Q&A: Rear Admiral Brad Hicks
Written by Marty Kauchak
MSMF 2009 Volume: 2 Issue: 6 (November/December)
Leading Efforts to Bolster Navy's
Integrated Air and Missile Defense
Rear Admiral Brad Hicks
Commander
Navy Air and Missile Defense Command
Rear Admiral Hicks was interviewed by Marty Kauchak, MSMF editor.
Q: Briefly describe the service readiness gaps or shortfalls that led to establishing NAMDC.
A: The biggest fact or that led us to the establishment of the centers of excellence and, in particular, one for IAMD [integrated air and missile defense] was the feeling: Who is the single point of contact that you want to go among the numbered fleet commanders and OPNAV [CNO’s staff] to interface on AMD matters—that has the right subject matter experts, the right skill sets to either define what the CONOPS [concept of operations] ought to be across the areas of responsibility [AORs] and also tell you exactly what you need to achieve the right readiness, to do the assessments of your capabilities in the fleets? Additionally, to be the joint interface—who is going to support the numbered fleets for the engagement with the joint community?
Q: What are the top three priorities for bolstering Navy’s effectiveness across the full spectrum of air and missile defense?
A: The first step in the engagement process is: How good are we? One that we have already established some fertile ground to work in is interoperability. What I mean is when a strike group goes to sea, and it brings up its data links and connectivity, are we having data exchange issues that we need to work on? This is an area we are helping to support the fleet to improve.
Another area is training. AMD, of which we believe BMD [ballistic missile defense] is a subset, is getting very, very complex. As we bring up these complex architectures to support these missions [we ask]: Is the training adequate? Are the tools adequate to support what the fleet needs, and is the manning behind that adequate? We’re taking a hard look at that. We are addressing areas of skill sets to ask: Do we need to look at how we are “growing” guys that are link experts? When a sailor leaves a ship and has that skill set, where are we sending him or her, so that we are getting the maximum value from a sailor who is truly a very critical skill asset?
The third area is CONOPS for the AORs. This requires our engagement with the fleet staffs. We just returned from a trip to Sixth Fleet. We are meeting with all of the fleets every year. When we work CONOPS the meetings tend to be joint. They’ll bring in the joint participants in their AOR. We have discussions on how we are going to bring up the architectures, how we are going to support the mission—not just ballistic missile defense, but integrated air and missile defense.
Also, if we have to do major joint exercises with our Navy components or a real-world event—if there are holes in their manning—we establish augmentation or fly-away teams to help them. This is something [else] we have been working on. In some recent real-world events we deployed some of the NAMDC staff to Hawaii and Japan to support the operators.
Q: As a follow-up, does your command send military only on these missions, or are you including civilians and contractors?
A: The staff manning goal is 75 people—25 military, 25 civilian and 25 SETA [contractor support]—as the initial target to man up to. We’re over halfway there. But, frankly, we’ve been very fortunate to get a lot of strong expertise, including from the Navy Reserve, to help us. We feel we’ve been very successful in getting skill sets—niche people if you will—from all across the board, whether it’s been military, civil service or SETA. One big take away, since we started ramping up this command in January of this year, there seems to be no lack of volunteers who want to work in this area—they find it very exciting.
Q: Please explain how NAMDC interacts with the service’s acquisition community to provide a warfighter’s perspective on air and missile defense procurement requirements.
A: We have a strong interaction. I had meetings in D.C. yesterday with the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy and the program executive officer for integrated warfare systems (PEO IWS) on how we make certain the alignment is good. When we do these end-to-end assessments, my expectation is the PEOs from SPAWAR, IWS and C21 will be part of our assessments. I don’t want to walk into Navy leadership and say, “OK, here is where we see seams and gaps.” I also want to walk in and say: “This is why we believe there are a seam and a gap”—and to do that I need the PEOs involved. It’s better to bring them in up front and to provide the leadership with an understanding of why we have these issues so that we can get the best, efficient response and answer forward.
Q: Discuss how NAMDC provides operational support to the fleet commanders and joint commands.
A: Once we get more fully manned up, I would like to have a fairly steady-strain relationship with Army Space and Missile Defense Command, some connection with the necessary component under Air Combat Command that works those CONOPS issues for the Air Force. But right now, because it’s the “wolf nearest the sled,” the criticality is to get to the Navy numbered fleets—for them it’s the Navy component.
Another place where we are having fertile ground is working with U.S. Pacific Fleet and Fleet Forces Command for global force management issues. I defer to them on how they are going to deal with allocation of Aegis BMD ships and Aegis BMD assets. Because PACFLT has such a heavy equity in this mission area, we have a pretty heavy, steady involvement with them, just because of their involvement with other nations. One nation we have a strong relationship in this mission area is Japan. PACFLT has a strong equity with Seventh Fleet, and we play a strong role in how we work architecture issues to get data. We see a continuing growth in helping to bring in the South Koreans and work with them—as they have an Aegis ship.
Q: Your help wanted list: Discuss the most urgent technology challenges within the NAMDC portfolio that Navy needs industry’s help to solve.
A: We’re fielding a lot of sophisticated data links and information architectures. I’m not comfortable that we’re fielding the tools to plan, manage and sustain the architecture. To sustain these sophisticated architectures and the data that goes over them, the ship up through the fleet staffs need something to help them manage it. And frankly, we haven’t, I think, done a good job of that. We’re putting a big burden on the ships and the numbered fleet staffs to go with intuition and a lot of grunt work to manage these complex architectures—we need to do a better job there.
We talk a lot about how we do command and control with complex architectures in joint and coalition [allied] environment—the development of the right C3 to support C2. I think, jointly, we need to take a harder look at: Are we doing it right? If the architecture is robust enough, does it really support the command and control needs of the echelons of command?
Q: Discuss NAMDC’s plan to develop an outreach strategy to industry and the academic community.
A: As far as influencing industry, my intention is to go back through the PEOs. As far as the academic community, we will over time [use], and have used the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and the Kennedy Government Lab and other FFRDCs.
Q: Discuss NAMDC’s priorities for the next 12 months.
A: The first milestone is the first end-to-end assessment for the POM 12 deliberations.
The second one is working with Fleet Forces Command on training and manning issues—job task analysis [and asking]: Are shipboard manning and training adequate to support what we’re tasking the ships to do? Another area near and dear to my heart, and I mentioned earlier, is manning. Limited duty officer and chief warrant officer expertise is pretty critical. We are looking at how we detail and manage the careers of these real critical assets.
Another priority is CONOPS issues—and we’re working the issues with the fleets.
Those are some of the high-end priorities. ♦