The Navy's outgoing top officer confirmed his commitment to open released his final navigation plan July 20, hitting on familiar themes of pushing more ships forward, continuing incentives for sea duty and opening all billets to women by the start of 2016 and to forward deploy more ships.
Adm. Jonathan Greenert, scheduled to step aside as chief of naval operations in September, hit familiar themes and laid out priorities nearly identical to last year's priorities in his newly released report, which he calls a his and final "navigation plan." The plan The release of the navigation plan is likely one of the last glimpses into Greenert's vision for the Navy, which has remained remarkably consistent through four years of Greenert's tenure, marked by heavy budget cuts and ceaseless demand for the Navy forces in the Middle East, the Pacific and now increasingly in Europe.
Greenert pushes for The maintaining the fleet's Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine fleet and ultimately funding the yetstill-to-be-named Ohio replacement class; keeping ships forward; staying ahead of the enemies technologically; increasing readiness, ; increase cyber and electromagnetic warfare capabilities while and sustaining the industrial base.
On the personnel front, Greenert reaffirmed the Navy's commitment to open all billets to women next year.
"Over 96 percent of all Navy jobs are currently available to women and we expect to open all occupations by January 2016," the plan saidreads.
He also committed to retaining special pay increases designed to keep sailors at sea longer.
This year's Navy budget, Greenert writes, "Emphasizes and rewards sea duty by continuing increased sea pay, sea pay premium, and critical skill retention pays."
In March 2014, the Navy announced it was hiking career raising sea pay and sea pay premium — a kicker that starts after 36 months at sea — as a way to fill empty billets at sea. Greenert also delivered on long deployment pay, known as hardship duty pay-tempohigh deployment pay-tempo, which kicks in for sailors deployed beyond 220 consecutive days; only the Navy and Marines offer this.
Greenert also cited the implementation of the new deployment schedule, known as the optimized fleet response plan, as a way the Navy was improving the lives of sailors, calling it "the readiness framework which serves as the foundation of our planning to restore readiness and provide stability and predictability to the lives of our sailors and their families."
For officers, Greenert said the budget bankrolls fully funds the continued expansion of the foreign area officer ranks to more than over 400 by 2019. Foreign area officers work as liaisons and naval attachés to navies overseas.
Presence
Greenert's plan says the Navy is on track to maintain put an average of 36 ships at any point in the Middle East by 2020, from an average of 22 today. In large part, that's due to an increase in the number of forward-based ships, from and ups the number of ships forward from 95 to 115, on average at any given time by 2020.
The Navy is also on track to station get seven LCSs in the Persian Gulf, stationed in Bahrain on a rotational basis by 2020. ((out of a particular port???))
The service is also going to begin deploying a coastal patrol coastal ship to Southern Command, which is includes Central and South America, and expects to deploy at least one joint high speed vessel per year to Africa and one to South America per year.((on one-year rotations???))
Greenert called this an "innovative, low-cost and small-footprint" approach to providing presence in the areas.
The JHSV's, civilian-crewed high-speed ferries that can be configured to carry Marines and heavy equipment, would also be used to provide additional presence in Europe.
Ships, planes and gear
The budget fully funds the complex overhaul and refueling overhaul of the carrier George Washington, returning from Japan now after seven years as the ready carrier in the Pacific.
It also funds building four new fleet oilers, coming to an underway replenishment near you, and keeps the Navy on track to converts all its E-2 Hawkeyes to the advanced E-2D airborne surveillance aircraft by 2020.
On the F-35, the service is still on track for welcoming the fighter to the fleet in 2018, Greenert said in the report.
The service also plans to purchase bought 24 V-22s to replace the old C-2 carrier onboard delivery planes used to shuttle sailors, supplies and VIPs around the fleet.
The report includes mention of the cyber, signals intelligence and electromagnetic sectors and plans for mentions around the report, including investing in new anti-jamming technology and rolling out new offensive jamming equipment. The service will bring its total cyber workforce up to about 1,700 sailors by the end of 2016.((from what now??? what is the percentage increase???))
Hanging threads
While the plan lays out a comprehensive view of Greenert's priorities, experts say the plan leavesft some unanswered questions.
The investments in EM were scattered around the document but didn't lay out a clear strategy for how they would be used to boost the Navy's capabilities,in the future, which Greenert has cited as a priority, said Clark said.Two areas in particular, the investments in electromagnetic warfare and the implementation of OFRP, were hanging threads from the plan, said Bryan Clark, a former Greenert aide and who's now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, D.C.
Clark also said that, while the implantation of the latest deployment scheme deployment plan is supposed to bring consistency stability back to the deployment rotations, the navigation plan didn't address one of the foremost drivers of the erratic ship schedules: the main driver of that instability: demands placed on the Navy by commanders seeking forces in the region that far outstrips what the fleetNavy can manage to provide.
"It doesn't address the supply and demand mismatch for naval forces," Clark said.
David B. Larter was the naval warfare reporter for Defense News.
