ADMIRAL FRANK CALDWELL, USN
DIRECTOR NAVAL REACTORS
Admiral Padgett, congratulations and thank you, sir, for your leader- ship. Thank you also for sorting out the slide issues. Jay, I trust that there will be a suitable critique at the end of this.
You know you’re at a submarine conference when you notice that all the men in the men’s room, when they’re done using the sink, they take the time to wipe off the counter. I mean, that’s an ingrained cultural item and it’s hard to get away from. But anyway, it is great to be here.
Thank you, Jay, for the introduction. Thank you to the Navy Subma- rine League for all that you do for us, not only for this event but for all that you do to strengthen our submarine family, to communicate and ad- vocate for the submarine force, and to recognize our submariners for all of their accomplishments. Congratulations to this year’s award winners.
A special congratulations to Mr. Dan Tyler, Vice Admiral Ron Thun- man, and Vice Admiral Dan Cooper. I’d like to say, gentlemen, thank you for your lifetime of service and contributions to the U.S. Navy and the nation. Our force today is stronger because of your sacrifices and your commitments to the nation. I’d also like to publicly recognize Admiral Carter’s lifetime of service to the nation as well. And last but not least, I’d like to thank and recognize our industry leaders for your partnership in delivering and sustaining a strong submarine force that is so vital to our national security
Every time I come to this conference I’m reminded of my dad and the submarine family that I grew up in. My dad was all in on subma- rines, and so were we in our house. I’ll give you some examples.
In our house, we did not turn down the volume on the TV, we turned down the volume by 3DB. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my dad say that. My brothers and I learned to hate the recurring semi-annual force revision to the planned maintenance schedule for our home. This was always conducted late in the evening and always involved a lot of what we would call quality time with dad.
Whenever we worked on a car there was a full-fledged underway testing that occurred. It was usually full ahead and with hard braking, and then full astern with hard braking as well. These were frequently conducted on a dark highway late at night after some long shift work in the garage.
Interestingly enough, though, there was always a discussion about ownership. It kind of went like this, he said before your family drives on it, you make sure you test and make sure it works right. There was a lesson in there. Little did I know that I would learn that lesson and have that responsibility on the submarine force.
We also had in our family the installation of TV aerials. A lot of you younger folks don’t know what those are, but TV aerial installation was a major evolution and a core competency in the Caldwell family. This usually required a pre-check of all the equipment, which included this rotor that turned the upper assembly, pre-stage tools on the roof, multi- ple stays that allowed us to get an extremely high look, even though we lived on top of a hill, and the assistance of two or three nuclear-trained officers who were unfortunate to live near us. They all attended the pre- brief, they all had assignments, and then before we went aloft everybody reviewed what they were going to do. I have to say we probably did not meet the rules for working aloft.
But anyway, the best part of this conference and being in the sub- marine family is the comaraderie. No matter where you go, no matter what port, no matter what station, that comaraderie comes right at you and there’s always a friend. So I think the most valuable part of this symposium is the chance to meet old friends, to reacquaint, and to gain new friends.
Since I have the honor of speaking first, I’m going to give you a short update on what’s going on in the Naval Reactors Program. I’ll just touch on the things that have happened since we last met, and then I’ll talk about our theme, which you can see at the top of the poster here “Getting Faster.”
We’ve been incredibly busy over the last year. There’s a lot on our plate. The Columbia, formerly known as the Ohio Replacement, remains the number one investment priority for the U.S. Navy, and will provide deterrence out to the year 2080, carrying over 70 percent of the opera- tional warheads, and be the most survivable leg of our nuclear triad.
We’re on a very aggressive design and construction schedule with no margin. We can’t shift the schedule any further right. In Naval Reactors, we’re focused on completing the system arrangements and the compo- nent designs that will allow us to procure the reactor plant heavy com- ponents: the reactor vessel, steam generator, and the components in the reactor compartment. We’re going to do those procurements in FY ’19.
We’ve completed the designs for the major electrical components for the electric drive. We’re tracking towards full scale integrated testing of the pre-production components, and that testing will commence later on this year and go well through and into 2018 and the start of 2019. We’re going to test all these things, full size, actual components.
We are delivering on two Virginia-class submarines per year. There’s a steady battle rhythm of milestones which includes commissioning the Illinois and Washington this last year, christening Colorado and Indiana, laying the keel for Oregon, of which I’m proud to say that Dana Rich- ardson is the ship’s sponsor. We’ve completed sea trials on Colorado and Washington, and as you would expect the crew and the ship performed very well. All total, there are some 12 ships under construction at New- port News Shipbuilding and Electric Boat.
We’re progressing on the Virginia Payload Module. Again, this is that 85-foot section with the four tubes that goes into the Block V boats. The work on the Virginia Payload Module is moving ahead with the sub- mittal of detailed designs. The first payload tubes are under construction, and the machining and assembly of critical components on the tubes is in progress. All of this supports the start of the first VPM construction in FY ’19. I’m going to leave it to PEO Submarines, Program Executive Officer Submarines, Mike Jabaley, to talk more about what he’s doing with Virginia, Virginia Payload Module, and Columbia.
On other fronts, we’re just about a year away from transitioning to the first new moored training ship, the La Jolla, and we’ve already start- ed conversion on the second moored training ship, the San Francisco. Meanwhile, there are major changes going on on the waterfront down in Charleston. These include security upgrades, new buildings for training, and the addition of the engine room team trainer. These high fidelity trainers simulate the forward end of the 688-class submarine, all three levels. To give you some sense of our progress, we have actually landed all three levels on the first interim team trainer down in Charleston, and we’re putting the cap on that this week as we speak.
We’ll be training on these devices in about a year. We’re going to build a second one down in Charleston and we’re going to build a third one up at the S8G prototype in New York. All of these efforts are fo- cused on enhancing the quality of our training program and delivering the best operators to the fleet. I’m pretty excited about it. I think it’s going to represent a great gain for us.
In Idaho we broke ground on the new spent fuel handling facility. There’s a lot of site preparation that has to occur. Again, that is going to replace a 60-year-old facility. This has been a long time coming in our program and allows me to fulfill my obligations for safely handling spent fuel at end of life.
This year we commissioned the Gerald Ford, the first new carrier designed in 40 years. There are major propulsion plan advancements in Ford. This design benefitted from a lot of design cycles that occur within the submarine force that then informed the work on the carrier. I could take you down there, those of you who build and understand and have operated submarines, I think you would be incredibly impressed with the Ford propulsion plant.
Right behind Ford we’re 36 percent through the man-hours of the production on the carrier Kennedy, which is the next one, and that trans- lates to over 50 percent of the structural members being in place. So we’re well on our way and it’s something to be really excited about.
I want to shift gears and talk about this conference theme today. A friend of mine recently sent me a picture of USS Jacksonville that was underway. As you heard in the introduction, Jacksonville was a ship I commanded, so she’s always very close to my heart. Very soon Jackson- ville will turn up in Bremerton and she will be there for inactivation and defueling. This will mark the end of a life for a ship that will have served the nation for 36 years, having been commissioned in 1981.
I’m sure many of you can identify with this, but anytime a subma- rine that you served on decommissions you think of the deployments made, the missions conducted and the boat’s accomplishments. Mostly you think about the people. It probably brings a smile, a chuckle, some great stories and a sense of pride. For Jacksonville, that will be the same for me.
When Jacksonville was commissioned she was the 12th 688-class submarine, the third of six Los Angeles-class submarines that were built in that year. Think about that. She was born into a fleet of 74 fast attack submarines. According to our math and research, about 50 percent of the force were 637-class submarines, and about 15 percent were 688-class submarines.
We were turning out ships at a high rate: six in 1981, four in 1982, five in 1983. Generally, we were averaging somewhere a little over three ships per year, plus the one Ohio-class submarine that we were turning out at that time. Jacksonville was born in the Cold War. She was built to have the speed to keep up with the carriers, and she had numerous Cold War deployments. After the Cold War ended, she became what we called then a battle group deployer, meaning you worked up with the bat- tle group, do certification exercises – we called them COMPTUEX and JTFEX – and then you deployed with the carrier, although frequently, once deployed you operated independently and then you might join a carrier depending on what the world operations were.
Originally Jax was scheduled to be refueled. At some point a de- cision was made to inactivate here, and then later that decision was re- versed and she was refueled at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in the early 2000s. Then, in 2009, she transitioned to the Pacific, where she has served until the present time.
When I was at SUBPAC from 2010 to 2013, I had a picture of Jack- sonville maneuvering near the pier in Sepanggar, Malaysia. I liked this picture a lot, and I liked it because of what it represented. It represented a world that we never envisioned when I was a young officer.
It also represented a submarine force that was adapting and evolving to the changes that were going on in the undersea domain and in the world. So Jax, here she was, a Cold War veteran, serving out here last few years on deployments in the Western Pacific and also in the Central Command area. We got our money’s worth.
Her last deployment was nearly eight months, with an incredibly high op tempo and no missed underway obligations. Think about that, a 36-year-old ship, a real testament to the ship and the people that main- tained and operated her. When Jax decommissions she will represent the changing face of our submarine force, which is now roughly 68 percent 688s and 25 percent Virginia-class. And that number is changing rapidly because of the full-fledged construction of two Virginia-class subma- rines per year and a steady program of record that decommissions 688s at about the pace of two per year.
When I think about her three-plus decades of service, I hold up Jack- sonville as a shining example of what the evolution of our force has been and what we’re capable of if we put our minds to it. I think this sets the stage for the discussion about our foundation and our future, and really gets to the theme of this conference about getting faster. Yes, the world is changing fast and we need to stay ahead of it. The central question is, how do we do that? How do we adapt our boats and ourselves to what the nation needs?
We all know that in our reality the construction span takes years. New classes take decades in a world where the pace of change of tech- nology is much faster than that, and our warfighting needs are much faster than that. So how do we respond?
I can confidently say, as Jax gets ready to decommission, that she is still among the most capable submarines in the world. How did we do that? How did we provide a submarine that operated for 36 years, literally operating around the world, and yet by comparison is still very, very capable?
When I commanded Jacksonville I once toured a NATO admiral around the ship and he was shocked at the age of the boat. It was then 20 years old. He lamented that younger ships in his navy looked nowhere near as good as Jacksonville. I am absolutely confident that if we were to re-enact that when the ship was 30 years old or even 36 years old today, he would still be overwhelmed with the way we preserve, maintain the ship, and the combat capability of that ship.
The answer about how we got there was hard work, yes, a steady day-to-day commitment to standards, but it was also we did this iter- atively. Over the course of decades, we made changes to Jacksonville at the tactical level. Through necessity we came up with the scheme to modernize her sonar and fire control systems, and the sonar and fire con- trol systems in the fleet. It was a plan that Jacksonville benefitted from. These upgrades not only avoided equipment obsolescence but added tremendous real warfighting capability, including improved situational awareness for the officer of the deck and a greater tactical control over a broader range of the undersea domain.
That same modernization schedule also allowed us to increase the pace of modernization, introducing new capability through successive and progressive cycles of hardware and software changes. That same scheme now serves us very well in our submarine imaging and electron- ic systems and interfaces now with our electronic navigation systems. During the battle group years, we substantially upgraded Jacksonville’s communications suite, and have the ability to tap and feed over the hori- zon targeting support systems.
During battle group operations, we handled a volume of commu- nications that was unheard of on my first boat. In fact, it would have made my communicator’s head explode. I remember him going around and trimming out every “the” and “and” and unnecessary adjective from every message we sent, which wasn’t very many.
Operating with the battle group was all about adaptation. It was ad- aptation to a new set of circumstances and a new set of demands. There was a lot of innovation. There was incremental adding of capability. There was learning at sea and then rapidly feeding that back to the force.
An image I recall very vividly during my time in Pearl Harbor as XO was that of a large group of submarine department heads, XOs and commanding officers jammed in a classroom at Pearl Harbor listening intently and questioning two battle group deployers who had just re- turned from what we called the CBBG deployment, and trying to under- stand what it took, what we needed to do and how do we get better. By the way, history repeats itself, because I have the same image from my first boat of all officers from the waterfront mustering on the second deck at DEVRON 12 to hear first-hand the exploits of a returning boat. That same image, folks, is the image I have about Admiral Lockwood meeting with his commanding officers during the battle in the Pacific in World War II as they sat in the skipper’s lounge and talked about what worked, what didn’t work, how we’re going to get better and how we’re going to get better faster. There was a need, there was a necessity there.
Over her life Jacksonville saw a transition in the mix and types of weapons she carried in her torpedo room, a transition to Tomahawk and Mark 48 ADCAP. This, combined with the communications upgrades that I already talked about, and for that matter for the rest of the subma- rine force, changed us. We could not only do sea control missions, we could now do power projection missions and we could do them deep inshore.
So as a result of huge tactical system changes on Jacksonville and throughout the force, we were able to make impressive contributions to the operational level of war and to the lethality of the submarine force. Those overall tactical improvements also allowed us to contribute to the strategic domain as well. What I find really noteworthy in all of this was the decision to shift Jacksonville to the Pacific Fleet
Many of you lived through that and probably know the story better than I do, but the move was emblematic of a submarine force that was maneuvering to stay ahead of the changing tides in the world. This was part of shifting 60 percent of our submarine force to the Pacific, and that, by the way, occurred years before President Obama talked about the piv- ot to the Pacific in 2011. This ship was the product of submarine force leadership looking at deployment patterns, understanding fleet combat- ant commander and national tasking requirements, and thinking hard about the future and carrying the case to Navy leadership in a well-craft- ed position to get a decision.
I’m extremely proud to be part of a force that fought that through, carried it through, got the decision and then executed. I argue that within our culture – the point of this story is – within our culture is the DNA to get at getting faster, and to get at the challenge posed by this conference. Success for Jacksonville and the 688 force and our strategic force has always been constructed on a solid bedrock of fundamentals: building the ship tough from the start with the margin and first-time quality that we need; working closely with shipbuilders and industry partners who know their tradecraft very well and deliver very capable ships; and an unrelenting commitment to rigorous maintenance standards.
And by the way, we’ve had to fight for this from time to time. I recall when we transferred the nuclear-capable tenders out of Norfolk and we shifted it to shore-based maintenance, that was a change. That required partnering and educating with our shore-side maintainers to make sure that we got our intent of maintaining our boats. There’s also reliance on the hard work of trained and knowledgeable sailors to operate and main- tain our boats. Those fundamentals include an unrelenting commitment to inspect what we expect, including tactical, strategic, as well as propul- sion; and also, to inspect the supporting programs in each of those areas.
There was a commitment to modernize through the forward thinking and tightly synchronized efforts of the fleet, OPNAV, NAVSEA, and this was coupled with a never-ending assessment of the schedule versus re- sources and see where we need to make tweaks and adjustments. There was also an investment by the submarine force leadership to tell our story, to highlight our missions, to inform defense, administrative and Congressional leaders, while all the time fighting to keep funding for the program. And very importantly, we worked to find and keep the best people that we could get. Once we got them we annealed them in our culture, a culture of constructive dissatisfaction, and we made them a part of our submarine Ohana forever.
Everything we’ve done with Jacksonville and the rest of the subma- rine force, and everything we did at the tactical, operational and strategic level, was enabled because we got these fundamentals right, due in large part to the folks in this room. All the efforts to go faster start with an unwavering commitment to these standards and these fundamentals. So we turn to the challenge that the CNO has posed to us and articulated in his “Design for Maritime Superiority.” It’s a theme that he has been very vocal about for the last two years, if you’ve been listening, the chal- lenge of getting faster and delivering and advancing our naval capability across the four lines of efforts in the design, and that I talked about last year.
So you say, Caldwell, what do you mean, get faster at what? I say get faster at the four lines of effort: strengthening naval power at and from the sea, that is delivering the warfighting capability to a fleet that is trained and operated to fight; high velocity learning at the individu- al, team and organizational level, you can’t forget about that; strength- ening the Navy team, our people, for the future, including active duty, civilians, reserves, and our families who play a role in this; and finally, expanding and strengthening the network of international, inter-agency and service partners.
We are in a global competition for the maritime domain. That com- petition, folks, is very, very real. Our operational commanders, Joe To- falo and Daryl Caudle, are going to talk about this in their presentations.
The good news is that the CNO’s message is out. We have every- body, including the Naval Submarine League, talking about it. Get Faster And now, we actually have to get faster.
It’s time to execute. So how do we do this? I’m going to give you my thoughts on it. Using the history of Jacksonville as a lesson, I want to make several points.
We must continue to do the fundamentals very, very well, and we must attack anything that weakens those fundamentals. I’m confident that the force commanders have this exactly right. One of those fun- damentals is our strategic deterrent mission. We can never waver on that. That is the submarine forces’ core capability and contribution to the national defense.
The second point, iterations matter. We didn’t wake up one morning and decide to press the easy button and end up with Jacksonville at 36 years of service with all the modernized fully capable sonar, fire control, weapons and electronic suites. We iterated with an unrelenting deter- mination that was fueled by this DNA of constructive dissatisfaction, a culture for never settling for second best.
The art now is to figure out, how do we make those successive itera- tions happen quicker? And additionally, how do we learn as industry and partners side-by-side? Think about my example about talking in the ward rooms and at DEVRON 12, bringing the people together and talking.
Third, we need to open up our aperture on our thinking. Getting faster and improving warfighting capability on Jacksonville was a heck of a lot more than just acquisition. In fact, I charge all of us to think about how we broaden our thinking in areas of training, tactical devel- opment, maintenance, ordnance, deployment, operations and developing our warriors. These all contribute to warfighting and our central focus of owning the undersea domain not only today, but well into the future.
On top of that, I offer an amendment to the wise words of one of my predecessors, Admiral Bowman. Recall the five gets. I know you know them. Get connected, get payload, get modular, get electric, get affordable.
If you haven’t pulled this out Google it. Go find that. You’ll find it’s still very relevant. You’ll also find that we’ve made some great progress. It’s a nice model for thinking about where we can go add effort.
But now we need to add and amplify that a little bit, and the next get is get off-board. We’ve got to grow the arms and the reach of each individual boat. The path is through off-board vehicles, sensors and net- works. By the way, I don’t think these have to be carried organically on a submarine, but we have to be able to use them. And we need help from our industry partners.
I’d like you to think about it in three phases. One is, what is the capability you can add to Virginia-class now, so we can learn and adapt and iterate quickly? Using what we learn from that, what can we do to expand our thinking about the opportunities that might be present in the Virginia Payload Module tubes? And subsequently, learning from that, what do we learn and add to the next design for the next SSN?
Finally, folks, getting faster is absolutely dependent on stable and predictable funding. We can’t win, we can’t execute efficiently, if we have to redo our planning every year. There are many examples where that inefficiency has caused us problems. So, getting faster is on all of us.
The good news is that your submarine force leadership team is mov- ing out. Vice Admiral Tofalo and Rear Admiral Caudle are going to tell you about the things they’re working on across the full spectrum of their responsibilities. I like what they’re doing. There’s a lot of things to be proud of, but there’s more work to be done.
Mr. Brian Howes from N97 is going to talk to you about something we call TSEP, Tactical Submarine Evolution Plan. That’s the approach to continue to improve our platforms, whether it’s Virginia or the next SSN. It’s a great start. It’s a building block that brings all the right players together in a recurring dialogue with an action plan to drive us to the best direction we can. Brian is also going to talk about the family of UUV, Unmanned Undersea Vehicles.
Rear Admiral Mike Jabaley is going to talk to you. He’s the Program Executive Office for Submarines. He’s working to integrate our build strategy for Virginia, Virginia Payload Module and Columbia, and to figure out, how do we buy those components more efficiently; including, how do we leverage buying for the carrier programs to make them more efficient and to de-risk the work that we need to do on Columbia? Sep- arately, I think you could challenge me and say, Caldwell, I hear you but go fast to where? Where are we going?
Well, we’re working on that too, and we’re working with the War College to help us think about the future demands of the force. Where will we need to operate? Where will we need to operate? What missions might we be assigned to do? What capabilities matter most? What part- ners need to be included in our discussion?
We’re calling this the Alternate Futures Study, which seeks not to predict an exact specific future, but to give us a range of alternative fu- tures in the 2040 timeframe that we should plan to. We will use the Alternate Futures Study to inform our decision regarding future capabil- ities and operational requirements, not only for the next platform but for other investments in the undersea domain. In this effort we’ve brought in expertise from a broad range and a broad spectrum of disciplines. We started the discussion at the un-class level and we’re progressing into the classified level. I’m pretty excited about this and I think it’s a great partnership with the War College.
As I close here, I would like to say the challenge that the CNO has issued, and that you’ve issued in your conference them about getting faster, is a calling for all of us. Since the first days of our submarine force, we have sought to improve our ability to support the nation. I’ve discussed Jacksonville’s life, but there are many similar stories through- out the early days of force during World War II and during the Cold War.
One thread runs through all of this. The center of gravity for ev- erything that we do is our people, the men and women in uniform, our civilians and our leaders and our partners in industry, and also our Con- gressional supporters. The type of people that I’m talking about are the ones who believe in what we’re doing, who sacrifice time with family and friends to go to sea, who work the long hours at sea or at shore to solve really hard problems, and who are willing to stand on that roof and install your TV aerial, if you’re so inclined to do so today.
We’re going to answer the call that you’ve issued to our people.There’s a saying I picked up at the American Nuclear Society plenary this week, and it goes like this. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Well we want to go far, and we want to go fast, and we’re going to have to figure out how to do that both with in- dustry, with our Congressional team leaders, and with our military folks.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. I’m honored to have had the chance to talk to you today.
