SECNAV tweets
July 31st, 2009 | Blogs Science and technology Ships Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
BRUNSWICK, MAINE – - Navy Secretary Ray Mabus landed here in a rainstorm Friday in his Gulfstream jet, ate a lobster roll at a restaurant built on an island in the middle of the Androscoggin River, and sent his very first Twitter update.
Missile hits missile. Again.
July 31st, 2009 | Ballistic missile defense ordnance Science and technology Ships | Posted by Andrew Scutro
//U.S. Navy
A few days ago we posted about an upcoming ballistic missile intercept test from the destroyer Hopper in the Pacific. According to the Missile Defense Agency it was a success, recorded on video. It was the 19th successful test of the seagoing Aegis-BMD system out of 23 attempts. Details.
Hitting a ballistic missile with another missile is often compared to hitting a flying bullet with another. There are plenty of short videos out there of gun range trick shots, especially with shotguns and clay pigeons. But this unique short shows a guy who hit a ping-pong ball with an arrow. Judging from the perforated backstop, this was not a lucky first shot.
Happy 219th, Coast Guard!
July 31st, 2009 | Coast Guard Navy | Posted by Susan Schept
Petty Officer 2nd Class NyxoLyno Cangemi/Coast Guard photo Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Shawn Beaty, 29, of Long Island, N.Y., looks for survivors in the wake of Hurricane Katrina Aug. 30, 2005.
In honor of the Coast Guard’s birthday Aug. 4, the Naval Institute has put together a new collection of rescue photos, including historic photographs and modern images.
“While the equipment and technology have vastly changed, the Coast Guard’s ‘always ready’ spirit remains the same,” according to the Naval Institute.
And you can save 20 percent on your photo order. Check out the link for the coupon code.
The politics and correctnesss of ship names
July 30th, 2009 | Carriers Historical Ships Washington | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Enterprise (CV-6) steams toward the Panama Canal on 10 October 1945, while en route to New York to participate in Navy Day celebrations.//U.S. Navy
Updating a previous Scoop Deck blog post, naval aviation blogger Steeljaw Scribe has taken up taken up a noble cause. A bill underway in Congress to name the second or third Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers after the late, conservative Sen. Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona has prompted Steeljaw to rally against the practice of naming flat-tops after polititians. At least the namesake of the last Nimitz-class carrier was a proud naval aviator before entering politics. With the one-of-a-kind CVN-65 soon retiring, why not keep names like Enterprise in the fleet Steeljaw asks. See the petition to do so here.
Slight digression coming: Staffers here would agree. Years back for example, some of us thought it would be appropriate to use the opportunity of the Littoral Combat Ships to give them nasty names like Sledgehammer, Cutlass, Ice Pick and Machete. Then we looked on aghast as the first two were saddled with the impossible-to-offend-anyone names Freedom and Independence.
There’s just something more, ah, effective about the thought of a notional U.S.S. Sabre bearing down on a seagoing ne’er-do-well. It’s sort of like if the Air Force decided to call the AC-130 Spectre gunship the AC-130 Equality or the Pursuit of Happiness gunship. A lethal weapon for sure, so why sugarcoat with light and airy names?
Port Royal returns (in October)
July 30th, 2009 | Ballistic missile defense Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The cruiser Port Royal will be back at sea in October, the Navy announced July 29 // Michael Laley/Navy
Engineers are almost finished with repairs to the cruiser Port Royal, the Navy announced Wednesday, and — at least according to the official statement — the damage wasn’t as bad as many people feared. After the ship went aground Feb. 5 on a coral reef off Honolulu Airport, Port Royal rolled and shook and shuddered with the surf as it lay on the reef, subjecting the entire ship to bad shocks and twisting. Several people in naval engineering circles told Navy Times privately they worried the ship would need completely new drive shafts or even new main reduction gears — very expensive, very complicated work.
Another rumor was that the damage was so bad top Navy officials were considering striking Port Royal altogether from the Naval Vessel Registry.
But now, according to the Navy’s statement, we know that although the grounding wasn’t a picnic, it didn’t take as bad a toll on the ship as it first may have seemed:
The ship remains in dry dock at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Most of the required repairs have been completed. The ship’s rudders have been reinstalled and structural work on the ship’s tanks and underwater hull has been accomplished.
Structural challenges were encountered in rebuilding the sonar dome, the area of the ship most heavily damaged in the grounding, and in addition, the struts that support the propulsion shafts were found to be out of alignment by a very small, but critical amount. These complications have extended the repair schedule slightly.
The Navy is sticking by its guesstimate of between $25 and $40 million for the repair job. Port Royal still has several more weeks’ of work before it can sail again, and the Navy’s announcement stressed its crew would have plenty of training before getting underway to avoid what happened last time.
AAARRRGGHH — Navy needs new “Old Tar”
July 29th, 2009 | Navy | Posted by Mark Faram
Is your master chief old? I mean really old? Well he or she just might rate an honor for that. The Surface Navy Association is searching for its next “Old Tar” — the active-duty enlisted sailor who has been Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist qualified for the longest.
The Navy Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist pin -- if you've had yours the longest -- you might rate an award.
According to NavAdmin message 224/09, applications will be accepted for anyone who earned their pin “equal to or later than Aug. 1, 1982″ — and has the paperwork to prove it. The award, created in 1996 by the Surface Navy Association is currently held by recently retired Command Master Chief Sammie L. Lymon.
There is one catch, however, submissions must be received by Friday, July 31 at the association’s headquarters — 2550 Huntington Avenue, Suite 202, Alexandria, Virginia 22303.
Hopper in SM-3 test
July 29th, 2009 | Ballistic missile defense ordnance Science and technology Ships | Posted by Andrew Scutro
//U.S. Navy
Scoop Deck has learned that the destroyer Hopper will take part in a ballistic missile intercept test on Thursday off Hawaii. Unlike the land-based interceptor tests also conducted by the Ballistic Missile Defense program, the Standard Missile-3 is shot out of vertical launch missile tubes aboard AEGIS-equipped warships during the seaborne BMD tests. Like previous tests this has the “Stellar” prefix, and will be called “Stellar Avenger.”
Will update with results.
The Navy’s F-35 rollout
July 28th, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Navy | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
Here’s a photo from Forth Worth this afternoon, where Lockheed Martin rolled out its first F-35C, the carrier variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. That’s Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead at the podium.
Here’s a little background info. The F-35C will undergo some test flights up at Pax River in Maryland later this year, and the first carrier landing is scheduled for Spring of 2011.
Homecoming for a pirate brig
July 28th, 2009 | Military Sealift Command Pirates Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The dry cargo and ammunition ship Lewis and Clark, seen here doing a vertical replenishment in January, was due back Tuesday at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. // MC2 Katrina Parker/Navy
This is a week of high-profile homecomings at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., with the hospital ship Comfort and the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower both scheduled to return this week from big-deal deployments to South America and the Persian Gulf, respectively. But another naval ship also was scheduled to come back to Norfolk on Tuesday — a Military Sealift Command supply ship that did much more than sustain the fleet.
For part of its cruise the dry cargo and ammunition ship Lewis and Clark was part of the Navy’s counter-piracy armada off the lawless coast of Somalia, serving as an overflow headquarters for the group and as a floating jail for pirate suspects arrested at sea. The ship also hosted a pirate-patrol helicopter detachment, all on top of its normal job re-supplying and refueling U.S. and allied warships underway.
This apparently made the pirates angry enough they tried to get revenge: In May the Lewis and Clark had to repel an attempted hijacking of its own, which included being chased by small boats and taking fire from the would-be boarders.
The ship escaped, and soon it’ll be home again.
Mystery solved: The conventioneers did it
July 28th, 2009 | Historical Submarines | Posted by Phil Ewing
A memorial to the crew of the World War II submarine Dorado -- seen here launching on May 23, 1943 -- was toppled by tourists, not vandals // Naval History and Heritage Command
Submarine and other Navy veterans in the greater Witchita, Kan. area can put away their torches and pitchforks now — it turns out that vandals weren’t responsible for overturning a local World War II submarine memorial after all. The evidence pointed that way: A monument to submariners on eternal patrol was toppled, with a clear sneaker print on its underside that could indicate it had been kicked over, the Wichita Eagle reported.
What’s more, the memorial-upending took place as city fathers debated where to put a proposed memorial to Vietnamese soldiers who fought against the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War — leading to an argument over whether Wichita’s Veterans’ Memorial Park was just for American vets, or whether others could be included. The city decided it would be for Americans only, so could someone have kicked over the sub memorial in protest?
Well, no. Two women in town for a church convention volunteered that they accidentally knocked over the sub memorial while leaning on it during a visit to the park. But the local submarine vets group, the Dry Docked Dolphins, still needs help with repairing the monument — if you’d like to make a contribution, you can send it to: Veterans Memorial Park of Wichita Inc.; P.O. Box 4754, Wichita, KS 67204, with sub-memorial donations marked “Dry Docked Dolphins.”