Rear Admiral Robert E. Frick, USN(Ret) Joins the Board of Directors of BMC
Cleveland, OH September 01, 2022.
Bartlett Maritime Corporation is pleased to announce that Rear Admiral Robert E. Frick, USN(Ret) has been elected to the company’s Board of Directors, effective immediately. Rear Admiral Frick retains his existing position as Vice President, Planning at the company.
The nation’s Submarine Industrial Base, which in the 1960’s consistently delivered a new submarine into service every 44 days while properly maintaining this rapidly growing fleet and as recently as the 1980’s delivered 5 new submarines into service per year while properly maintaining a Submarine Force of more than 100 submarines, is in the midst of a now-widely-acknowledged and well understood capacity and capability crisis. There are many reports from various agencies detailing this crisis, summarized on our website.
In response, Bartlett Maritime Corporation is preparing to execute its immediately actionable, cost-effective public-private-partnership proposal – The Bartlett Maritime Plan™ – to add the required capacity and capability to the Submarine Industrial Base. The company’s team includes an exceptionally well-qualified team of senior leaders in both Naval shipbuilding & maintenance and in various key aspects of commercial industry on both the company’s Senior Advisory Board and the company’s senior operating staff. As a key next step in organizing for success, Rear Admiral Frick has been elected to the corporation’s Board of Directors, accelerating preparations for project execution.
Rear Admiral Frick, whose last US Navy position was as Program Executive Officer, Submarines – responsible for all submarine program procurement – initially joined Bartlett Maritime in September 2021 as Vice President, Planning, making an immediate, positive impact on the company’s program to complete the self-funded development of its proposed program to assist the US Navy in resolving the capacity and capability crisis in the submarine industrial base.
Rear Admiral Frick, a native of Erie, PA and a graduate of Purdue University with Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering, had a broad and distinguished active-duty naval career. He both commanded USS Birmingham (SSN 695) and was a Senior Member of the Pacific Fleet Nuclear Propulsion Examining Board before transitioning the Navy acquisition professional community. Within the Navy acquisition professional community, he was instrumental in “saving the Submarine Force” at a critical juncture at the end of the Cold War, successfully delivering USS Seawolf (SSN 21) to the fleet amid a tumultuous political frenzy to quickly cash in a “peace dividend.” He then successfully led the transition to the highly capable but lower cost, Virginia Class submarines.
In recognition of his service, Rear Admiral Frick was presented the Distinguished Service Medal by the Secretary of the Navy citing his achievement in bringing the nuclear submarine fleet to an unprecedented level and directly strengthening our national policy over maritime matters throughout the world. Additionally, he received a formal Tribute on the floor of the House of Representatives for his extraordinary service to our Nation over his 36-year active-duty career.
Commenting on this added role for Rear Admiral Frick, Bartlett Maritime Corporation Chairman and Chief Executive Officer CAPT Edward Bartlett, noted “In the year since Rear Admiral Frick has joined our team, we have made great strides in completing program development and in preparing to launch the execution of our public private partnership. While each and every member of the Bartlett Maritime Team has demonstrated an extraordinary personal passion for the successful launch of our program, Rear Admiral Frick’s total commitment to success has had a decidedly unique character to it. He shares the privilege with me of having been “deployed, underway, submerged” in a US Navy attack submarine in combat – making no mistake that SSN deployments during the Cold War were absolutely a most stressful and unique form of combat. Like me, he is also “594 Tough” – having served in a Thresher Class submarine. These unique experiences lead to this unique form of lifetime commitment to the success of the Submarine Force and to the safety of each and every one of the intrepid young men and women who sail these ships in support of our national security. Everyone is invited to review Rear Admiral Frick’s comments during our National Press Club event last March (Resolving the Submarine Maintenance Crisis: Restoring National Security – YouTube or Why Can’t We Keep Our Attack Submarines Ready for Action? — Bartlett Maritime Corporation) to see his intensity and personal commitment to our project. We are so very pleased that he elected to join us, and both has been and continues to be so totally committed to our success. I join my fellow members of the Board of Directors in welcoming Rear Admiral Frick to the Board.”