Admiral, thank you very much for that kind introduction, and a special thank you to all the of the Submarine League leadership, Admiral Mies, Admiral Padgett, Tim Oliver. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I’m also very grateful for your leadership in providing this venue, which is extremely important to allow that interaction between industry and the government. You saw all the program managers that were just up here. It’s really great stuff. So I appreciate that. I would like to also echo my classmate Phil Sawyer’s recognition of all the folks up here. I’d like to have a round of applause for everyone from industry that is here. We absolutely could not do what we’re doing without the commitment of the great Americans that are in industry and supporting this. So my hat is off to all of you. I want to point out the 20 Naval Academy midshipmen that just walked in. Why don’t you ladies and gents stand up. So there’s the future of our Navy right here, and I’m sure there’s a couple of submariners in the crowd.
Yesterday, Admiral Richardson talked about synchronizing the message. So my remarks this morning are going to be about the Integrated Undersea Future Strategy (IUFS). It’s the bedrock foundational document upon which we do that synchronization. I had a lot of people since October come up to me and say, “Hey, very impressive. You guys are really right on message. It’s clearly well-synchronized.” And I’ll be honest with you, that didn’t happen by accident. We work at it, and its efforts like the IUFS that helps that. So it’s really important to me that you understand that. I’m going to take my time this morning to talk about it. Admiral Richardson talked about commander’s guidance and getting the message out. He challenged all of you to go out and interact with
folks, whether it’s calling on your own Congressmen, or if you belong to some organization from the Chamber of Commerce to the Rotary Club. I am committed to help you do that. If anybody needs help in strategic messaging, then you call “1-800-N97” and let us know. Commander Martin Sprague, would you stand up? Go slip him your business card on a break, and if you need trifolds, priorities briefs, talking points for your Congressman, we are more than happy to support you.
Now, another thing that Admiral Richardson talked about yesterday was the six-factor formula, and I know Admiral Donald and Admiral Bowman are looking at me right now. So I thought it would be appropriate to give you the N97 perspective on the six factor formula. As you know, sequestration is going to hit one of the factors. Admiral Richardson accurately alluded to that. The IUFS is organized into five pillars – platforms, platform enhancements, payloads, posture, and people. It is the document we use to align our undersea warfare strategies with the Navy and national objectives. It’s an internal SECRET level document only really accessible from within N97. So, if you are a Distribution List-D cleared contractor and have access to a CAC (Common Access Card), you will be able to download an industry overview version of the IUFS. The IUFS is a 200 plus page document. I’ve distilled it down into five pages to describe where N97 is going and what our priorities are, our integrated undersea future strategy. I want people to know where we’re going. That shouldn’t be part of the mystery. Okay, so the website address is https://usff.portal.navy.mil/sites/csl/stratcomms/default.aspx, and we’ll go from there.
The IUFS has been around for a while. It served us well in leadership transitions, and I think the results speak for themselves when you consider the fact that everyone from POTUS to Congress to DoD, DoN are really in line with our priorities. The priorities are listed. OHIO Replacement is number one followed by building Virginia class at a rate of two per year. Next is getting the Virginia Payload Modules (VPM) starting with block five VIRGINA and beyond. I add a fourth priority because it’s something we really want to get going on. That’s the heavyweight torpedo restart. Dave Johnson alluded to that a little bit in his remarks. In the end, the IUFS is all about prioritization, alignment, communication.
The Undersea Dominance Campaign Plan (UDCP) has six lines of effort, and Admiral Connor talks about the UDCP a lot. He talks about these six things: own the best platforms, grow longer arms, beat the adversary systems, defend the undersea base, getting on the same page, and getting faster. That has all of the things that are both to and from the undersea domain. There are multiple resource sponsors involved, N2N6, N89, N95, N96, N97, N98. What’s different about the IUFS is that N97’s approach addresses the investments that are from the undersea. So the UDCP kind of does both the to-from thing and the IUFS is just about the from part. The UDCP is essentially the blueprint for what needs to be done, and the IUFS is about how N97 will address that from part. So I’m going to build this concept out a little bit. There are the five pillars of the IUFS that I mentioned earlier—platforms, platform enhancements, payloads, et cetera, and the same six lines of effort that we just talked about from the UDCP. Now, some of those connections are very obvious, like platforms. As we work through this, I’ll show you how a lot of the IUFS has multiple touch points with the UDCP.
So here’s the platform part. Obviously, they’re our largest financial investment, and a lot of the early IUFS work really focused heavily on trying to address the significant platform challenges that we were going after. Let’s face it; platforms are the biggest rocks, so we need to put those into the jar first. You also see the heavy emphasis on that prioritization that we talked about, the Ohio Replacement and maintaining that strategic deterrence in those first two blocks, and of course Virginia class, two per year. All right, platform enhancements. We used to focus primarily on payload volume, and recently we broadened this pillar to reflect additional platform improvement efforts such as modernizing and maintaining acoustic superiority in light of next generation threats. Consequently, this is kind of the second biggest chunk of rocks, and therefore, we need to put them into the jar next. Owning the best platforms includes being flexible and responsive to support the capacity and capabilities required of future operating environments and threats. The connection between the IUFS and the UDCP is much broader than it is on the platform side. From the standpoint of owning the best platforms, platform enhancements is the pillar that really puts the best capabilities in the best platforms. Platform enhancements enable all the things like grow longer arms, beat the adversary systems, et cetera, and then it provides the tactical systems that allow you to get on the same page. Payloads are one of the big focus areas for the next revision to the IUFS. Again, the full IUFS is a SECRET-level government internal document, so that doesn’t mean as much to those of you in industry. But this is where we’re putting a lot of work because a lot of the spade work for platforms and platform enhancements has been done and it’s time to really hit the payloads part a bit heavier. I think you’re all aware of Admiral Greenert’s emphasis on payloads from his Proceedings article. I’m going to talk a little bit more about the payloads in a minute. So I won’t dwell on each one here, but I would point out that payload development is something that requires a lot of partnership and a lot of teamwork. For example, we have to work with N2N6 who is the Resource Sponsor for Large Diameter UUVs. When it comes to pursuing advanced missiles, we have to coordinate with the surface folks in N96, the aviators in N98, and even the Air Force, because we all have interest. Coordination adds to the complexity of the process, but we’re working that very hard.
Finally, posturing and people. I’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that these are also in the mix. At the end of the day, the only thing a submarine is capable of doing by itself is sitting next to the pier and rusting. So, if it weren’t for the people, we’d be nothing. Relatively speaking, I don’t have the major near-term investment pull from these two pillars, so I’m not going to dwell on them in my short amount of time here today. So there are investments that I’m going focus on a little bit more, and these are also the things that are going to get the most attention in the next IUFS update that I was telling you about. I would also add that these are the areas that require industry expertise to move from a concept or basic design, towards a capability that we can use to
maintain undersea dominance through 2025. So let’s discuss briefly the platform enhancement piece. VPM and the Acoustic Superiority Program (ASP) are the two most investment intensive aspects of the platform enhancement pillar.
RADM Dave Johnson went into the VPM quite a bit. I’m not going to get into the details, but the bumper sticker is—you get greater than a three times increase in firepower for less than 15 percent increase in the cost of the ship. A fantastic selling point for this very, very vital capability that we need when the SSGNs retire. When the four SSGNs retire in the mid to late 2020s, there is a 60 percent reduction in our undersea payload volume. VPM is the answer to that. It is a huge enhancement.
Then there is acoustic advantage. USS SOUTH DAKOTA is a test platform for three crucial aspects we’re working on for acoustic superiority. The first is improved sensors. The second is an improved submarine coating. Third, there are a dozen or so noise reduction initiatives we’ll be obviously pulling through to the rest of the Virginia class and into Ohio Replacement as appropriate. These are very, very important. It’s my intention to pursue all of these acoustic superiority technologies on in-service and future SSNs and SSBNs. You will read in our industry overview that that’s where we want to go, and we’re leaning very far forward to do that. The degree to which we are able to do that is going to be a function of budgetary pressures. The Submarine Force is the key that opens that Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD) lock. We’re the folks that are expected to get in underneath, and at the time and place of our choosing, do what needs to be done. A significant part of our ability to do that relies on our acoustic advantage. Acoustic advantage translates to tactical advantage, and in the end, be able to put green metal (torpedoes) on black metal (adversary submarine).
Let’s talk a little bit about the payloads. Tomahawk blocks three and four, the current inventory, are sun setting in 2022. We’ll be working that re-certification and upgrade process starting in ’19. It adds some very significant electronic upgrades and about 15 years of life to each of those weapons. The Next Generation Land Attack Weapon (NGLAW) capability assessment should complete this fall with the initial capabilities document completed in ’15, followed by the Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) in ’16. The Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (OASW) weapon also has an AoA that’s being updated. In general, I can see a future with a multi-mission missile commonality, not necessarily an identical missile from platform to platform. The surface warriors don’t have that access that the submarine has, so the submarine may not need as long legs on the missile that the surface ship does. At the same time, they both need the seeker, the autonomy and the navigation.
There’s definitely multi-missile commonality without necessarily an identical missile. That’s the kind of commonality that we’re working for. Think of complexity in coordination we talked about earlier when it comes to this particular weapon system because it’s N95, N96, N98, and even the Air Force. The heavyweight torpedo restart timeline is all there also, RADM Johnson already mentioned that. The bottom line is we’ve got a lot of things that are coming together. Between APB 5 software modularity, APB 6 hardware modularity if you will, the 112 element array, and the Future Naval Capabilities (FNCs) that are all feeding in, there’s some great hardware that’s all going to come together here in a critical mass, and we’re excited about the future.
In the non-kinetic payload roadmap we have project 1319. It’s a Remus 600 vehicle that is going to be doing a real world mission soon. That’s delivering a UUV used in a real world scenario to a commander, and we’re very excited about that. The extended DryDeck Shelter (DDS) allows you to put an LDUUV in there. It also allows you to get a Shallow Water Combat Submersible (SWCS) in there. It not only gets you the additional 50 inches in length, but automation gets the diver out of there, which lets you use the full diameter of the DDS. As for the Universal Launch and Recovery Module (ULRM), we’ve successfully completed the land demonstration. We are pushing hard for an at sea demo in the fall of ’15. We want the ULRM to be able to handle the LDUUV. That’s the prime target, but ultimately we also want to handle future SWCS vehicles. Having that vehicle on the ULRM will allow dual SWCS vehicle ops from a single submarine. You’ll have SWCSs in both the DDS and the ULRM. That’s key. From a
SOF perspective, you get a backup SWCS for one thing, but you also get a significant increase in your operations because you’ve got two SWCS that can work simultaneously or augment each other. Finally, there is the LDUUV. Think something that’s about 22 feet long and about 54 inches in diameter. That’s the kind of thing that we’re going for.
So, wrapping it up here, the IUFS as I mentioned, hits those top three priorities—Ohio Replacement, building Virginia class at two per year, and the Virginia Payload Module. These are pretty well established, and frankly, the main challenges are fiscal. Of course, as RADM Johnson talked about, we’ve got to hit those costs and scheduled targets. Below our top three are things that we know we want to accomplish but frankly we’re still figuring out how best to do that. The things that we can use help from industry on are endurance, modular capability, sensors, coating, energy, autonomy, targeting, commonality, and all that I’ve talked about throughout the brief. The IUFS and the UDCP are very much aligned. I’m looking forward to any feedback on the IUFS from Industry as you get it. This will ensure that we will maintain undersea dominance as we go forward into the coming decades.
So, for questions, the first question I want to answer, because I know Sydney [Freedberg] is going to ask me anyway, is regarding ORP oversight. I want to make sure that you clearly understand that there is a very, very vigorous ORP oversight process. We have a Flag Oversight Board (FOB) chaired by RADM Johnson, and he is the whip cracker. You asked, “who cracks the whip.” I think Mr. Mulholland and Mr. Geiger, the two presidents of the two shipbuilding companies, can show you their lashes. He sends them letters all the time and tells them about performance issues, schedule issues, et cetera. So there’s your whip cracker. Informally, that flag oversight board meets every Thursday in a teleconference. On a more formal basis, they meet about every two to three months face-to-face. On this Flag Oversight Board are Admiral Johnson, Admiral Tofalo, Admiral Benedict, and Admiral Richardson is represented by SES Karen Henneberger who was here yesterday. Admiral Richardson acknowledged her as a result of her leadership award. Oh, and Jack Evans himself is also on the FOB. So, all the stakeholder SESs and Flag officers meet once a week informally, and formally quarterly. What else? Oh, you also asked about the chain of command, if you will. So given that RADM Johnson is the chairman of that board, the chain of command is very, very clear through the acquisition community.
ASN-RDA Stackley, who is the Service Acquisition Executive in accordance with the DoD 5000 instruction. He works for Mr. Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, and is the DoD Acquisition Executive, again, in accordance with the DoD 5000. I want to leave you with a very clear understanding that there is a very rigorous oversight process for the Ohio Replacement.
All right, other questions?
Speaker 21: Sir, could you comment briefly on what’s coming down the pike and what can be done to ensure that we can operate credibly in the absence of or seriously degraded space assets?
Joe Tofalo: This is in our DNA, right? I mean, we’re the guys who go out for entire patrols and never communicate. So from a communications standpoint, VLF is not the kind of thing that’s going to be impacted by loss of communications satellite. Our ability to do navigation using the ocean bottom is well-known. So again, you’re not relying on a satellite. So, already baked into who we are is the ability to not communicate and to navigate independently.
Speaker 21: I agree with you, but do we practice those things?
Joe Tofalo: Oh, absolutely. You bet. We challenge Commanding Officers to come up with different initiatives. I know when I was a group commander we had several COs that demonstrated the ability to go extended periods of time without any communication. I’m talking leaving the port not communicating. That’s in addition to the mission requirements. They also go extended periods of time utilizing navigation that’s not reliant on GPS. So, yes,
absolutely. Great question.
John Padgett: One more.
Speaker 22: One of the things you discussed was a long-range tactical missile. Once upon a time, there was a thing called TASM.
Is that a foundation for a long-range tactical missile?
Joe Tofalo: It’s certainly a conceptual foundation. What that’s going to actually look like, we have to allow the process to assess and determine what that’s going to be, including the appropriate JCIDS wickets that it has to meet. From a conceptual standpoint, I don’t think there’s anybody out there that doesn’t want to ensure that we have a weapon that will allow us to engage surface combatants.
Speaker 22: All right.
Joe Tofalo: Thank you very much, everybody. I appreciate it.
