The old fashioned way, vol. 2
February 26th, 2010 | Military Sealift Command | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Navy, MSC and General Dynamics plan to christen T-AKE 10, Charles Drew, this weekend in San Diego // NASSCO
If you’re lucky enough to have the right connections in San Diego this weekend, here’s a great way to spend your Saturday: The Navy, Military Sealift Command and shipbuilder General Dynamics are planning to christen the latest dry cargo and ammunition ship, Charles Drew, and slide it down the ways — the way a ship should be launched. Even though the forecast calls for rain, G-D NASSCO officials say the ceremony will go on.
Here’s a sneak preview — this is what it looked like when the previous T-AKE, Matthew Perry, was launched on a sunny day last year.
Dewey’s flagship fights another battle
February 26th, 2010 | Historical Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The cruiser Olympia in its heyday // NavHistHerCom
Apparently it wasn’t enough to defeat the Spanish in Manila Bay under the command of Adm. George Dewey — now his flagship, the cruiser Olympia, has to fight the ravages of time and our stagnant economy. The organization that runs the Olympia, which is moored in Philadelphia as a museum ship, has said it can no longer afford to maintain it, and is looking for a new owner with $30 million to tow the cruiser someplace else, restore it, and put it on display.
So how about it — can anybody out there come to Olympia’s rescue?
Next big surface ship: Flight III DDG
February 25th, 2010 | Science and technology Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Navy's advanced destroyers of tomorrow will look a lot like the Higgins, seen here underway off Haiti last month // MC2 Adrian White / Navy
Now that the Navy has killed the advanced cruiser known as CG(X), you were probably wondering what would take its place as the tomorrow’s bearer of today’s hopes and dreams and plans and schemes. Officials hinted at it starting Feb. 1, when they confirmed CG(X) was no more and instead the Navy would add its radars and other accessories onto the hull of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. This week, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus confirmed in House and Senate testimony that tomorrow’s standard-bearer will be what he called a “Flight III” Burke — an evolutionary step forward for the species greyhoundis maris.
The breed has undergone many changes since the appearance of the lead dog, the Arleigh Burke, in 1991. Later versions got a helicopter hangar and more missile tubes, but lost their Harpoon missiles, towed arrays and many crew members. Undersecretary of the Navy Robert Work has compared the Burke class to the British 74, and there’s no question the ships are the backbone of the surface force.
So what would a Flight III version look like? Much of it would probably be very familiar to today’s sailors, with the same flight deck, VLS tubes and crew accommodations. It would probably be larger — 10,000 tons or more. Its engineering spaces might be slightly different, and include a “hybrid” plant like the one aboard the amphibious assault ship Makin Island. The real differences would start to appear in the superstructure, which could take on whatever appearance engineers needed to support tomorrow’s bigger, power-hungry radars. Navy engineers have even drawn up plans for including the 155mm Advanced Gun System on a DDG 51 in place of its standard 5-inch gun.
If you were running Naval Sea Systems Command, what would you change about the old reliable DDG 51 design? If you’ve served on a modern-day destroyer, what would you make sure they add on its future counterpart?
Everyone got uncomfortable
February 25th, 2010 | Aviation Congress Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Marine Corps
Illinois Sen. Roland Burris, a Chicago Democrat, was just making standard prefatory congressional chit-chat on Thursday in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, but from the press table, it looked like a lot of people swallowed very hard when he said this:
BURRIS: I’d like to add my thanks to these three excellent Americans for their dedication and commitment to the service of our country. And I would just like to let them know where I spent last week, the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot down in San Diego, the Marine Air Station Miramar, where I experienced and flew that Osprey — I crashed it about 20 times.
See NLOS in action … kind of
February 24th, 2010 | ordnance Video | Posted by Phil Ewing
Navy
Speaking of the littoral combat ship’s Non Line Of Sight missile… have you ever wondered what it would look like if a U.S. warship used a surface-to-surface missile to kill two guys on a Jet-Ski? Thanks to this promotional computer-animated video from the Archive of Excellence, you need wonder no more.
Blast from the past: the National Patrol Frigate
February 24th, 2010 | Coast Guard Congress leadership Ships Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
An oldie, but a goodie: Northrop Grumman's trade-show handout about the National Patrol Frigate, circa 2008 // Philip Ewing / Staff
Remember the wild, crazy year called 2008? The presidential election was going full swing … Kanye West asked a befuddled America how it could be so heartless … and in certain elite circles, the big debate was littoral combat ship v. national security cutter. Back in those golden, by-gone days, the hip crowd was saying, “hey, why don’t the Coast Guard and the Navy both buy LCSes or NSCs, or both services get a couple of each, and realize increased savings and commonality?”
Shipbuilder Northrop Grumman even issued rack-display cards for that year’s trade shows depicting its cutter with a haze-gray paint scheme.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead took pains to explain why they didn’t like that idea: The Coast Guard’s vessel is designed for many days’ endurance at a moderate speed, hunting for smugglers in the Eastern Pacific. The Navy’s ship is a full-bore speed demon, designed to rip up the waves at 45 knots — with constant support from an oiler — and operate in a strike group with other warships. (Funny: LCS did chase some smugglers this week, though.)
After awhile, people forgot about all this. Or did they? At a hearing on Capitol Hill today, House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Ike Skelton, D.-Mo. brought the “National Patrol Frigate” concept roaring back to life:
Bartlett: EMP, carrier-killers and unmanned ships
February 24th, 2010 | Congress nuclear weapons Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Among the questions the CMC, SecNav, and CNO got Wednesday was why the Navy still has manned ships // MC2 Kevin O'Brien / Navy
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., is the top guy in Congress when it comes to electromagnetic pulse attacks. At every hearing where military decision-makers appear, he asks: Aren’t you concerned about EMPs? What are you doing about EMPs? Suppose China hits us with an EMP?
Bartlett didn’t disappoint when Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead and Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway appeared before the House Armed Services Committee today. But he also didn’t just get in an EMP question — he also asked about China’s carrier-killing death-missile, the looming submarine gap, and why the Navy continues to field manned ships.
Here’s what Bartlett said, in his own words:
‘One sniper shot at a time’
February 24th, 2010 | Coast Guard | Posted by Susan Schept
An advertisement to watch a sneak preview of "Modern Sniper: Coast Guard" on the Military Channel. //Coast Guard and Military Channel
The Coast Guard invited the media to attend an all-hands sneak preview in Jacksonville, Fla., of the debut of “Modern Sniper” on the Military Channel. Although Scoop Deck could not be there, we will be watching as the cable channel profiles the Jacksonville-based Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron at 9 p.m. (8 p.m. central) on Thursday, Feb. 25. Known as HITRON, the unit is tasked with stopping drug trafficking,
One sniper shot at a time.”
MSC’s pirate oiler
February 23rd, 2010 | Life at Sea Military Sealift Command | Posted by Phil Ewing
MC3 Matthew Jackson / Navy
Tacked to the cubicle wall here at the Center of Excellence is one of Scoop Deck’s most prized mementos from a trip to sea: A simple paper pilot card from the Military Sealift Command oiler Leroy Grumman, describing what it calls the “ship’s particulars” a pilot needs to know to take the 677.5-foot oiler in or out of a harbor. On the outside of the card is a white skull against a black field, smoking some kind of bizarre pipe, with the motto: “Serving the four corners of hell.”
Sometimes it’s not that bad: Here’s an image of Leroy Grumman refueling its Military Sealift Command sibling hospital ship Comfort this week in the Caribbean. Underway replenishment — better known as an unrep — is how Navy strike groups or ships like Comfort can stay on station week after week.
Leroy Grumman is all over the place these days: Here it is refueling the littoral combat ship Freedom; here it is with the carrier Carl Vinson; and here it is with the carrier George H. W. Bush.
The only thing missing from the Navy’s photo site is an image of the oiler flying its trademark giant Jolly Roger after it breaks away from an unrep. Anybody got a picture of that? Or send us an image of your ship flying the skull and crossbones — we’ll post that straightaway.
Could LCS lose its missile?
February 23rd, 2010 | ordnance Science and technology | Posted by Phil Ewing
The missile that the Freedom can carry in the multi-use top-deck spaces, now occupied by its 30mm guns, is in trouble, according to reports this week // Lt. Ed Early / Navy
Even though the Navy is very proud that the littoral combat ship Freedom is underway right now in the Caribbean patrolling for smugglers, there are many parts of the LCS concept still in the works. The wham-o-dyne, helicopter-mounted, super-gun that will blow up mines, for example, is still under development, as are the Non Line Of Sight “precision attack missiles,” which are planned to give LCS ships a quick, extended ability to hit surface targets.
However, as reported by our colleague Kate Brannen, all is not well in NLOS land. Not only are the missiles doing poorly in live-fire tests, but as Brannen writes in the print edition of this week’s Defense News (on newsstands now!) they are proving to be much more expensive than planned. NLOS, which the Navy is developing with the Army, will cost $466,000 per round in 2011, according to Army budget documents.
“This is what happens when you try to buy too much under [low-rate initial production] when the production line is not mature,” one congressional source told Brannen.
Elements within the Army are recommending the service’s top decision-makers back off NLOS, one of the survivors of the monster known as Future Combat Systems. What would that mean for the Navy? LCS planners are relying on NLOS as a way to defend against swarms of incoming small boats, which could mass and attack faster than the Freedom could handle with its 57mm main gun and twin 30-mm point-defense guns.
Stay tuned for more on the effect an Army NLOS scale-back would have on the Navy and LCS.
Update: We dug through the Scoop Deck Archive and came up with this classic computer-animated video of NLOS in action aboard an LCS.