Sam LaGrone

The Navy’s portfolio acquisition executive for robotics and autonomous systems – the first job the service created as part of a broader acquisition overhaul last year – was removed from the position on Wednesday, fewer than eight months after stepping into the role. Rebecca Gassler assumed the helm of the Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (PAE RAS) upon its creation in December. Chris Miller, the head of PAE Maritime, will step into the PAE RAS job on an acting basis, according to a service news release. The Navy also announced the creation of a new job called

The dual-hatted Naval Sea Systems Command and Portfolio Acquisition Executive Industrial Operations Vice Adm. Jim Downey retired last week, the Navy announced. Downey, who took charge of NAVSEA in early 2024, retired from both roles in a Thursday ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. “What we do and how we treat people matters,” Downey said in a statement. “This legacy strengthens the Navy and all of us who ready the ships that our warfighters take to sea.” Downey commissioned into the Navy in 1987 after graduating from the State University of New York. He’s a career surface

South Korean Shipbuilder Hanwha has made a $1 billion bid for the U.S. subsidiary of Australian shipbuilder Austal, Austal disclosed in a regulatory filing on Tuesday morning Australian time. Austal also revised its previous guidance from an estimated $77.6 million (AUD 110 million) in profits to a loss of $79.73 million (AUD 113 million) based on an accounting event around the Mobile, Ala., yard’s contract setbacks with the Navy’s Navajo-class tow, salvage and rescue ships (T-ATS), the Auxiliary Floating Dry Dock Medium (AFDM) and the Landing Craft Utility 1700 program, according to a statement the company posted to the Australian

The second Ford-class aircraft carrier — John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) — left Wednesday afternoon for acceptance trials after years of delays and Navy and congressionally mandated equipment changes to the ship.

President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to consider foreign-built warships and auxiliary vessels for the U.S. Navy, in addition to other proposed changes to shipbuilding, in a sweeping presidential memo released on Thursday. Citing a lack of capacity in the U.S. naval shipbuilding base and cost growth, Trump is instead calling for more foreign investment in U.S. shipbuilding and the use of foreign ship designs that would initially get constructed abroad. “An atrophied shipbuilding industrial base, coupled with diminished adjacent supplier bases, has expanded delays and increased costs. The Department of War shall restore both capacity and competition to

PASCAGOULA, MISS. — The rose-brown hull of the first heavy polar icebreaker for the Coast Guard is taking shape after years of delays on the Gulf Coast. The stern sections of the future USCGC Polar Sentinel (WMSP-21) is now standing almost four stories high in the middle of the Bollinger Mississippi shipyard, USNI News observed during a visit to the shipyard on Aug. 5. As of early August, the stern section of the future Polar Security Cutter was positioned to be welded in place. A few hundred yards away, workers in the steel panel line of the shipyard were working

The Navy has signed off on a Northrop Grumman modification to the E-2D Hawkeye that will allow faster upgrades to the airborne command and control aircraft, the service said this week. The E-2D Advanced Hawkeye Block II upgrade passed its critical design review preparing the Portfolio Acquisition Executive Aviation for flight tests sometime in Fiscal Year 2029. “Representing the next evolution of Delta System Software Configuration 6 (DSSC-6), the Block II upgrade delivers the software foundation for rapid capability insertion,” reads a statement from the PAE. “This modernization introduces state-of-the-art cockpit architecture, increased computing power, an Open Mission Systems framework

USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) outperformed legacy Nimitz-class aircraft carriers in a test of the launch and recovery systems of the carrier, the Navy’s top officer said last week. A February stress test of the electromagnetic launch system, EMALS, and the advanced arresting gear installed aboard Ford showed the carrier could generate 120 to 130 percent more sorties than the existing systems aboard the Nimitz-class, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said during a roundtable at the Tailhook Symposium in Reno, Nevada. The test occurred while Ford was in the Caribbean Sea before sailing to U.S. European Command and

The crew of USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) is weeks away from wrapping a deployment that could be the second longest since the end of the Cold War, according to the USNI News carrier database. As of Tuesday, Lincoln, its escorts and the embarked Carrier Air Wing 9 were sailing in the Indian Ocean on the strike group’s return journey to the West Coast and were still a month or more away from home. Based on the time it took the last three carrier strike groups to sail from the Middle East to California, the strike group might not arrive until

NAVAL SUPPORT ACTIVITY HAMPTON ROADS, Va. — Families of sailors assigned to the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group are already preparing for a deployment that will last more than seven months as the U.S. conflict with Iran continues. When USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), its escorts and the embarked Carrier Air Wing 11 leave from San Diego in the coming weeks, the strike group is expected to move to U.S. Central Command to relieve the Japan-based USS George Washington (CVN-73), which entered U.S. 5th Fleet last week. Since Operation Epic Fury began on Feb. 28, the U.S. has maintained a carrier