The Scoop Deck – 2010

Book deal, casting call: Pirates, SEALs and a DDG

January 29th, 2010 | Books Maritime operations merchant ships Pirates | Posted by Phil Ewing

"Thanks for savin' me, sailor -- hey, did you hear I've got a book coming out?" // MC3 David Danals / Navy

This week the Center of Excellence got a truckload of “advance uncorrected proofs” of “A Captain’s Duty,” a forthcoming memoir by Richard Phillips, the merchant captain saved by the Navy last year after he was taken hostage by Somali pirates. In his cover photo, Phillips wears a command baseball cap (although not a Pirate Brigade cap) from the destroyer Bainbridge, which was instrumental in his rescue.

Phillips’ book is full of new details about his ordeal.

Read the rest of this entry »

They build, they fight — you watch

January 29th, 2010 | Seabees The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing

A camera crew from "National Geographic Explorer" interviewed Ensign Eric Julius of NMCB 74 at Camp Leatherneck in September // MC2 Michael Lindsey / Navy

Here are the ingredients for a TV program you can set your watch by: Start with a bunch of Devil Dogs from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Unit having some fun in the sun over in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, throw in some Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 74, and get National Geographic there to catch it all on film.

That’s what you can look for out of “National Geographic Explorer: Camp Leatherneck,” which is scheduled to air this Sunday. It’s the product of a visit to the Marines’ little patch of paradise by a Geographic film crew last September, and should have some good Seabee parts, judging by this story:

Mags Miller, a producer for the documentary, said that her directive came shortly after the head of National Geographic visited Camp Leatherneck with the National Security Advisor General James Jones about two months ago. According to Miller, he was absolutely amazed by the camp…

“From what I’ve heard and seen, it’s the Seabees who physically built the berms up and did the billeting in not so secure areas,” Miller said. “Without the Seabees, I don’t think the Marines would be able to have a camp like Leatherneck.”

If you can catch the show when it airs this weekend, come back here and let us know what you thought in the comments.

A thank you, from the top

January 29th, 2010 | Coast Guard Morale | Posted by Susan Schept

Information Technician 2nd Class Jose Estrada, from the 270-foot cutter Tahoma, rushes an injured Haitian girl to an awaiting Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter Jan. 19 in Killick.//PA3 Brandyn Hill/Coast Guard

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen took time out Thursday to give Coast Guardsmen a well-deserved pat on the back for being the first responders after the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti. The Coast Guard deployed 1,000 service members, eight cutters, five planes and five helicopters over the past two weeks. The service also stood up a Homeland Security Task Force in Miami to help evacuate American personnel in Haiti.

In a five-minute video on his blog, Allen thanked service members:

“There will be difficult times in the days and weeks ahead, but I feel our men and women are up to the challenge…You have performed superbly and I thank you.”

‘Avatar’ not anti-military, director tells military

January 29th, 2010 | Life at Sea Morale The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing

Actress Michelle Rodriguez, who plays a space-helo pilot in "Avatar" signed the helmet of a real-life Navy helo crewman aboard the cruier Hue City // MC2 Gina Wollman / Navy

Judging by the box office receipts, every human being on the planet has now seen “Avatar” at least once, so there’s no worry about spoilers: In the far-off sci-fi planet where the movie takes place, gruff men with high-and-tight haircuts and digital camouflage uniforms really do a number on the planet’s indigenous population of Native Americans sexy cat people.

Viewers massaging their temples after the punishing, three-hour sensory Götterdämmerung might think that director James Cameron was criticizing the U.S. military by using a Vietnam War allegory built around space-Huey helicopters and white-guy grunts destroying the space forest. Not so, he says — he gave our shipmates at Marine Corps Times a detailed interview defending “Avatar” and the Marine Corps — and said the same thing to the sailors of the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and cruiser Hue City, according to this Pentagon story:

Finally, Cameron commented on the critics who said “Avatar” was anti-military. He disagreed completely, saying the movie’s main character is a strong-willed Marine who is courageous and dedicated and demonstrates he can adapt and overcome the odds to fight for what he believes in — just like the military today.

There, see? In addition to the warships at sea, Cameron and several of his actors visited sailors and their families at the headquarters of 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

Motivational cruiser photo of the day

January 29th, 2010 | Photos Ships The Pacific | Posted by Phil Ewing

Cmdr. Ed Thompson gets today’s coveted Ship Photography Prize. The cruiser Shiloh, silhouetted against a sunset in the South China Sea, is looking powerful, peaceful, menacing and mysterious all at once. This shot could be the background of a movie poster — and Scoop Deck would line up to see a movie about a U.S. Navy cruiser — or the cover of an adventure novel. Click the image for a high-res version.

The ‘prison ship’ off the Haitian coast

January 28th, 2010 | Blogs Life at Sea Maritime operations Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing

The amphibious assault ship Bataan stood off the coast of Haiti this week as its crew and Marines contributed to the international rescue mission // MC2 Julio Rivera / Navy

Y’never know what’s going to pop up in a Google Alert these days: From the risible-and-disappointing file comes this gem about the amphibious assault ship Bataan — whose aircraft, crew and landing craft have been working nonstop helping with the humanitarian crisis in Haiti — conducting secret “experiments” on the “prisoners” kept aboard.

Bataan actually did transport terror suspects back in the day, and according to the “Islam Times,” it has kept that assignment:

The ship’s flat hold bottom, designed to accommodate troops for disembarkment, has been equipped with cages. Prisoners are subjected to the same experiments as in Guantánamo… It appears highly unlikely that the prisoners were taken to another location after the earthquake and that the ship was overhauled to allow for the transportation of troops.

Right, see, so, the U.S. was in such a hurry to deliver badly needed food, water and medicine to earthquake-ravaged Haiti that it didn’t have time to rip out the experiment-cages in Bataan’s “flat hold bottom,” and the ship had to sail with its poor victims still down there.

Oddly, Scoop Deck’s senior shipmate Mark D. Faram happens to have just left Bataan after almost two weeks aboard and in Haiti — and y’know, it’s the strangest thing! — he said he didn’t see any of that.

“I’ll admit the evidence is overwhelming, but I didn’t see any cages or experiments going on,” Mark says. “Now, sometimes I felt like a prisoner — but that was it.”

Tags: Haiti

Why exempt the Navy from a spending freeze?

January 28th, 2010 | Blogs Congress leadership Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing

One blogger calls for canceling the Zumwalt-class destroyers as part of President Obama's spending cutbacks //Image: Naval Sea Systems Command, photo illustration by Scoop Deck

In his speech last night, President Obama called for a spending freeze for most of the federal government, starting next year. He made exceptions for entitlement programs and “national defense” spending, but this has led many bloggers online to ask: Why? How come the Pentagon — and specifically, the Navy — gets to keep spending as before?

Change.org points out that when all the new U.S. troops reach Afghanistan after the plus-up there is complete next year, the cost to taxpayers will be around $82 million per day.

Online columnist Ivan Eland has some specific suggestions for how the U.S. could realize savings by not spending money on the Navy:

The Navy could cancel the CVN-79 aircraft carrier, terminate the building of littoral combat ships and LPD-26-class [sic] amphibious vessels, stop production of exorbitantly expensive DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers, and terminate production of SSN-774 Virginia-class submarines. The Navy has little relevance to the war on terror and, with existing equipment, has crushing dominance over any other fleet in the world.

So how about it? Is it fair that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or NASA, have to endure frozen budgets for the next three years, but the Pentagon gets to keep spending?

Need to sharpen that killing edge? Try video games!

January 27th, 2010 | Blogs Science and technology Seabees The deckplates | Posted by Phil Ewing

Seabees in Bahrain honed their fighting instinct. // MC2 Stephen Murphy / Navy

All you oldsters just never understood, did you — with your “fresh air,” “outdoor activities” and your “socializing” and such — the younger generation hasn’t been wasting time inside playing “Halo” all these years. It’s been developing itself into a legion of stone-cold killers!

Such is the conclusion from an Office of Naval Research scientist who finds that today’s gamers “perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than normal people that are non-game players,” according to this official DoD story:

[ONR program officer Ray] Perez described the war against terrorists as presenting significant challenges to [troops] on the ground because they must be able to adapt their operations to innovative and deadly adversaries who constantly change their tactics.

“We have to train people to be quick on their feet — agile problem solvers, agile thinkers — to be able to counteract and develop counter tactics to terrorists on the battlefield,” said Perez. “It’s really about human inventiveness and creativeness and being able to match wits with the enemy.”

Good point. For example, Scoop Deck’s normal load-out is the ACR (with M203 grenade launcher and holographic sight) and the M1014 shotgun (with suppressor) but sometimes, if it’s a big map, you need the WA2000 sniper rifle (with thermal scope) or if one of these other clowns calls in a helicopter gunship, you need a Stinger to bring it down. See? That’s flexibility across the full spectrum of make-believe warfare.

H/T: Joystiq

The military is really expensive

January 26th, 2010 | Personnel Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing

People, including these students at Naval Air Station Meridian, Miss., are the Navy's most expensive weapons // MC1 Jennifer Villalovos / Navy

Here are some great factoids from a presentation this morning at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments given by Todd Harrison, their senior fellow for defense budget studies. They’re all interesting, but if you don’t have time, here’s what you need to know: Running the Navy, and the rest of the military services, costs a ridiculous amount of money.

Although overall end-strength across the four services has stayed relatively constant from 2000 to 2010 — with increases in the Army and Marines offsetting draw-downs by the Navy and Air Force — the over-all cost for personnel has gone from $90 billion in ’00 to more than $150 billion in ’10.
Funding for personnel and operations and maintenance accounts for about 60 percent of the DoD budget, or about $322 billion in fiscal 10.
Military health care costs grew at an annual rate of about 6.3 percent over the decade — that’s base cost, not including the expenses for care related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Over the past decade, here’s how the Navy’s spending on shipbuilding has broken down: 29 percent for submarines; 26 percent for destroyers; 21 percent for carriers; 15 percent for amphibious ships; and 9 percent for “other.”
Harrison said he thinks it’ll be “difficult” to achieve a fleet of more than 300 ships with what he called “the fiscal realities of the future.” As in, it’s gonna cost more than the U.S. wants to pay.
Six of the seven largest DoD satellite programs are over budget; together they are $35 billion over budget.
The cost per troop — including Navy individual augmentees — in Afghanistan is $1.1 million per person, per year. Of that, only $66,000 goes for her or his pay, benefits and health care. The rest, Harrison said, is for the logistics to feed, fuel and house the troops.
Of the cost per year for an individual sailor, less than half — 48 percent — is for her or his actual paycheck and immediate remuneration. Most — 52 percent — goes for long-term deferred expenses such as pensions and health care.