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Intelligent consolidation among the services is an effective means to cut costs, but it should not wipe out the full spectrum of knowledge and core capabilities that each service requires to meet its unique needs. Navy-operated and -controlled aviation depots, for example, ensure the hands-on experience and knowledge of naval aviation’s particularities that are required to maintain combat readiness.
aval aviation operates in a harsh environment that imposes unique and stringent requirements on the design, manufacture, and support of aircraft and aeronautical systems. In the past, the U.S. Navy was able to depend on other nations for significant contributions to naval aviation, such as the United Kingdom’s development of the steam catapult and the angled carrier flight deck. Today, however, we have the only Navy in the world that operates substantial numbers of aircraft at
u.s. navy
sea. No longer can we rely on other nations for technological development. Moreover, as our own defense budget declines, we are seeing the infrastructure, which has both sustained our naval air forces and kept them technically superior, also being reduced significantly.
The greatest innovations and contributions to our at-sea war-fighting capabilities used to come from our naval aviators, who operated at sea and clearly understood the environment. Working with their civilian counterparts in the Navy s materiel establishment—formerly the Bureau of eionautics and now the Naval Air Systems Command— t ey blended their at-sea operational experience with civilian technical talent to translate bold and innovative t oughts and ideas into working reality. For example:
, n mid- 1920s, the crash barrier was developed on e experimental carrier USS Langley (CV-1). Prior to the an iei, each aircraft had to be taken below after landing e ore the next aircraft could land. Once the barrier be- cameopcrati003^ aircraft could be parked at the front of . 6f 'k C protected by the crash barrier from air-
ciu t that might fail to catch an arresting wire—allowing naval aircraft to be recovered more rapidly and repositioned for refueling and rearming.
>■ Early carriers had limited space for repair capability, and teams of operationally experienced naval aviators, en-
t'neers from the Bureau of Aeronautics, and industry representatives were always working to reduce equipment s,ze. One outstanding success was the radial, air-cooled reciprocating engine with a horsepower-to-weight ratio greater than that of contemporary water-cooled in-line en- §>nes. These new engines were far easier to maintain Jnd much more able to resist battle damage. In fact, ’heir performance was so impressive that both Army avi- a’ion and the airlines adopted them.
* The need for air-to-air missile capability on carrier ’actical aircraft pushed the Navy to the forefront in developing the world’s first successful air-to-air missile— •he Sidewinder.
^ Although the Navy had antisubmarine warfare (ASW) systems in its helicopters since the early 1950s, its desire 'o improve these systems and add others was inhibited by ’he helicopter’s inherent weight, size, and power constraints. To overcome these limitations, a team of naval officers and civilians from the Naval Air Systems Command and the former Naval Air Development Center conceived the idea of placing the relatively lightweight ASW sensors on the helicopters and the much heavier but much more powerful processors on the escort ships. The two svere then linked by a secure, highly directional, digital data link. This solved the weight problem and also increased basic capability by allowing for real-time interaction between ship and helicopter system operators. This new system—the LAMPS Mk III—was then capable of active and passive surface and subsurface search, localization, classification, and attack out to 100 nautical miles from the convoy. In the 1980s, Navy engineers at Lake- hurst, New Jersey—using the unique land-based test site there—developed the recovery, assist, securing, and traversing (RAST) system, allowing LAMPS helicopters to operate around the clock, even in heavy weather.
^ The Consolidated Automatic Support System (CASS), an integrated suite of electronic test equipment designed to diagnose faults and facilitate the repair of all electronic equipment, was developed from years of experience with electronic component test and repair gained by our enlisted, officer, and civilian personnel at our aviation depots and carrier-based Aviation Intermediate Maintenance Departments. CASS solved the space constraint problem and halted the proliferation of test equipment. With this single, reconfigurable, automated test system, maintenance crews can diagnose multiple type aircraft avionics, whether on the factory floor or at the avionics repair site, saving significant time and money.
As a result of the severely reduced Defense budget, there is considerable pressure to consolidate—or even eliminate—many of the Navy’s aviation development, acquisition, and support activities. This is a real concern, as the success of naval aviation is dependent on the Navy’s possessing a full spectrum of skills and abilities in its aviator, engineering, research and development, maintenance, and test and evaluation communities. The elements of this spectrum—science and technology, design, development, test and evaluation, production, fleet support, and depot overhaul and repair—fit together like the pieces of a complex machine. Weaken any one of them, and the machine’s effectiveness as an engine for innovation declines. Take away any piece and you compromise naval aviation’s abil
ity to push the envelope of technology and innovation for operating our aircraft and weapons from the sea.
This is not to say we should not be looking—and looking hard—for consolidation. Unneeded duplication of capability must be eliminated among the services. This can be accomplished, however, while still maintaining within each service the full spectrum of knowledge and core capabilities required for its unique needs. In fact, it is imperative.
For naval aviation, those core capabilities enable the Navy to work with industry to develop, acquire, and support aviation systems that operate at sea. Without them, we could well find ourselves in the same position as the Royal Navy’s carrier air arm after World War I: with less- than-adequate aircraft, inadequate support, unreliable catapults, and unsatisfactory arresting gear. We simply cannot let that happen. We cannot forget that our research and development, acquisition, support, test and evaluation, and industrial policies are tied together, and must remain so if we are to maintain our air superiority at sea and from the sea.
Because naval aviation is a unique business with no commercial equivalents, the Navy needs to be a smart and informed buyer and supporter of its naval aviation systems. To be smart over a system’s life cycle, we need to do more than look over the shoulders of those actually doing the work. The Navy needs people with hands-on experience in every area of the unique design, development, acquisition, test and evaluation, and support—including depot maintenance—of its sea-based war-fighting systems.
Maintaining core depot-maintenance experience and capability is particularly critical because the readiness and sustainability of our carrier battle groups are so dependent on it. Its importance even has been recognized by Congress and codified into law. Title 10, U.S. Code, states, “it is essential for the national defense that Department of Defense (DoD) activities maintain a logistics capability (including personnel, equipment, and facilities) to ensure a ready and controlled source of technical competence and resources necessary to ensure effective and timely response to mobilization, national defense contingency situations, and other emergency requirements.” Without Navy-operated and -controlled aviation depots, the Navy would not be able to guarantee compliance with Title 10; in a time of crisis, there would be no way to ensure that Navy requirements would receive the needed priority.
Maintaining a core depot industrial support capability is also critical in minimizing the risk that mission-essential weapon systems will not be ready for use in combat or that they will be unable to be sustained in combat because of unresponsive, unsatisfactory, or disrupted depot support. This means having the organic capabilities necessary to ensure a ready and controlled source of logistics support to our operating forces. It also means working in partnership with private industry and doing, in-house, that which the Navy needs to do to be a smart buyer and a responsive provider of support.
But no matter how good our maintenance is, it can be no better than the equipment itself. To ensure that we begin with the best quality products, we rely on our test and evaluation facilities and capabilities. They are, with-
out question, the most complex and comprehensive within DoD. One reason is that our carrier aircraft must operate in a far more demanding environment than shore-based aircraft. Our aircraft structures must be more rugged, our avionics systems more tolerant of a far more dense electromagnetic environment, our pieces and parts more corrosion resistant and durable, and our systems and their components more maintainable in very limited spaces. Unlike operators ashore, carrier aviators cannot rely on internal inspections to ensure safe flight operations. Because the margin for error in carrier aviation is near zero, our test facilities must have and must maintain the most technologically advanced capabilities. We must retain those distinctive test and evaluation capabilities that ensure our aircraft and related systems can safely operate in the highly demanding at-sea environment.
The need for the services to cut costs is clear and convincing. Intelligent consolidation should be pursued at every opportunity, but only where it makes sense. It would be a serious mistake to take away the very structure that
gives each service its unique capabilities and strengths- The success of naval aviation is the result of the Navy s possessing the full spectrum of knowledge and selected capabilities required to work with industry to design* develop, test and evaluate, and support naval aviation systems.
Admiral Bowes is Commander, Naval Air Systems Command.
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