Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
6/26/2015
Navy Strategic System Programs and the Air Force intercontinental ballistic missile community should determine exactly what aspects of commonality the services will integrate between the Trident 2 life extension and Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent development efforts “now,” Navy Vice Adm. Terry Benedict, Director of Navy Strategic Systems Programs, said during a speech in Washington on June 19. “If we want to be able in the future to meet the requirements of the National Command Authority’s strategic deterrence objectives, we must see commonality. The time to determine exactly what that will be is now,” Benedict said during a Peter Huessy Breakfast Series event at Capitol Hill Club. “Because of the urgency of the GBSD effort, delay will simply force the status quo. We need to begin this assessment now, and it needs to be a cooperative effort co-led by senior experienced leaders from the United States Air Force ICBM community and the Navy Strategic Systems Programs with support from the service acquisition executives, the service requirements experts and U.S. STRATCOM.” Industry expects the Air Force to release a draft RFP for the GBSD this summer and that service plans to make its Milestone A decision for planned Minuteman 3 follow-on in Fiscal Year 2016.
Will Trident 2 LEP Be Affordable in Long Term?
The “status quo” would involve life extending the Trident 2 through 2084, the entire life of the Ohio-class Replacement, which Benedict said he believes won’t be affordable in the long term. SSP has started initial planning for when a Trident 2 follow-on might be needed, according to Congressional testimony submitted by Benedict in advance of an April 15 House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing. “These efforts will provide the Navy with the missiles and guidance systems we need to meet operational requirements through the introduction and deployment of the Ohio Replacement SSBNs through the 2080s,” the testimony states.
Steadily working toward submarine-launched and land-based ballistic missile commonality could prevent “organizational inertia” that would preclude development of a follow-on, Benedict said. “The further we can move toward some aspect of commonality, the greater the cost savings will be,” he said. One common effort the Air Force and the Navy have been working on is the “Joint Fuze Program,” which applies elements of the fuze for the Trident 2 Mk-5 reentry vehicle to development efforts of the fuze for the GBSD. Benedict cited this effort not as an example of both services working on an entirely common missile, but as a collaboration on component- and subsystem-level commonality, “resulting in minimized, non-recurring engineering costs and providing for more robust production and sustainment programs.” The common fuze is expected to reach initial operational capacity in FY 2019.
Aging Ballistic Missile Industrial Base
The Navy and Air Force must develop either a single plan or separate plans to optimize an industrial base that has not produced ballistic missiles on a mass scale since the 1980s. Benedict said he hopes working on commonality can help streamline the industrial base and workforce. “I’m not looking for commonality just to save money,” he said. “I’m looking for commonality for stability in the government workforce, in the industrial workforce, from resources to manufacturing through technology and ultimately into, in some cases, maybe, a common system. So do I have a preference? No. The data, and I think the reviews that I’m advocating, should drive the decision rather than some preference that is not quantified, but basically somebody’s desire.”
Navy/AF Joint Ballistic Missile Program Office?
In 2012, the Navy and Air Force signed a memorandum of understanding to increase cooperation and established eight working groups to explore areas of commonality. The Navy also participated in the Defense Department’s GBSD Analysis of Alternatives. After mentioning the possibility of a joint ballistic missile program office for the Navy and Air Force during a speech in April 2014, Benedict said during his recent speech that such a move is on the “far right-hand side” of the potential commonality spectrum and might not actually be required. “I think, right now, we don’t necessarily need to go there,” he said. “I’ve got diversity of architecture. Diversity within the industrial base right now is a good plan. Having said that, diversity needs to be, I’ll say, controlled in this concept of commonality.”
If the Air Force and Navy can draw a commonality “line” that prevents compromise of the services’ ballistic missile technical requirements, then would linger the “major challenge” of examining a common acquisition strategy. “[A]ll those domain spaces would have to be addressed if I were to figure it out technically and I acquire it through the process of the DoD [acquisition protocol],” Benedict said. “So if this was easy, I promise you the Navy and the Air Force would’ve figured this out a long time ago….[T]hen there’s the pressure to maintain the ICBM programs, and I fully respect that, but I think this is an opportunity, and so I think we should go after this aggressively to the extent that we can and see what type of progress we can make.”
