Future

of the Navy DEC 2018 EBOOK

Contents
04 FOREWORD |
BRADLEY PENISTON

06 THE US NAVY IS DEVELOPING MOTHERSHIP DRONES FOR COASTAL

DEFENSE | PATRICK TUCKER

08 TOWARD A 21ST-CENTURY US NAVY MINING FORCE | CAPT. HANS

LYNCH, USN & SCOTT C. TRUVER

13 HOW RUSSIA’S SUB-LAUNCHED MISSILES THREATEN NATO’S

WARTIME STRATEGY | MAGNUS NORDENMAN

16 UKRAINE IS BUILDING A MOSQUITO NAVY TO FEND OFF RUSSIA,

WITH US HELP | PATRICK TUCKER

18 THE US NAVY IS HACKING WETSUITS FOR ARCTIC WARFARE |

PATRICK TUCKER
COVER: The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74)

19
launches aircraft from Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 9. The ships
comprising the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group are THE NAVY’S TERRIBLE ACCIDENT RECORD IS NOW HIDDEN FROM
participating in a group sail exercise designed to develop
coordinated capabilities./ U.S. Navy photo by Mass
PUBLIC VIEW | JASON PALADINO
Communication Specialist Seaman Christopher Frost.

Future of the Navy | Page 3

Foreword
W
elcome to Defense One’s latest ebook, which peers into the future of the U.S. Navy through
lenses big (a look at threats to NATO’s wartime strategy) and small (new drone motherships!
Hacked wetsuits!).
“NATO used to worry that Soviet subs would decimate supply convoys and carrier battle groups. Now
Russia can simply wreck ports from afar” with a new generation of submarine-launched land-attack
missiles, writes Magnus Nordenman, late of the Atlantic Council. “With its new high-quality submarine
force, married with the ability to launch cruise missiles, the Russian navy is still in a position to deny
access to Europe via the North Atlantic.”
Or read about a renaissance in a much-neglected aspect of naval warfare. “The U.S. Navy has fewer
than 10,000 sea mines of three types, the latest introduced in 1983. This relatively dusty and threadbare
portion of the arsenal at once belies the effectiveness and efficiency of naval mines, and reflects the
Navy’s on-again, off-again embrace of these weapons that wait,” write U.S. Navy Capt. Hans Lynch and
Scott Truver. But now, they write, “The U.S. Navy is poised to achieve a strategic objective in making
America’s adversaries worry about U.S. mines and creating our own asymmetric anti-access/area-
denial advantage.” Read on, and find out more.

Bradley Peniston
Deputy Editor
Defense One

Future of the Navy | Page 4

REAL-WORLD
AI IS HERE.
MEET AIRI »
The US Navy Is Developing Mothership
Drones for Coastal Defense
The service is looking to
accelerate the way it buys,
builds and drills drones
and robotic ships.
By Patrick Tucker
T
he U.S. Navy and researchers from Florida
Atlantic University are developing robotic
boats that can launch aerial and sub drones
to protect U.S. coastal waters.
“Our focus will be on developing a multi-
vehicle system that can safely and reliably
navigate coastal waters with a high level of
autonomy while performing assigned tasks,”
Manhar Dhanak, director of SeaTech, the
Institute for Ocean and Systems Engineering
in FAU’s Department of Ocean and Mechanical
Engineering, said in a press release.
The FAU researchers will develop new
software tools for better sensing and collision
avoidance as well as to allow the ship “to serve
as a docking station” and power sub and air
drones that latch onto it, according to a statement
from the university. One aspect of the effort is
developing software to help the surface vessel
obtain a clear picture not just of obstacles to avoid
but also friendly and hostile elements in the area,
to help it better plan routes and paths for different
missions.
It’s an example of the types of prototypes that
will become more common, according to a Navy
roadmap for the development and acquisition
of autonomous systems. This Strategic Roadmap
for Unmanned Systems, which began circulating
around the Pentagon last year, has not yet been
released. But a predecisional copy obtained by
Defense One shows that the Navy is pushing to
develop and buy its drones faster, integrate them
more aggressively in exercises and other activity,
and work more closely with universities and other
non-traditional research partners particularly in
the design of new prototypes.
The Navy’s research into unmanned weapons
goes back to World War I research into flying
munitions and torpedos. The term “drone” was
coined in the 1930s by Cmdr. Delmar Fahrney,
who was in charge of Navy research into radio-
controlled aircraft.
More recently, the Navy has sought to
incorporate ever-higher levels of autonomy
into drills and activity. In 2014, the service ran a
dramatic experiment that showed that a swarm
of 13 autonomous roboticized boats might help
defend a warship.
The Navy has also developed (and plans to
soon deploy) the Sea Hunter, an unmanned ship
that can guide itself on the open water while
obeying international maritime laws. Former
Future of the Navy | Page 6
 ARABIAN GULF (Sept. 28, 2016) Sailors
assigned to Commander, Task Group (CTG)
56.1, Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile
Unit (EODMU) 1, launch an underwater
unmanned vehicle in the Arabian Gulf during
routine testing operations. / U.S. Navy photo
by Petty Officer 2nd Class Tyler Thompson.
Defense Undersecretary Bob Work speculated
that the Sea Hunter could be armed with ballistic
missiles. “We might be able to put a six-pack or a
four-pack of missiles on them. Now, imagine 50
of these distributed and operating together under
the hands of a flotilla commander,” Work said at
an event sponsored by CNAS. “This is going to be a
Navy unlike any navy in history, a human-machine
collaborative battle fleet that will confound our
enemies.”
The Navy is experimenting with a widening
menagerie of novel aerial drones, such as a tube-
launched rotary-wing drone called the Nomad,
which was launched off of the destroyer Pinckney
in2016. Another is the hybrid flying-swimming
Glider, a drone that can deploy from a plane, fly
along the surface of the water, and then submerge
to a depth of 200 meters.
Flight-testing for a new version of Glider
is scheduled for later this year, and the
Naval Research Laboratory expects to a full
demonstration in 2019.
The new Navy roadmap argues that the service’s
adoption of unmanned and robotic capabilities
must move far more quickly than it buys human-
operated planes, boats, and ships. It outlines steps
to accelerate their building, buying and deploying.
One key is moving away from a “platform-
centric model” — think big, expensive ships that
only serve one role. Instead, envision small, cheap
robots that can be robustly networked and easily
configured to new tasks.
“The Navy must evolve from today’s platform-
centric, uncontested-environment [unmanned
systems] operating concept to the concept of a
platform-agnostic force,” it says. “A cross-domain,
distributed, netted, self-healing, highly survivable,
and collaborative communications network made
of manned and unmanned nodes will enable
multi-domain communications. These nodes will
fuse big data to interpret the environment, share
relevant information, and introduce increased
risk, uncertainty, and mistrust in the adversary’s
systems.”
Marcus Weisgerber contributed to this article.
Future of the Navy | Page 7
Toward a 21st-Century
US Navy Mining Force
T
Standoff weapons he world is awash with naval mines.By
and other initiatives some estimates, the world’s navies possess
promise a renaissance about a million sea mines of more than 400
in U.S. naval mine types, including perhaps 400,000 in the arsenals
warfare. of potential U.S. adversaries. That’s not counting
water-borne improvised explosive devices that
By Capt. Hans Lynch, terrorists as well as traditional navies can use
USN & Scott C. Truver to challenge military and commercial transit of
maritime chokepoints and even the high seas.
(In early 2017, Houthi rebels planted mines and
WBIEDs—most likely provided by Iran—near
Red Sea ports, sinking several vessels and killing
and wounding civilians. It is not far-fetched to
expect Russia or a Russian proxy to use WBIEDs
in non-attributed “gray zone” maritime insecurity
operations.)
By contrast, the U.S. Navy has fewer than 10,000
sea mines of three types, the latest introduced in
1983. This relatively dusty and threadbare portion
of the arsenal at once belies the effectiveness and
efficiency of naval mines, and reflects the Navy’s
on-again, off-again embrace of these weapons that
wait.
This has pretty much been the case since
1776, when David Bushnell’s American Turtle
used a limpet mine to attack, without success,
HMS Eagle in the Hudson River. During the Civil
War, sea mines were the South’s strategic anti-
access/area-denial weapon of choice. Despised
as “unchivalrous” by Union commanders,
Confederate mines severely damaged or sank 35
Union ships — along with 11 of their own.
In the following century, the U.S. Navy laid
many thousands of mines in World Wars I and
II and the Vietnam War, at times with strategic
effects. During the Cold War, a variety of advanced,
sophisticated, multiple-influence bottom and
moored anti-submarine and -surface mines were
to be deployed in bastions, chokepoints, and
gaps against a burgeoning Soviet fleet should the
“balloon” go up.
The Navy last deployed mines in combat during
the Persian Gulf War. In January 1991, four A-6E
Intruder bombers planted a minefield of Destructor
bomb-converted shallow-water mines at the mouth
of the Kwahr Az Zubayr River to deny Iraqi access
to the northern Gulf. One of the Intruders was lost
and its crew killed by anti-aircraft fire, and there
was no confirmation that Iraqi naval movements
were affected.
Today’s USN Weapons that Wait
The oldest of the U.S. Navy’s trio of mine types
Future of the Navy | Page 8
 SA Mark-63 Quickstrike Mine is
mounted on a P-3 Orion aircraft at Oak
Harbor, Washington, on July 25, 2018. / U.S.
Navy photo by Mass Communication
Specialist 2nd Class Jakoeb Vandahlen.
was introduced in 1979: the Mk67 Submarine
Launched Mobile Mine, a 2,000-pound bottom
mine that attacks surface ships and submarines
in shallow water. Launched from an attack
submarine’s torpedo tube, the SLMM covertly
transits to a predetermined location, and waits. It
is particularly useful for mining areas that are not
accessible to other mines, but few remain
in service.
The other two types, introduced just four years
later, are deployed by aircraft: the Mk65 thin-
walled bottom mine and the Mk62/63 Quickstrike
bottom mines. While the former is a 2,000-pound
purpose-built mine, the latter are kits fitted onto
the Navy’s ubiquitous 500- and 1,000-pound
conventional bombs, allowing aircraft carrier
air wings to conduct mining operations without
carrying dedicated mines as additional ordnance.
The air-launched types are getting a major
upgrade in the form of the Mk71 target detection
device, a state-of-the-art firing mechanism that
can sense multiple influences and be programmed
with sophisticated target-processing and counter-
countermeasures algorithms. This enables
the Navy’s miners to optimize performance
against different target classes and to respond
to future threat targets. Continuing engineering
development efforts include advanced algorithms
for ship detection, classification, and localization
against a wide variety of threats. The Navy has
fielded the Mk71 TDD for the Mk65 mine and in
2018 is performing final qualification testing for
using the Quickstrike Mk62/63 mines.
And new variants are in the works: standoff
versions of the Quickstrikes designed to prevent
a repeat of the 1991 loss of the mining aircraft
to ground fire. In September 2014, the then-
U.S.Pacific Command (PACOM) demonstrated the
extended-range Quickstrike-ER, a modification
of the 500-pound winged Joint Direct-Attack
Munition (JDAM)-ER. (INDO-PACOM remains
very interested in a modern mining capability.)
Dropped from a B-52H strategic bomber, this
was the first-ever deployment of a high-accuracy,
precision, standoff aerial mine.
Future of the Navy | Page 9
 "Within five years, how can our operating
forces disrupt/deter an adversary vessel in
international waters using mines that are smart,
controllable, adaptable, and flexible?"
ADM. JAMES WINNFELD, then Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 2015

Subsequently, a parallel joint effort among
PACOM, the Navy, and the Air Force had its first
success in a 2,000-pound Mk64 Quickstrike-JDAM
laid by a B-52H. Testing has continued, from the
B-52, B-1, and F/A-18, demonstrating that the
Quickstrike-J can be deployed from high altitudes
and at great standoff ranges by any aircraft
equipped to drop the GBU-31 JDAM. With GPS
precision, bombers can lay an entire minefield
in a single pass without even coming close to the
minefield. There are two variants: The 2,000-pound
weapon is the Quickstrike-J, called “Skipjack,”
has only the JDAM guidance kit. The 500-pound
Quickstrike-ER version, “Flounder,” has both a
JDAM-ER guidance kit and a pair of folding wings.
Development efforts are ongoing to demonstrate
and field a 2,000-pound version of the Quickstrike-
ER.
....and Tomorrow’s
In January 2015, Admiral James A. Winnefeld,
then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
challenged the Navy’s mining experts to think
broadly: “Within five years, how can our operating
forces disrupt/deter an adversary vessel in
international waters using mines that are smart,
controllable, C2-enabled, mission adaptable, and
payload—kinetic and non-kinetic—flexible?”
The Navy has taken up the admiral’s challenge
and is pursuing several mine/mining initiatives
that promise a renaissance in U.S.naval warfare.
For example, Navy research and development labs
are collaborating on a Smart Mine Initiative (SMI)
that is a component development and prototyping
effort to accelerate the fielding of an initial kinetic
“encapsulated homing effector” capability for
wider area coverage in deeper water than possible
in 2018.
Moreover, these come in addition to the
Navy’s improving the in-service shallow-water
Quickstrike converted-bomb bottom mines with
Joint Direct-Attack Munition (JDAM GPS guidance
and wing packages that enable aircraft-launched
mines with ranges and precision-accuracies
unheard-of before now. Another near-term
option includes repurposing excess Mk67 SLMM
warheads to make Clandestine Delivered Mines
delivered by unmanned undersea vehicles.
Importantly, this need to address modern,
modular “smart” mines—capabilities well beyond
the improved Quickstrikes and Clandestine

Future of the Navy | Page 10

Delivered Mines —dovetails with evolving
concepts for seabed warfare. There is an incipient
but growing demand for non-traditional mines
that are delivered with accuracy and precision,
controlled remotely, able to discriminate targets,
able to deploy both kinetic and non-kinetic
“effectors,” and cover wide areas. Thus, it is
something that generates military “effects” well
beyond a traditional explode-in-place high-
explosive warhead mine. In short, the U.S. Navy is
expanding the concept of the “mine.”
In addition to anti-submarine and anti-ship
remote control mines, for example, this could
include encapsulated seabed-to-air anti-aircraft
missiles, drones or other warfare effectors.
Others see the deployment of encapsulated
communications and command-and-control
nodes. The new “mines” will be modular and
deliverable from a wide variety of vessels. The
sensors and effectors could be part of a distributed
seabed network capable of multi-phase
warfare operations. Thus, smart mining—a.k.a.
“encapsulated effector”—capabilities will become
part of a “kill web” offering flexible, scalable,
distributed, forward, persistent, and autonomous
lethal and non-lethal effects from the seabed.
The general concept of seabed warfare,
particularly in the mine warfare community,
is not new. Naval mines tethered to and resting
on/beneath the seabed have been constants for
America’s Navy for much of its history. What is
new in is the coalescing of diverse technologies,
modular systems, and platforms that can generate
a variety of kinetic (in addition to the traditional
high-explosive mine) and non-kinetic effects for
seabed warfare missions throughout the undersea
domain. The Smart Mine Initiative involves
a suite of modular, flexible seabed-deployed
encapsulated effectors that offer commanders a
spectrum of options by facilitating the integration
of existing sensors and weapon systems into a
cohesive, networked seabed capability.
The Smart Mine Initiative has focused on
prototyping viable concepts and capabilities for
an offensive modular solution that can disrupt,
deter, and/or disable an adversary vessel in
a contested environment, as well as support
distributed maritime operations. The operational
concept is to give a commander the ability to select
payloads with varying capabilities/effects that can
be delivered to the theater and launched from a
variety of undersea platforms.
Wait No More?
The continuing efforts in advanced mining
development and improvements to the in-
Future of the Navy | Page 11
 Sailors assigned to Patrol Squadron
VP-40 and Maritime Patrol Reconnaissance
Weapons School inspect a Mark 63
Quickstrike mine in the bomb bay of a P-3
Orion aircraft during the conventional
weapons technical proficiency inspection at
Naval Air Station Whidbey Island on July 26,
2018. / U.S. Navy photo by Mass
Communication Specialist 2nd Class
Jakoeb Vandahlen.
service mine inventory are responding to
growing demands by the geographic combatant
commanders for more and better mine-like
systems to deal with burgeoning global maritime
competition and different scales of conflict. The
U.S.Navy is poised to achieve a strategic objective
in making America’s adversaries worry about U.S.
mines and creating our own asymmetric anti-
access/area-denial advantage. The integration
of these advanced capabilities into our evolving
seabed warfare strategy creates an additional
factor that must be taken into account by our
adversaries’ decision-making. The service must
continue to fund, develop, and deliver capabilities
that will ensure strategic, operational, and tactical
advantage within a challenging and dynamic
undersea domain.
“The legal, technical, and conceptual
challenges to developing and employing such
a device are surmountable. It will not be
enormously expensive to develop or procure,”
Admiral Winnefeld and Captain Ahmad conclude
in a 2018 essay that expands upon the admiral’s
2015 speech. “The only question will be whether
cultural and programmatic challenges will
continue to stand in the way. Of one thing we can
be nearly certain: if the United States does not do
this, another nation probably will ... and probably
already is.”
The views expressed in this article are the
authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the views
of the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or the
U.S. government.
Future of the Navy | Page 12
How Russia’s Sub-Launched Missiles
Threaten NATO’s Wartime Strategy
T
NATO used to worry hree years ago, the Russian submarine
that Soviet subs would Rostov-na-Donu wrapped up its sea trials
decimate supply convoys by firing a few test missiles in the Barents
and carrier battle groups. Sea. This is not particularly unusual; such tests
Now Russia can simply are sometimes conducted just off the Norwegian
wreck ports from afar. coast, close enough to be seen by the NATO ally’s
By Magnus Nordenman border guards. Nor was it unusual for the newly
commissioned attack submarine to head off
toward its new homeport, Sevastopol in annexed
Crimea, home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
The unusual part came in early December,
when the improved Kilo-class submarine began to
loiter off Syria — and on Dec. 8, unleashed a volley
of Kalibr cruise missiles against what Moscow
alleged were ISIS targets ashore.
The cruise missile attack itself counted for little
in the Syrian civil war, where both Russia and the
U.S.-led coalition have been pounding targets from
the air with missiles and bombs for years. But it
signaled that Russia had joined the small global
club that can deliver no-notice long-range strikes
from the relative safety of the underwater domain.
This technological achievement has game-
changing implications for NATO and America’s
ability to come to the aid of its European allies if
Russia and the transatlantic alliance ever comes to
blows in Europe.
During much of the Cold War, NATO planners
worried that American reinforcements coming
across the North Atlantic in wartime would be
savaged by a surge of Soviet submarines and naval
bombers. So the alliance developed a barrier
strategy around the Greenland-Iceland-UK choke
points: find the Soviet subs with ocean-bottom
microphones, then stop them with NATO-member
frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, and submarines.
This scenario is vividly recounted in Tom Clancy’s
Red Storm Rising, a Cold War cult classic that is still
well worth a read.
Today, however, the Russian navy is too small
to sustain an anti-shipping campaign of that
magnitude, or to threaten America’s and NATO’s
command of the open ocean. But with its new
high-quality submarine force, married with the
ability to launch cruise missiles, the Russian navy
is still in a position to deny access to Europe via the
North Atlantic. Northern Europe has surprisingly
few seaports and airports through which large
amounts of NATO troops and materiel can flow to
respond to Russian aggression. They are all well
within the estimated 1,500-mile range of Kalibr
missiles fired from the Norwegian Sea or the North
Sea, all well north of the GIUK gap.
Future of the Navy | Page 13
NORTHERN EUROPE HAS SURPRISINGLY
FEW SEAPORTS AND AIRPORTS THROUGH
WHICH LARGEAMOUNTS OF NATO TROOPS AND
MATERIEL CAN FLOW TORESPOND TO RUSSIAN
AGGRESSION.
The Kalibr is thought to be somewhat less
accurate than the U.S.Tomahawk cruise missile,
but packs a warhead that is nearly twice the size.
And shutting down a seaport or airport does not
require its complete destruction. A reinforcement
node requires a range of equipment and
infrastructure to operate, including on- and
off-loading equipment, storage facilities, and
connectors to rail and roads. Seriously damaging
these unprotected and fragile components, which
are often out in the open, would hamper NATO’s
reinforcement efforts across the sea considerably.
In short, NATO’s effort to come to the aid of an
ally under threat could be over before it even
truly begins, and it could end in the North Atlantic
rather than in, say, the Suwalki gap or in the face
of the much-discussed A2/AD network built by
Russia in Kaliningrad. Russia’s ability to launch
long-range cruise missiles from submarines also
come with a deterrence effect. It could certainly
complicate the decision-making in European
capitals if national leaders had to also ponder
that their own countries, however far away from
eastern Europe, were at risk of a Russian strike.
Russia is doubling down on cruise missiles in
its navy. Built in Saint Petersburg between 2011
and 2014, Rostov-na-Donu is just one of the Black
Sea fleet’s six missile-bearing improved Kilo-
class boats. Its 2015 attack on Syria was followed
by others, most recently carried out by a pair of
improved Kilo-class boats in October 2017. Russian
surface warships have also fired cruise missiles
against Syria, from waters as far away as the
Caspian Sea. Not all cruise missile launches have
gone as planned; some of Caspian Sea-fired Kalibrs
crashed far short of their targets in northern Iran.
But even these failures have provided real-world
data and lessons for the Russian navy.
The improved Kilo class is not the only
submarine platform for the Kalibr and other
long-range missiles. Russia’s new multi-
purpose nuclear attack submarine, dubbed the
Severodvinsk class, can carry up to 40 Kalibrs,
while the upgraded Oscar-II nuclear guided
missile submarines can pack up to 70. The two
current Severodvinsk boats (more are coming)
and the Oscar-IIs currently serve with the
Northern Fleet on the Kola Peninsula, within easy
reach of the North Atlantic. And in July 2017 Putin
signed out new guidance to the Russian military
dictating that cruise missiles should become
the main armament for the Russian navy in the
coming years.
NATO and its members — in particular
Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United
Future of the Navy | Page 14
 In this image provided by Russian
Defense Ministry Press Service and released
on June 23, 2017, long-range Kalibr cruise
missiles are launched by a Russian Navy ship
in the eastern Mediterranean. / Russian
Defense Ministry Press Service via AP
States — have begun to respond to the re-emerging
threat to the reinforcements across the North
Atlantic, with investments in maritime patrol
aircraft, submarines, and the re-opening of North
Atlantic basing. NATO is also re-establishing an
Atlantic command of sorts, to be based in Norfolk,
Virginia. But this is just a start, and the new contest
in the North Atlantic will be different from the one
that took place during the Cold War, due to Russia’s
shift from quantity to quality in its submarine
force and the reliance on cruise missiles for
long-range attack against both ships and targets
ashore. NATO and its members should, among
other things, consider operations and exercises
much further north of the GIUK gap, leveraging
new technologies that will allow the distribution
of sensors across a broad area of the maritime
domain, making ports and airfields more resilient
and robust, and the bolstering of defenses against
cruise missile attacks. It is indeed true that the
resurgent Russian navy is not of the size and scope
of its Cold War forebear, but it constitutes a high
Kalibr threat to the North Atlantic region indeed.
Future of the Navy | Page 15
Ukraine is Building a Mosquito Navy to
Fend Off Russia, With US Help
F
Hostilities in the Sea of or some months, Russian vessels have
Azov are heating up, and grown increasingly aggressive toward
the U.S. is increasing its Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea and the
involvement. Sea of Azov. Now Ukraine is marshalling a bigger
By Patrick Tucker response, with U.S. help.
On Thursday, Ukrainian officials will take
possession of two U.S.Coast Guard Island-class
cutters in Baltimore. The transfer comes amid
budding maritime hostilities that Ukrainian
officials worry may herald a second wave of
aggressive Russian military action.
Russia maintains a large naval base in
Sevastopol on the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea,
which Moscow illegally seized in 2014. Around
August 14, Russia began what many call a blockade
of the Kerch Strait, the narrow body that connects
the Azov with the Black Sea.
“Experts in Ukraine say this could be the
next [Russian] operation from this flank, from
the sea, near Mariupol,” Valeriy Chaly, Ukraine’s
ambassador to the U.S., said in an August interview
at the Ukrainian embassy.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials say Russian
military activity has also been increasing in the
Azov Sea, which Ukraine and Russia legally share
under treaties signed in 2003.
Here’s an Aug. 30 statement from the State
Department: “The United States condemns Russia’s
harassment of international shipping in the Sea
of Azov and the Kerch Strait. Russia has delayed
hundreds of commercial vessels since April and in
recent weeks has stopped at least 16 commercial
ships attempting to reach Ukrainian ports.”
The message from Ukraine has been more
urgent. “They are militarizing the Azov, bringing
in weapon systems, more troops,” Chaly said.
“It’s a disproportionate situation because Russia
has more ships. They want to prevail in the Black
Sea and Azov not only against Ukranians but
internationally...In fact, Russia wants to maintain
control and not allow free access of ships.”
It’s not just a matter of seizing marine territory.
Moscow’s broader objective is to exacerbate
economic hardship in Ukraine, in order to
Future of the Navy | Page 16

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf
(WMSL 750) is underway July 29, during Rim
of the Pacific (RIMPAC). The 2018 edition of
the annual exercise drew 25 nations who
brought 46 ships, five submarines, about 200
aircraft, and 25,000 personnel / U.S. Coast
Gaurd Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class David
Weyder.
exacerbate civil strife and hasten the collapse of
the anti-Russian Poroshenko government.
“We lose money through our ports. Russia is
trying to destroy this opportunity for Ukraine,”
Chaly said. “It’s another tool of ... economic
pressure to not allow us to have a normal trade
relationship. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”
The Island-class cutters, which can carry
a 25mm machine gun and several .50-caliber
machine guns, are small compared to what
the Russians can bring to bear. The Ukrainian
government approved the $10 million sale
in September.
“We can’t create a fleet like Russia has but we
can create so-called Mosquito fleet: small ships but
many of them,” said Chaly.
The Ukrainian navy also conducts a exercises
called Sea Breeze with the U.S. 6th Fleet, the
18th iteration of which took place in July. It’s
a part of Ukraine’s efforts to further develop
interoperability with NATO.
Future of the Navy | Page 17
The US Navy Is Hacking Wetsuits
for Arctic Warfare
A new wetsuit treatment
could allow troops to
operate in frigid water for
far longer.
By Patrick Tucker
W
hen it comes to diving in frigid water,
there’s a big difference between a
SEAL and a seal. All the pull-ups and
pistol squats in the world won’t turn the one into
the other. That’s a challenge for a U.S. military
increasingly concerned about countering Russian
naval activity in the Arctic. So the Navy, working
with researchers at MIT, is developing a new
method for treating wetsuits that could extend the
amount of time troops can spend in freezing water
from minutes to hours.
Here’s how it works. Wetsuits are made of
neoprene, a material that functions a lot like
animal blubber. Neoprene is full of little air
pockets, or cells, that insulate a human in cold
water. But that insulation effect only works for
only a few minutes when the water is close to
freezing.
Michael Strano and Jacopo Buongiorno, two
chemical engineering researchers at MIT, have
discovered that if you fill the little air pockets
with heavy, inert gases like argon or xenon, you
can extend the amount of time the suit retains
its insulation properties, and thus dive times for
the humans wearing them in frigid water (48
degrees Fahrenheit in their paper) from minutes
to perhaps three hours.
As they illustrate in their paper, the process
involves sticking the suit in a sealed container
about the size of a beer keg and then pumping it
full of gas for a day or so.
“Our process is unique in that it modifies an
existing wetsuit, making it demonstrably more
insulating. So far, there are no tradeoffs with
respect to comfort, flexibility, dexterity, etc. So
the technology appears promising,” Strano told
Defense One over email.
“The next phase of our research will examine
the human factor for this technology,” he said.
“We’ve demonstrated a record low in thermal
conductivity for neoprene, an important advance
for sure. But the next step is to conduct field
trials,” meaning it’s time to collect more detailed
measurements about how well the suit works on
humans.
Future of the Navy | Page 18
The Navy’s Terrible Accident Record Is
Now Hidden From Public View
W
The latest incidence of ebsites appear and disappear every day.
a government agency The internet is an amorphous beast,
quietly removing data from constantly being edited and updated.
its website demonstrates We accept these changes as simple fact, but
the dangers of an ever- crucial information is frequently removed from
changing internet government websites—and small changes over
By Jason Paldino time can have major downstream consequences.
I made the disturbing discovery recently
that, amid a dramatic five-year spike in aviation
accidents, the Navy has put aviation safety data
that used to be public behind a wall. I bumped
into this change while researching for the
documentary film Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?,
which uncovers the long history of negligence
and institutional failure surrounding the 53E
helicopter, the deadliest aircraft in the U.S.
military.
I lost a high-school friend in the 2014 training
accident that killed Wes Van Dorn, and soon
after, I began investigating why he died. The
safety data on Navy accidents that is now blocked
was public when I began my reporting, and it
was indispensable in producing what was first
a newspaper series, then an NBC Nightly News
investigation, and now a feature documentary.
Without that safety data, these stories would have
been far more difficult to tell.
The decision to suppress this data from public
view came as the Navy, which also oversees
Marine aviation, was dealing with headlines
pointing out that its safety problems are increasing
faster than any other branch: The Navy has seen
an 82 percent spike in accidents between the 2013
and 2017 fiscal years, while the overall military
increase for that same period of time is 40 percent.
The Navy’s decision may be part of a larger
trend. In May 2017, the foreign-policy magazine
National Interest obtained emails from top
Navy officials discouraging the disclosure of
readiness numbers—figures that report how
many aircraft are ready to fight in the event of a
major conflict. At the time, nearly two-thirds of
the Navy and Marine F-18s were unfit to fly. In
2015, the Marines’ CH-53E fleet was in even worse
shape, with just 23 percent of aircraft able to fly a
mission. A March 2017 email from the Pentagon
spokesman Captain Jeff Davis instructed the heads
of public affairs across the military to “be cautious
about publicly telegraphing readiness shortfalls.”
The guidance reportedly came from Secretary
Mattis himself, according to National Interest.
“There have been a series of removals of
information from the public domain,” said
Steven Aftergood, the director of the Federation
Future of the Navy | Page 19
of American Scientists' Project on Government
Secrecy. He pointed to the Defense Department’s
decision last year to stop publishing active-duty-
troop numbers in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan;
these numbers had been posted online for more
than a decade. The Department also removed past
troop numbers from its quarterly reports and
issued conflicting numbers of troops active around
the world.
It’s unclear whether the Navy’s decision to
remove the data was a product of Davis’s email
guidance. The Naval Safety Center, a Navy
command dedicated to working on safety issues,
told me that the decision was simply made as
part of a website redesign. It was “definitely A screenshot of the Naval Safety Center Website as it appeared on March 18,
2018, with several links removed.
not directed by Secretary Mattis or part of any
directive issued by him,” said April Phillips, the The value of the removed data sets was made
Naval Safety Center’s public-affairs officer. clear in 2016, when this information helped
inform my report with The Virginian-Pilot that a
potentially catastrophic safety issue that had gone
unaddressed and led to the grounding of more
than 150 Navy and Marine Corps helicopters.
I relied on these data sets to learn the condition
of Navy and Marine Corps aviation. How often
were aircraft crashing? How did that number
compare to prior years? Which aircraft were
most accident-prone? Without being able to
access these records directly, the public has to
rely on an understaffed and overworked team
that handles public-records requests. While it’s
possible I could have done the same work under
current conditions, it’s certain that reporters
interested in Navy and Marine Corps aviation
A screenshot of the Naval Safety Center Website as it appeared on January
22, 2018, before data was removed.

Future of the Navy | Page 20

safety will now have a significant barrier to overcome,
a barrier that none of the other military branches
have put up. The public no longer has easy access to
detailed summaries of accidents, data on accidents by
aircraft types, the comparative information provided
by annual safety data, and other safety reports and
studies.The removal of this data from public view is
troubling for aviators themselves, too. Their aircraft
may now face less scrutiny both from the public and
from reporters.
The change in policy was implemented quietly
sometime between January 22 and March 18 of
this year, according to Internet Archive’s Wayback
Machine. The web page where the information used
to be available gives the following message: “Note:
For further statistical, visit NAVSAFECEN’s Common
Access Card (CAC) site. A CAC and a one-time account
registration are required for access.”
So I emailed a Navy representative to ask about the
change.
About a week later, I got a reply from April Phillips
in the Public Affairs and Strategic Communications
Division at the Naval Safety Center: “The information
you are referring to has not been removed, but it has
been placed in a section of our website requiring a
DoD Common Access Card (CAC) for access, along with
a great deal of other information...”
The Department of Defense (DOD) Common
Access Card cited in the email is only available to
active-duty military, military reserves, government
contractors, and civilian DODemployees. By removing
this information, the Navy has obviously reduced its
transparency. The Navy made this decision to limit
access to the information even though none of the
files or information on the old version of the website
were marked “For Official Use Only.”To learn how
the decision was made, I submitted a Freedom of
Information Act request for any documents or emails
about the decision to remove the data. The response
reads: “The decision to make the change you refer to
Future of the Navy | Page 21
 There is no security reason for limiting public access to
statistical summaries of safety mishaps.
STEVEN AFTERGOOD, the director of the Federation of American Scientists'
was the result of an exclusively verbal discussion ...
There was no written guidance, no emails, discussions
(except for verbal conversations), memos, notes, or
policy change documents relating to the withdrawal
of Naval Safety Center public information, specifically
on the statistics page, to the DOD CAC(Common Access
Card) site.”
While I did get confirmation that the information
was “withdrawn,” I’m no closer to understanding why
the Navy made the decision. Phillips, the Naval Safety
Center public-affairs officer, implied that publishing
the data online created a security risk. “When you
aggregate so much information in one place,” she said,
“bits and pieces of that can be compiled by those who
wish us harm to make inferences and gain intel.”
Aftergood, from the project on government
secrecy, finds this reasoning unpersuasive. “It’s
disappointing and, I would say, inappropriate,”
Aftergood said. “There is no security reason for
limiting public access to statistical summaries of safety
mishaps. On the contrary, public disclosure of such
information can help to improve safety and security
by motivating officials to adopt remedial measures.”
In contrast to the Navy, the Air Force could be
considered a model of transparency. The Air Force
Safety Center not only discloses accident data year
after year; it also breaks the data down by individual
aircraft. (The Center even lets you see which bird
species have caused the most damage to Air Force
aircraft. The Canada Goose has caused more than $91
million in damages from 1995 to 2016.)
The Air Force’s clear handling of its public data
raises an obvious question: Are the security concerns
of the Department of the Navy really that much
greater than those of the Air Force? Even though
the Navy’s accident data will hypothetically still be
available through a request system, the act of making
the data private effectively makes it secret. “Most
people, including most reporters and official oversight
personnel, are not going to take the trouble to uncover
suppressed information of this kind,” Aftergood said.
Small changes to government websites will
inevitably go unnoticed by the public, and there’s no
telling what information is slowly and irrevocably
slipping out of reach.
Future of the Navy | Page 22
About the Authors

PATRICK TUCKER CAPT. HANS LYNCH, SCOTT C. TRUVER MAGNUS JASON PALADINO
Patrick Tucker is
USN Dr. Scott Truver directs NORDENMAN Jason Paladino is
technology editor
Gryphon Technologies’ a reporter for UC
for Defense One. He’s Capt. Hans Lynch, USN, Magnus Nordenman is a
national security program Berkeley’s Investigative
also the author of The is the former head noted NATO and maritime
and serves as a senior Reporting Program and
Naked Future: What of the Mine Warfare affairs expert. He has
advisor at the Center for associate producer of the
Happens in a World That Branch (N952) in the served, among other
Naval Analyses. documentary "Who Killed
Anticipates Your Every Expeditionary Warfare things, as the Director of Lt. Van Dorn"?
Move? (Current, 2014). Directorate (N95), Office the Transatlantic Security
Previously, Tucker was of the Chief of Naval Initiative with the Atlantic
deputy editor for The Operations (OPNAV). Council in Washington,
Futurist for nine years. D.C. He is the author of
Tucker has written about “The New Battle for the
emerging technology Atlantic,” forthcoming
in Slate, The Sun, MIT from the U.S. Naval
Technology Review, Institute.
Wilson Quarterly,
The American Legion
Magazine, BBC News
Magazine, Utne Reader,
and elsewhere.

Future of the Navy | Page 23