Looking at LCS, USV ops support

ARLINGTON, Va. – The Navy is conducting war games and prototyping efforts to better understand how unmanned surface vehicles (USV) will fit into the fleet and how the Littoral Combat Ship will expand its presence around the globe. Program Executive Officer (PEO) for Unmanned and Small Combatants, Rear Adm. Casey Moton, described efforts that look at how to maintain and sustain both types of vessels, as well as how USVs will operate and contribute to a fight alongside manned ships. The Navy already has at its disposal two Large USVs as part of the Pentagon’s Overlord program - that took vessels and converted them to autonomous controls. The first two Overlord vehicles contributed to Phase 1 testing, ensuring the vessels could navigate autonomously while following the rules of the road at sea. Navy expects to buy two more Overlords in FY 2020, which will contribute – along with the first two – to Phase 2 testing. Moton addressed the LCS program, which currently has three ships operating forward: USS Montgomery (LCS-8) and USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS-10), operating out of Singapore; and USS Detroit (LCS-7) operating in the U.S. 4th Fleet’s waters. Ahead of Detroit’s first-time deployment, the Navy did “quite a few tabletops looking at LCS corrective maintenance, preventative maintenance,” he continued. The PEO worked with 4th Fleet and Naval Sea Systems Command’s Ship Maintenance and Modernization arm, SEA21. To supplement these war-gaming efforts to better understand overseas maintenance and sustainment, Moton said lessons learned from the ongoing deployments are being collected and disseminated by the Top Technical Issues forum. In collaboration with the Commander of Naval Surface Forces and Naval Supply Systems Command, the tech group is getting “almost real-time feedback from Montgomery and Gabrielle Giffords on where they need changes to their forward-deployed spares’ status, do we have the right contracting methods in place to reach back to (original manufacturers), what are things we can do to make the ship operators and (regional maintenance centers) more self-sufficient in their ability to do corrective maintenance? We are rolling all of those in as fast as we can, the lessons learned, and making improvements.” (Source: USNI News 11/21/19) Gulf Coast Note: The Montgomery and Giffords were built by Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Ala. https://news.usni.org/2019/11/21/unmanned-vehicle-operations-global-lcs-support-informed-by-ongoing-