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Robert Work News

07 Apr 2016

US Military Christens Self-piloting Ship

Photo: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

The U.S. military on Thursday christened an experimental self-driving warship designed to hunt for enemy submarines, a major advance in robotic warfare at the core of America's strategy to counter Chinese and Russian naval investments. The 132-foot-long (40-metre-long) unarmed prototype, dubbed Sea Hunter, is the naval equivalent of Google's self-driving car, designed to cruise on the ocean's surface for two or three months at a time - without a crew or anyone controlling it remotely.

31 Mar 2016

China: No Need to "gesticulate" over South China Sea

China's Defence Ministry denounced as gesticulation on Thursday speculation it would declare an air defence zone over the disputed South China Sea, after the United States said it had told China it would not recognise one. U.S. officials have expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could prompt China to declare an air defence identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said on Wednesday the U.S. would view such a move as "destabilising" and would not recognise such an exclusion zone in the South China Sea, just as it did not recognise the one China established over the East China Sea.

09 Feb 2016

Pentagon: Cut in LCS Ship Program 'Not an Indictment'

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said the Pentagon's plan to truncate the Littoral Combat Ship program at 40 ships instead of 52 reflected budget pressures and was "not an indictment" of the program. Lockheed Martin Corp and Australia's Austal each build different models of the smaller, fast coastal warships. Carter said he wants the Navy to have a competition and pick just one supplier for future ships. Work said the Pentagon decided to buy two of the ships in fiscal 2017, instead of scaling orders back to just one ship as Defense Secretary Ash Carter had ordered in a memo late last year, at the Navy's request. He said the move was meant to help ensure a smooth transition to a future competition by keeping both shipbuilders working for another year.

17 Sep 2009

Military Sealift Wins Small Business Award

Military Sealift Command's small business program was formally recognized in a ceremony at the Pentagon where Under Secretary of the Navy Robert Work presented the Secretary's Award for the Department of the Navy's Outstanding Small Business Program in fiscal year 2007 to MSC Commander Rear Adm. Robert D. Reilly, Jr., and MSC Associate Director of Small Business Bradley D. Taylor. This is the first time MSC has received the award, which was created in 2002 to recognize a command's success in meeting its small business program targets and the implementation of its Small Business Improvement Plan. MSC awards approximately $400m of its $3b annual budget to small U.S. businesses.

02 Aug 2005

Shipbuilding Industry Bears Brunt of Cuts in Pentagon Budget

Strained by the demands of a major ground war and a sweeping overhaul of U.S. forces for an uncertain future, the Pentagon faces a severe budget challenge. According to the Providence Journal, while Congress and the Bush administration are working on a very large spending program for the military, the outlay for shipbuilding will be tight -- a prospect that is hurting the industry. The Navy's problem, says one Washington analyst, is not a lack of ships, but a lack of money to keep the shipbuilding industry moving. Congress and the Bush administration are working on a very large defense spending blueprint for fiscal 2006, but it will continue a long string of tight shipbuilding budgets that are pinching the industry hard.

04 Nov 2005

New England Shipbuilding's Fate Hangs on Salvage Budget

The fate of New England's shipbuilding industry and thousands of jobs will depend on a series of top-level discussions that began yesterday at the Defense Department, where Navy officials are scrambling to salvage long-term plans to buy new warships and submarines built at shipyards in Maine and Connecticut. The region narrowly escaped the closure last summer of its two largest naval facilities, in Kittery, Maine, and Groton, Conn., but its multibillion-dollar ship manufacturing sector remains in jeopardy, according to defense officials and lawmakers. The Pentagon is seeking major budget cuts to help reduce the federal deficit and finance the priorities of the war on terrorism -- $7 billion worth next year alone -- and is considering further reductions in the size of the naval fleet…