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Navy, Air Force Partner Under New MOA

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS100702-28
7/2/2010

By Mass Communication Specialist Derrick Ingle, Navy Office of Information

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force are now mutual partners in defense aviation surveillance thanks to a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signed June 12 by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz.

Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Dominance, Vice Adm. Jack Dorsett, alongside counterpart, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Lt. Gen. David Deptula, confirmed the two service's commitment to maximized commonalities and co-efficiencies of the Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft Systems (BAMS UAS) and Air Force's Global Hawk (GH) during a media roundtable held July 1, 2010, at the Pentagon.

"This agreement allows us to leverage the shared and complementary expertise of the Navy and Air Force and deliver agile, interoperable systems to the warfighter," said Dorsett. "We also look forward to the increased efficiencies that this approach will deliver to the benefit of both the BAMS and Global Hawk programs."

Deptula echoed that sentiment, "This memorandum of agreement is a tremendous opportunity to collaborate and seek out greater efficiencies and synergies between our two services. We believe it's the right thing for the service chiefs, combatant commanders, the Department of Defense, and ultimately our Sailors, Airmen and Marines out there in combat."

The MOA is aimed to increase interoperability for the Northrop Grumman remotely piloted aircrafts like the RQ-4 Global Hawk System used by the Air Force and the MQ-4 BAMS UAS used by the Navy. These multi-mission surveillance aircrafts provide intelligence, data collection and reconnaissance to commanders in theater.

Deptula and Dorsett stated that the MOA covers six categories which will be examined closely by a soon to be established Synergies Working Group, (SWG). The SWG will identify and make recommendations that maximize Service program commonalities and efficiencies.

"We're going to focus on basing, maintenance, aircraft command and control, logistics, training and the data requirements for processing exploitation and dissemination of BAMS and Global Hawk," said Deptula. "Take for example if we decide to jointly base in Italy. We can eliminate excessive personnel redundancies by having only one [joint] squadron based there instead of two. We can have Navy personnel operating Air Force Aircraft and vice versa," he said.

Dorsett further elaborated. He mentioned that under the new MOA, it's now about which program best supports the mission, versus which service.

"The COCOM will task down to the squadron to conduct the mission. If that [joint] squadron has a Navy aircraft that's best suited for the mission because of its sensors, it will fly that day, yet if the task is better suited for an Air Force aircraft it will fly instead. This offers the operational commanders greater flexibility in employing resources," Dorsett said.

"The need for greater defense efficiencies is a demand signal for all of the Services and I suspect we'll [Armed Forces] find more opportunities to partner in the future," Dorsett said.

This MOA effort is lead by the Deputy CNO for Information Dominance (Navy) and the Air force Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance who also support the Under Secretary of Defense of Intelligence.