By Carlo Munoz
The Army will transfer all 10 of its Joint High Speed Vessels to the Navy, along with an anticipated total of $604.8 million in research, development and procurement dollars for the effort, as part of a recent agreement inked between the two services on the program.
The memorandum of understanding, signed by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and his Army counterpart John McHugh on May 2, transitions the five JHSVs currently in the Army’s arsenal to the Navy and guarantees shipments of the remaining five boats to the sea service once complete.
“This agreement with the Army demonstrates our commitment to reducing redundancies and saving money for the taxpayer,” Mabus said in a statement released yesterday. “This is a responsible step that will ensure our military remains the most formidable fighting force the world has ever known.”
The Navy’s Strategic Mobility and Combat Logistics (N42) within the service’s material readiness and logistics shop will oversee the JHSV, while the Army’s logistics directorate (G-4) will run the program transition process.
“The transfer of the JHSV is about aligning our core competencies, while at the same time realizing a measure of managerial efficiency,” McHugh added in the same statement. “We look forward to continued cooperation with the Navy as we determine how to ensure this capability can best support the combatant commanders.”
Overall control of the joint program, as well as the “mission requirement sponsorship” responsibilities for the program, will also be shifted to the Navy, the memorandum of agreement (MoA)states. That, along with the ship transfers, will “optimally align service core competencies for strategic movement…clarify relationships, identify the roles and responsibilities [and] provide an implementation plan” for the program, the memo states.
The first step toward that implementation plan will be a joint effort by the Army, Navy and U.S. Transportation Command to draft a “JHSV concept of employment.” That document will take the lessons learned from testing and evaluation of the Army’s initial five-ship tranche, and coordinate those results with standing program requirements.
That JHSV concept plan is scheduled to wrap up by next March, according to the MoA.
In terms of the $604.8 million in requested program funds, the Army will move the Fiscal Year 2012 dollars set aside in the service’s budget to the Navy “through congressional action” or a reprogramming measure, pending the passage of the FY ’12 defense spending bill currently before Congress.
The balance of that funding, which runs from FY ’13 through FY ’17, will be transferred to the sea service via a “budget based transfer” the agreement states. Any funding requirements outside that $608 million, “the Army will be responsible for transferring to the Navy any additional funding necessary to cover cost overruns incurred, up to the contract ceiling price,” it added.
While the MoA was not officially approved until March, the decision to shift the JHSV program to the Navy was one of the many recommendations to come out of the Army and Navy warfighter talks last December, according to the document.