Young creates more "tools" for Navy program managers

Sea Power, Oct 2003

John J. Young Jr., assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development, and acquisition has served since 2001, presiding over key decisions in shipbuilding, aviation, and business reform that will shape tomorrow's fleet. Before joining the Navy secretariat, Young was a staff analyst with the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Defense. Young also worked in industry, with Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems in Fort Worth, Texas; and with Rockwell Missile Systems Division in Duluth, Ga. Prior posts include a technical staff position in hypersonic and standoff weapon design at Sandia National Laboratories. Young earned a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University.

The Navy is changing to a more flexible procurement process and the evolutionary development of technology. Is the budget system changing along with it?

Young: No, not at all. I will use the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program as an example. The Congress has been an amazing partner with us on LCS. In a visit before the war to Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, we could see the need for LCS: to do the mine warfare mission; to do the maritime interdiction mission.

Typically, we write a requirement, which is shaped by thinking in the Pentagon because we won't have money |at that stage] for industry's input. Then you put the requirement into the budget. A year later, we start hearing what industry can do against our requirement. It will be at least three years before you are even close to having the beginnings of a design for a ship. You are four or five years from starting construction on that ship.

With LCS, we have done it a different way. Congress has put some faith in the Navy [and] provided money in FY 2003. That let us go to industry and ask what can be done. That let us refine our requirements with the knowledge of what industry thought they could deliver for us within a reasonable budget. And so we are walking those steps together: We are asking for industry's ideas; we are down-selecting to the next set of ideas; we are refining our requirements and our cost estimates; and we are coming to [a] close. But it really takes that leap of faith on the part of Congress and confidence in the system to say, 'We are going to work the requirements in this spiral manner and have them be informed requirements. And we are really going to treat cost as an independent variable and trade some of the requirements to maintain the cost.'

The traditional process doesn't let you do that. Everybody wants to cut the acquisition timelines down from [the typical] eight to 10 years. The fundamental thing you have to do is create this partnership with the Congress. Or somehow alter the traditional budget process that means when you start a new program, you are at least two years away from having any money.

How will the surface force of the next decade accommodate new missions such as missile defense?

Young: A lot of people are working on that in great detail. The Chief of Naval Operations and the operational Navy have done a good job of thinking through concepts in terms of expeditionary strike groups and [aircraft carrier strike groups]. There are pieces that we still have to factor in, one being missile defense.

[Former Navy Secretary Gordon] England used to say it very well: 'Today's destroyer is dramatically more capable than the cruisers we had 20 years ago. It owns and dominates the airspace around it for a couple hundred miles with Standard Missile and the Aegis radar.' So we have more capability in our assets. But we are also being asked to be present in more places and to do more missions such as missile defense and maritime interdiction.

But how will you take on more missions as the fleet is being reduced?

Young: There is a knee in the curve. We are going to go below 300 ships, and then hopefully be able to turn that back. LCS and DD(X) [a new destroyer] are on schedule and are important pieces to help us get to the right number of hulls so we can provide the presence we need.

There are other tools that the Chief of Naval Operations and the fleet have worked, such as crew rotation. We get more deployed time out of those ships by doing a sea swap with the crew. Each of those steps is helping. The Missile Defense Agency and [its director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish,] have worked with us as great partners. They have determined that Aegis will be an essential element of the ground-based missile-defense system, providing that forward radar coverage. That is going to put an unexpected demand on the fleet, and we have got to stay conscious of that and to balance it against the mission requirements that we see. Sea Swap [a plan to rotate ships' crews while at-sea] and surge [new deployment plans] and other tools are going to get us more deployed time out of our more capable assets.

But as we step down the road and actually do begin to perform that missile-defense surveillance mission, and continue our roles in maritime interdiction and maritime presence, we are going to have to keep looking at the fleet size to make sure we have got the number right.