Traveling across the globe is nothing new for Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport In-Service Engineering Agents (ISEA) Matthew George, Daniel Braman and Dillon Savitzky, but the trio recently experienced a historic first Down Under.
Members of the Handling Systems Engineering Branch in the Sensors and Sonar Systems Department, the agents participated the first three-week Submarine Tendered Maintenance Period (STMP) at HMAS Stirling in Perth, Australia, marking a significant step in the Australia, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) trilateral partnership.
STMPs are similar to planned maintenance periods that are typically conducted in U.S. submarine ports. They usually last up to three weeks and don’t require the submarine to be dry-docked.
When factoring in the historical aspect, Braman — a 14-year employee at Division Newport with plenty of temporary duty travel under his belt — said his most recent work trip tops the list.
“I think it’s pretty cool that we did the first modernizations performed in Australia on a submarine,” Braman said. “To do a modernization on a submarine is nothing. Everyone does it. But we’re the first ones doing a modernization in Perth, and no one can take that away from us.”
The ISEAs worked alongside submarine tender USS Emory S. Land (AS 39) personnel, as well as their Royal Australian Navy (RAN) counterparts to conduct repairs and modernizations to the ship’s thinline towed array handling system aboard the Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS Hawaii (SSN 776).
This maintenance period aided the execution of Pillar 1 of the AUKUS partnership, which is to deliver a sovereign, conventionally armed, nuclear-powered attack submarine capability to Australia by the early 2030s.
“This is the first time since World War II that the U.S. has conducted submarine maintenance in Australian waters, and certainly the first instance in history of a joint American-Australian team performing maintenance on a nuclear-powered attack submarine,” Rear Adm. Lincoln Reifsteck, U.S. Navy AUKUS Integration and Acquisition program manager, said in early September after the STMP was complete. “The importance of this event cannot be overstated. These last few weeks provided essential maintenance and stewardship experience for our Australian partners in advance of establishing a sovereign SSN force in Australia.”
STMPs are a significant step toward achieving the AUKUS Pillar 1 objective.
“The main thing is that we integrated with a foreign military and trained them on how to do maintenance, repair, troubleshooting and modernization on our system,” Savitzky said. “They’re going to be receiving these submarines at some point, and they’re in the process of building up their infrastructure and capability. As Department of Defense civilians supporting the U.S. Navy, we were at the beginning of that process of integrating with a foreign military.”
George, Braman and Savitzky embarked on the 48-hour trip to Australia from Rhode Island on Aug. 19. Like any other in-service engineering trip, they had to learn the lay of the land and found the RAN sailors to be helpful and eager to learn.
“They certainly had a great thirst for knowledge, and they picked up everything pretty quickly,” said George, who has been with Division Newport for 22 years. “They were very willing to help, whether that was trying to track down shipping pieces or equipment. They were on the ball for everything.”
Savitzky, a certified second-class Navy diver, worked with RAN and U.S. Navy divers and Sailors serving on the tender on mechanical and electromechanical equipment in the submarine’s ballast tanks, which is only accessible by diving when the submarine is pierside. Above the water, George and Braman communicated with Savitzky to help execute the modernization, repair plan and inspection list.
“We operate as a team and it’s really a team process,” Savitzky said. “It’s not just the diver in the water doing all of the work. I’m constantly communicating with them topside, bouncing stuff off them. It works best when you have someone experienced topside, and someone experienced in the water.”
Nick Savage, head of the Handling Systems Engineering Branch, said George, Braman and Savitzky work together often and are among the best in the business at what they do.
“They have a really high standard for each other, and that makes them a really high-performing team,” Savage said. “There hasn’t been a situation where they haven’t been able to figure out what’s wrong. When other entities can’t figure something out, they’ll call us. Our role is the last line of defense to get something solved. It really requires a high-performing team, and that’s what we have here.”
NUWC Newport is the oldest warfare center in the country, tracing its heritage to the Naval Torpedo Station established on Goat Island in Newport Harbor in 1869. Commanded by Capt. Chad Hennings, NUWC Newport maintains major detachments in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Andros Island in the Bahamas, as well as test facilities at Seneca Lake and Fisher’s Island, New York, Leesburg, Florida, and Dodge Pond, Connecticut.
