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Innovation Deliverer Developing Affordable Innovation that Maximizes Operational Performance
Rear Admiral CJ Jaynes Program Executive Officer for AIR ASW, Assault & Special Mission Programs, PEO(A) Q: Those numbers represent a fairly wide gap. What are the chances that there will be movement to close that gap, or is everyone comfortable enough that this is what you will have to work with?
Q: How do you characterize your current budget in relation to your mission needs? Do you expect your budget to come under any further stresses in the next 12 to 18 months? A: We’ll talk about that from two different perspectives: procurement and sustainment. From a procurement perspective, we’re in pretty good shape. We’re procuring V-22s, P-8s, H-1s and H-60Rs now, with CH-53K and VH-92A coming in the future. We’re well-funded for those programs to keep those procurements going. Where our real budget stress comes is on the sustainment side and the supportability impacts. That’s where we take most of the cuts. For example, for the spares budget in 2015, we’re only funded for 33 percent of the requirements, so two years out there’s going to be a real impact on spares. From an in-service and engineering logistics [standpoint], we’re underfunded by about 50 percent, and that relates directly to fleet readiness. That’s really where we see the most stress on our budget, on that side of the house.
A: For now I think we are where we are. The NAE (Naval Aviation Enterprise) is very aware of what’s happening on the sustainment and fleet readiness side. It’s always safety first, so whatever funding we do get goes to safety first, tech assist and root cause analysis. Then what we’re focused on is a lot of innovation and best practices across the platforms, looking at our sustainment posture in terms of ‘If I have a depot repairable that maybe is currently being performed by an OEM, can I roll that to an organic depot or can I make a depot repairable possibly an I-level repairable and roll back it to the fleet? Or do I have high-cost consumables that cost $100,000 to $150,000 that maybe we can convert to a repairable so that we are not spending precious dollars on high-cost consumables?’ We’re really trying to reduce our own costs wherever we can and keep best business practices and innovation on the forefront of everyone’s mind to mitigate the budget impacts. Q: Are there programs that you’re going to have to put on hold or stretch out in order to manage these funds?
Feb 2015
Coast Guard Modernization A Congressional Research Service report of options for the Coast Guard By Ronald O’Rourke U.S. polar ice operations support nine of the Coast Guard’s 11 statutory missions.1 The roles of U.S. polar icebreakers can be summarized as follows: • conducting and supporting scientific research in the Arctic and Antarctic; • defending U.S. sovereignty in the Arctic by helping to maintain a U.S. presence in U.S. territorial waters in the region; • defending other U.S. interests in polar regions, including economic interests in waters that are within the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) north of Alaska; • monitoring sea traffic in the Arctic, including ships bound for the United States; • conducting other typical Coast Guard missions (such as search and rescue, law enforcement, and protection of marine resources) in Arctic waters, including U.S. territorial waters north of Alaska. Operations to support National Science Foundation (NSF) research activities in the Arctic and Antarctic have accounted in the past for a significant portion of U.S. polar icebreaker operations.2 Supporting NSF research in the Antarctic has included performing an annual mission, called Operation Deep Freeze, to break through the Antarctic ice so as to resupply McMurdo Station, the large U.S. Antarctic research station located on the shore of McMurdo Sound, near the Ross Ice Shelf. Although polar ice is diminishing due to climate change, observers generally expect that this development will not eliminate the
Continued On pAGE 8 ➥ Continued On pAGE 11 ➥
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February 3, 2015
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