Seven in Seven
April 30th, 2010 | Aviation Coast Guard Congress Environment Foreign navies Maritime operations Morale Navy Officers Personnel Pirates Royal Navy Ships Submarines The Pacific Washington | Posted by Lance Bacon
Photo by MCSN Joshua Martin
The Navy nabbed a lot of headlines again this week. Leading the way is news that subs are now officially open to women. In other career news, the active duty master chiefs list was released. The Coast Guard is holding its ground in the oil spill – and against critics. and the Army cancelled the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, which will likely have significant ramifications for the Littoral Combat Ship.
Here’s seven stories in seven minutes from the past seven days that you may not have seen, but are worthy of notice:
Is LCS 2 getting a raw deal?
April 29th, 2010 | Ships Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
In terms of progress and experience at sea, the littoral combat ship Independence is about where its cousin Freedom was two years ago. // Richard Stevens / Navy
Shipbuilding expert Tim Colton fired a broadside Thursday, spurred by this week’s congressional report on the life cycle and fuel costs of various Navy surface ships. (You can read our senior colleague Christopher P. Cavas’ take on it here.)
Even though the Congressional Budget Office was commissioned to make an impartial comparison between the littoral combat ships Freedom and Independence, the report has almost no data for the Independence, making it “pretty much a waste of time,” Colton wrote, and what could be seen as the latest example of the ship getting short-shrift:
The more I think about it, the more I deplore the Navy’s approach to this procurement: hasty, poorly thought-out and prejudiced. The institutional bias against LCS 2 reminds me of the arsenal ship, which was anathema to all those dimwitted surface warriors who couldn’t imagine commanding a warship on which they could not stand on the bridge and cry, “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!”
For the record, top Navy officials will do back flips while assuring you they already know “both ships meet their requirements,” clearly sensitive to the potential for legal action that could come after this summer’s down-select: Whichever giant defense corporation doesn’t get to build LCS could lodge a protest, making this whole thing even more complicated.
What do you think? Is the Navy being fair and honest at this point in the LCS competition?
Some things usually just don’t go together
April 29th, 2010 | Aviation Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Navy
Last month, for less than 24 shimmering hours — before it floated away on a high-speed aluminum trimaran — we had a bureau in Key West, Fla. At one point during this golden interval, we Key West Correspondents were walking back to the office after an important meeting on Duval Street. It was a little after 10 p.m. On a corner, we passed Spider-Man, sitting cross-legged, playing the sitar.
You get a similar feeling looking at this picture: An Army UH-60 Black Hawk from the 1-228th Aviation Regiment is coming in to land on the flight deck of the frigate Underwood? Well… all right. But it’s unusual!
Carrier builders don’t buy SecDef’s plan
April 29th, 2010 | Carriers Congress Navy Ships Washington | Posted by Lance Bacon
The Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition brought more than 130 members from its 400 constituent companies to Capitol Hill Thursday to urge continued support for the aircraft carrier program. The sixth annual breakfast, held at the Rayburn Building, was attended by Reps. Glenn Nye, D-Va., and Rob Wittman, R-Va. Both serve on the House Armed Services Committee and both are very vocal on keeping a minimum of 11 carriers in the fleet through 2039.
As one might expect, the construction and capabilities of the forthcoming carrier Gerald R. Ford was the top topic. Scoop Deck had a good talk with Wittman and senior leadership from Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding … but you’ll have to read about that in Monday’s edition of Navy Times.
We will share this nugget with you, though: We could not find anyone who agreed with Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ 2009 plan that would shift from four- to five-year intervals. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus in congressional testimony earlier this year said the move would put carrier procurement on “a more fiscally sustainable path.” This would defer the fiscal ’12 procurement of CVN 79 by one year and the fiscal ’16 procurement of CVN 80 by two years — and could create a domino effect as deployments and refueling schedules are adjusted to accommodate.
Eyeball to eyeball
April 29th, 2010 | Maritime operations Ships The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
The cruiser Hue City is one of the Aegis escorts for the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, and in all likelihood paid close attention to the recent visit by an Iranian navy patrol plane. // CT3 Clayton Reyes / Navy
As recently as Monday, we were asking which navy was going to take the place of Russia as the world’s aggressive high-seas bad boy — China is a contender, and now Iran wants to play, too. An Iranian navy maritime patrol plane last week decided to trip the light fantastic in the airspace above the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, although U.S. officials stateside said it was no big deal.
Iranian commanders have not released audio from the plane’s cockpit recorder, but it’s a fair bet that the pilot heard a lot of unpleasant tones as his threat-warning sensors sang out about all the Aegis energy coming from the sea below. Just as the crew of the Iranian Fokker F27 was probably enjoying its orbit over the American ships, so too were the sailors in the Ike’s escort, the cruiser Hue City, probably enjoying painting the plane with their fire-control radar. Fine sport!
Then again, people can get a little stressed out carrying on this way. Have you ever had a tense encounter with an air or surface contact at sea? How’d you handle it?
The green-green team
April 28th, 2010 | Environment The deckplates The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing
Lt. Julie Cunningham and AMEAN James Creek, of VAQ 129, the "Vikings," sorted garbage on the hunt for recyclables April 14 in Oak Harbor, Wash. Besides trash-bin sorties, what other lifestyle changes could the Navy's environmental focus have in store? // Nardelito Gervacio / Navy
Absolutely no disrespect meant here, but isn’t it funny to think about the Navy and Marine Corps — an immense, mechanized bureaucracy built around the basic goals of killing and destruction — as a crunchy-granola, hippie-dippie, save-Mother Earth commune? That’s the picture the Navy tried to paint as Earth Day came and went last week — ah, but one day wasn’t enough out at Naval Base San Diego: it celebrated a whole Earth Week.
There’s no question the Navy Department is serious about expanding its uses of alternative energy and being environmentally conscious, but does that mean sailors will be starting up drum circles and delivering sanctimonious lectures on the importance of locally grown produce? What effect do you think a low-impact, alternative-fuel, enviro-culture could have on the people of the Navy and Marine Corps?
Catching the cool breezes, when you can
April 27th, 2010 | Life at Sea Mine warfare The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
Casual day topside: The mine countermeasures ship Dextrous came alongside the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Cardigan Bay in the northern Persian Gulf this week. // MC2 Ja'lon Rhinehart / Navy
Look: The north end of the Persian Gulf is really hot. It is really humid. It is really, really unpleasant. A surreal yellow haze hangs over everything: One minute you can pick up the sleek, ominous silhouette of a U.S. destroyer on patrol, the next minute you can’t. Would you wear long pants in that situation when you had the option to wear shorts? Thought so. So too with some crew members aboard the mine countermeasures ship Dextrous, it appears.
Problem is, if you’re handling lines and wearing shorts, how can you tuck your pants into your socks?
The end of an era at Ingleside
April 27th, 2010 | Mine warfare Shore duty | Posted by Phil Ewing
No more ships, no more "arfare": The Navy handed over Naval Station Ingleside, Texas, to the Port of Corpus Christi last week. // S. L. Standifird / Navy
In a ceremony last week at the former Naval Station Ingleside, Texas, Navy officials returned the base to the Port of Corpus Christi, closing the book on one of the most unusual bases in the service. Ingleside was originally built — get this — as a homeport for the battleship Wisconsin, back in the 1980s glory days of the 600-ship Navy, when the fleet was going to have a set of surface action groups, each built around a battleship, dispersed around the country.
The enthusiasm for that waned. So instead the Navy made Ingleside the home of its mine countermeasures ships, and for most of its history the base was home to Osprey and Avenger-class minesweepers — a lower profile but very important element of the surface fleet. But Big Navy and the Defense Department lost enthusiasm for the minesweepers, too, so the fate of Ingleside has been in the works for awhile.
The Navy decommissioned all its Osprey-class coastal minehunters. The Base Re-alignment and Closure Commission recommended Ingleside be closed. The Navy moved Ingleside’s Avenger-class minesweepers to San Diego — a process not without its hiccups — and so with no more ships, Ingleside is going away.
And you thought the fight over Mayport was bad …
April 27th, 2010 | Foreign navies | Posted by Lance Bacon
Ukrainian opposition and pro-presidential lawmakers fight against each other during ratification of the Black Sea Fleet deal with Russia, in parliament in Kiev, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Ukraine’s parliament has voted to extend Russia’s lease of a Crimean naval port for the Black Sea Fleet in a chaotic session during which eggs and smoke bombs were thrown. The countries’ presidents agreed last week to extend the Russian navy’s use of the Sevastopol port for another 25 years after the old lease expires in 2017. // Efrem Lukatsky / The Associated Press
Clearing out the grit
April 27th, 2010 | Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The amphibious transport dock Green Bay and its siblings could finally be over their engine problems, the Navy hopes. // MC2 Robert Stirrup / Navy
Here’s a weird dichotomy: The Navy has been struggling for years with problems aboard its San Antonio-class amphibious ships. Construction delays, cost overruns, accidents — you name it and it has happened to the poor LPD 17s. At the same time, the class includes two of the highest-profile U.S. warships of the modern era, New York and John P. Murtha, but for all their exposure in the mainstream world, the grown-up news media never seems to discover the history of challenges with the class.
Maybe it’s just as well, because as our senior colleague Christopher P. Cavas wrote this week, the Navy thinks it’s got the latest problems licked. A smorgasbord of technical fixes seems to have resolved the problem of grit mysteriously contaminating the gators’ main diesel engines, which sidelined at least two of the ships this year. You can read more in the print edition of Navy Times this week, or get a sneak preview here.
Still no word, however, about all those weld problems…