Vice Admiral (Res) Javier Romero, Chairman of the Conference and Admiral Teodoro López, Chief of Staff, Spanish Navy

INTRODUCTION Ahead of our OPV International Conference taking place on 24-26 September in Cadiz, Spain, our lead partner Cluster Maritimo Naval Cadiz had the opportunity to interview Vice Admiral (Res) Javier Romero, Chairman of the conference and Admiral Teodoro López, Chief of Staff, Spanish Navy. They discuss the versatility that OPVs offer to the maritime community and the need to collaborate with industry in order to design and develop the right capabilities for current and future missions. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART ONE - ADAPTING TO THE EVOLVING SCENARIOS AND THE NEED TO DESIGN OPVS FOR THE WHOLE LIFE CYCLE Admiral Teodoro López PART TWO - INDUSTRY 4.0 AND IMPLEMENTING NEW TECHNOLOGIES INTO OPV DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT Vice Admiral (Res) Javier Romero PART ONE ADAPTING TO THE EVOLVING SCENARIOS AND THE NEED TO DESIGN OPVS FOR THE WHOLE LIFE CYCLE Admiral Teodoro López Chief of Staff, Spanish Navy Admiral General Teodoro López Calderón was born in Cartagena (Murcia) on May 3rd 1954. He joined the Spanish Navy in 1973 graduating as Lieutenant Jr. Grade on July 16th 1978. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1981, Lieutenant-Commander in 1990, Commander in 1997, Captain in 2003, Rear-admiral in 2008, Vice-admiral in 2011 and Admiral in November 2012. In March 2017 he was appointed Chief of the Spanish Navy and promoted to the rank of Admiral General. The synergy He has been Commander of the Standing NATO Maritime “ Group Two (SNMG-2), combining his post with that of Chief industry-navy, of surface units participating in the counter-terrorist Operation ‘Active Endeavor’ in the Mediterranean Sea; the that is, the only ‘Article 5’ operation in the history of the Atlantic Alliance. sharing of Admiral López Calderón has been Commander of the 41st Escort Squadron, Commanding objectives Officer of frigate ‘Cataluña’, Commander 2nd Squadron of Minesweepers, and CO of patrol boat ‘Villaamil’. He has from the also been Chief of Staff of the 21st Escort Squadron and Staff member of the ‘Delta’ Group; this task group was beginning of activated to monitor and seal the maritime borders of the Basque Country to prevent the smuggling of weapons and the clandestine trafficking of terrorist-related people. the conceptual Other at sea assignments include: corvette ‘Descubierta’ phase, is and frigates ‘Asturias’, ‘Extremadura’ and ‘Numancia’, the latter as member of the fist crew. He was also integrated undoubtedly into the U.S. Command Staff of USCOMSOLANT (Commander South Atlantic Force, US Atlantic Fleet). the best way Ashore, Admiral López Calderón has served as Joint Operations Commander and Chief of Staff and Assistant to to save time the Chief of Staff of the same Department. He had previously been President of the Spanish Section of the on design, “ U.S-Spain Permanent Committee; Chief of Strategic Plans Section of the Plans Division of the Spanish Naval Staff; construction Chief of Operations of the Naval Operational Command, and Adviser to the Minister of Defense in his Technical and testing. Cabinet. He has attended several national and international courses, among them the Senior Course of NATO’s Defense College. He is a Naval Warfare graduate, a specialist in Electronics and Tactical Action Officer. Admiral López Calderón has been awarded 18 military and civilian decorations, both national and international. Admiral Teodoro López Do you think that OPVs can be a valuable part of the battle fleet and, if not, what do you believe the missions sets that will allow patrol vessels to make the most valuable contribution to achieving naval strategy? Although, OPVs are ships leaning towards law enforcement or constabulary duties and therefore Maritime Security is their core mission, they are solid platforms capable of contributing to missions of an exclusively military nature: Deterrence and Defence and Crisis Management. Specifically, the new Spanish OPVs, which are called Maritime Action Ships (BAM in its Spanish acronym), offer response possibilities for a broad spectrum of maritime operations by virtue of their versatility, interoperability and long endurance at sea. At present, use of BAMs in a battle fleet, based on OPVs armament and its precision, would face non-conventional threats in a hybrid scenario, thus freeing up navy’s dedicated surface combatants to conduct other tactical operations, necessary to fulfill whatever operational goals need to be met. These operations or missions can be: control of maritime lines of communications, intelligence gathering in areas of interest, force protection in shallow waters, command and support mine counter measures (MCM) operations, or even ensuing the necessary command and control means to conduct operations. Having said that, I would like to showcase the contribution of Spanish OPVs to global Maritime Security during the past decade, focusing not only on home waters but also on a number of distant areas relevant to Spanish national maritime interests: namely the Mediterranean Sea, the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Guinea and the West Coast of Africa. www.opvinternational.com Admiral Teodoro López How is OPV design evolving, is it keeping pace with naval operational concepts and how can industry improve its efforts to be aligned with end user requirements? The evolution of OPV design needs to keep pace with naval operational concepts. For this purpose, it is crucial that industry and client Navy keep a fluid and constant communication from the first stage of the programme, the conceptual phase, in order to gather the operational requirements so that they can be implemented as necessary. We can consider this requirement from a twofold point of view: the adaptation to the evolving scenarios and the necessity to design for the whole life cycle. The evolving scenarios must be the OPV design benchmark. In these scenarios, the use of cyberspace will acquire, in all sort of operational field, an increasing relevance. Faced with this situation, combat systems must evolve incorporating new technologies that allow them to continue working even in certain saturated situations. In addition, they must allow their modernisation or adaptation to the operational environment, at any time during their life cycle, through the modular integration of new sensors and weapons. And last, the OPV combat systems have to be prepared to and extensive use of unmanned units: aerial UAV, USV surface and even submarine UUV. The evolution of OPV design needs to “ “keep pace with naval operational concepts It is also important to contemplate directed energy weapons (DEW) within the design of OPVs, which will demand to make provision for a significant capacity to generate electrical power by this kind of units. But, at the same time, new designs have to guarantee the reliability and availability of OPVs during their complete life cycles. Shipbuilders should take into account the maintenance strategy from the conceptual phase to ensure the logistic support of units throughout their life cycles. The implementation of concepts such as predictive maintenance systems, based on ‘digital twins’, or the ‘single virtual warehouse’ are innovative tools that should be considered. The attainment of this twofold purpose inexorably requires a seamless communication and the participation in every logistic process until the unit end-of- service of both the shipbuilder and the client Navy. www.opvinternational.com Admiral Teodoro López Where do you see the biggest opportunity to reduce the time spent on design, construction and testing in order to deploy faster? This question is intimately related to the preceding one. The synergy industry-navy, that is, the sharing of objectives from the beginning of the conceptual phase, is undoubtedly the best way to save time on design, construction and testing. Furthermore, the use concepts such as “Industry 4.0”, based on the intensive use of technology in both, the design and the production process, will also help reduce this time, since the transition from design to production is more immediate than with current processes. In search of this objective, NAVANTIA and the Spanish Navy are trying to develop and implement the "Shipyard 4.0", a concept based on “Industry 4.0” techniques. The “Shipyard 4.0” has a strong focus on increasing manufacturing flexibility in the mass-production sectors. Despite the initial difficulties –leaving the comfort zone is not easy– this new concept is transforming conventional processes and triggering significant changes in customers, employees and production processes. We are delighted to welcome you to OPV International 2019- could you tell us why the role of OPVs is such a valuable discussion and your reasons for taking part? Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the invitation to participate in this important forum. It is a pleasure for me to share our experience in this particular matter and, more importantly, to be able to know, first-hand, the present and future of the construction and operational use of OPVs by industrial stakeholders and navies. The value of OPVs lies in their versatility. They are multi-purpose and effective ships which are being used in an increasing number of roles. Consequently, the number of OPVs in operations worldwide has strongly augmented in the last decade and that is why many Navies are currently carrying out OPV modernisation programmes. This initiative provides a great opportunity to increase our knowledge about how new OPVs should evolve and adapt to a progressively more complex maritime security environment. As I mentioned before, this evolving scenarios must be our reference for obtaining future units and for optimising the operational employment concept. Admiral Teodoro López will attend this year’s OPV International Conference, where he will deliver a keynote address. To find out who will be joining him, you can download the full agenda here. www.opvinternational.com PART TWO INDUSTRY 4.0 AND IMPLEMENTING NEW TECHNOLOGIES INTO OPV DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT Vice Admiral (Res) Javier Romero Commander, Ferrol Naval Base (2015-2017), Spanish Navy Chairman, OPV International 2019 Vice Admiral Javier Romero was born in Ferrol on August 9th, 1957.

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