Q&A: Mabus discusses priorities since taking over the Department of the Navy

Ray Mabus, who took the reins of the Department of the Navy in May, has moved aggressively to outline energy efficiency efforts for the Navy and Marine Corps and is also clearing a path for women to serve on submarines. As secretary of the Navy, Mabus is responsible for an annual budget in excess of $150 billion and almost 900,000 people. Mabus is the former governor of Mississippi and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Clinton administration. The native Mississippian served as a Navy surface warfare officer in the early 1970s.

Q: What are some of your major priorities for next year and beyond?
The main thing I am always going to focus on is taking care of sailors and Marines and their families. Specifically, one of the things that we have been doing a lot of work on is sexual assault and prevention of sexual assault. We are also making sure when people come back from deployment that their physical and mental health needs are taken care of and that the Wounded Warrior programs are working not only for the wounded warriors, but also for their families.

{mosads}Outside of that overarching theme, we are trying to make sure that we get a handle on the cost of procurement so that we build enough ships so that we maintain a global Navy, and trying to also protect our industrial base as we go forward. Another priority is unmanned vehicles. I and the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations] believe that’s going to change the way we fight. We have to have a sharp focus on it to make sure that our research and development efforts go in the right direction, not just unmanned aerial vehicles, but also unmanned surface and unmanned undersea platforms … And finally, energy. One decade from now, the Navy will cut its use of fossil fuel in half.

Q: How are you going about that? What is the solution?
No. 1 is efficiency measures. A second way is use of alternative sources of energy. Ashore, you are talking about solar [energy] and biofuels, geothermal and hydrothermal and then wave action. In the fleet … we already produce 17 percent of our energy from nuclear power, so we are at 17 percent of non-fossil fuel use. It is [also the] use [of] replacement fuels for ships and aircraft, such as biofuels that exist today, and not changing the engines or the ships we have, but simply burning different fuels.

Q: You have talked about the immense costs of getting fuel to Afghanistan. With the focus on operations there, how can the Marine Corps and Navy be more energy-efficient?
It is expensive to get fuel to Afghanistan, but it is not only the cost. It is also the Marines who have to deliver that fuel and the Marines who guard that fuel and they are being used for non-war-fighting functions. A lot of that fuel is used for climate control — which is needed. [The Marines] are looking at more efficient ways of doing things, like spraying insulation on tents and buildings so that you’ll need a lot less air conditioning, and also generating the energy there, instead of having it delivered.

Q: Will you see a lot more focus in the budget on alternative energy?
I think you are going to see it all across the Pentagon and I think you are going to see it in the Navy. For example, we have about 50,000 non-combat vehicles and that fleet turns over about every five years. Just by buying different hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, we are going to cut the fossil fuel in half. There are going to be a lot of energy initiatives that may not be tabbed energy initiatives, such as the biofuels’ use in the F/A-18 engine. That makes it more a tactical [rather] than an energy-conservation issue.

Q: Do you still believe that the Navy should strive toward a 313-ship fleet, or more?
Yes, and the CNO says we need that capacity. I think we can get there if we are very diligent about cost and if we make sure that the design is mature when we build the ship; that the technology is ready when we start building the ship; that the perfect is not the enemy of the good, so if technology changes, instead of changing in the middle you put the technology on a block of ships. You have fewer new classes of ships and build classes that you know how to build. You move toward a lot more modular and replaceable type of architecture. The new Littoral Combat Ship is a good example of that. The LCS is really important to getting to that goal.

Q: What is your assessment of the health of the shipbuilding industry?
The health of the industry is OK, but I am concerned about the future of the industrial base. To train a shipbuilder regardless of what their specialty is takes a good while. One of the things that I want the Navy to try to do is to give some stability to these shipyards so that they can make the investment in equipment and in people, so that they can get some stability and maintain the industrial base. You want America to be able to build its own warships and you want competition to the maximum extent and if you lose any more shipyards, both those propositions [may be out.]

Q: You are a proponent of allowing women to serve on submarines. Has the Navy started getting a lot of interest from women?
We are working on formalizing the plan of how we do it and how we make this transition. Anecdotally, talking to women in ROTC and the Academy, there seems to be a lot of interest. Women ought to have a full range of career options.

Q: When do you think you are going to see the first women on submarines?
I think realistically, two to three years. You do not want the one woman. You want to have enough on each submarine that it is a whole cadre.