A giant video postcard
August 26th, 2010 | Photos Sports | Posted by Phil Ewing
Even though they are in an inferior league, it was very classy of the Boston Red Sox to help set up a special experience this week for the family of Cmdr. Matt Graham, who has been away from home for 14 months while stationed out in Bahrain. Graham appeared on the Jumbo-Tron Wednesday night with a message to his family and tens of thousands of their closest friends in Fenway Park, where the hometown squad went on to beat the Seattle Mariners, 5-3. MC2 Shannon Renfroe captured the occasion from both sides.
The day the Fire Scout went rogue
August 25th, 2010 | Aviation Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
"Y'know what? No, I am not going to zoom in on the fantail of that unidentified fishing vessel. I want to go see the Washington Monument!" // Navy
It must get really tiresome being a Fire Scout unmanned helicopter. Your human operators are always making you take off, fly your stupid old waypoints, look at boring objects through your Forward-Looking Infrared sensors, and then go back to base (or the ship). Sometimes you want to just… break free, y’know? Well, after more than 1,000 hours in the air for the Navy’s various test models, one Fire Scout finally did:
Navy operators lost control of an unmanned aircraft earlier this month and were unable to regain control before the aircraft entered restricted airspace around the U.S. capital. According to a Navy statement, the incident took place Aug. 2 when, about 75 minutes into a routine test flight, an MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned helicopter operating out of the Patuxent River test facilities in southern Maryland lost its control link with ground operators. The aircraft then flew about 23 miles on a north-by-northwest course and entered the National Capital Region restricted airspace, part of the Air Defense Identification Zone surrounding Washington, D.C.
Yes! If you had the chance for an exclusive aerial tour of landmark-rich Washington, D.C., wouldn’t you take it? No harm done — Navy controllers reacquired the mischievous bird and, as our senior colleague Christopher P. Cavas wrote, “commanded” it to land, which it did, with no damage, injuries or problems. The Navy blamed a software glitch.
Yeah, right — a software glitch called “ennui.”
A Coast Guard cutter brings the pain — $80 million worth
August 25th, 2010 | Coast Guard | Posted by Phil Ewing
Coast Guard
What does $80 million worth of cocaine look like? That’s it, right there, along with crew members of the Coast Guard cutter Forward, who took it off the hands of five “fishermen” off the coast of Honduras on Aug 3. The Forward’s crew then transferred the dope and the suspected smugglers to the cutter Tahoma, which, in turn, dropped them off in Miami this week.
If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 88 bales of cocaine — what a haul!
Swarm warning
August 25th, 2010 | Aviation The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
Action movie directors are encouraged to make a summer blockbuster that includes Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobras defending a Navy strike group against a small-boat swarm attack. Because that would be epic. // MCSN Chad Erdmann / Navy
Eagle1 has some great coverage this week about Iran’s invincible, 29,000-vessel strong hyper-navy, which has just added a new, unstoppable, 60 knot missile-armed small attack craft. This sounds like another one of those game over situations; when Congress comes back from summer vacation, it might as well just disestablish the Navy and liquidate the fleet.
But hold on a tick! Eagle1 seems a little skeptical that the massive swarm-attack spells doom for American seapower in the Middle East. No matter how fast your missile-attack jet-boat, he writes, and no matter how many of them you’ve got, there’s still the matter of deploying them with a coherent strategy and with enough surprise that they can get close enough to attack:
To reiterate, it’s really hard to hide 20 or 30 or 100 boats getting underway and trying to sneak around in an area like the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Faster boats don’t add much to the picture — except they make faster fireballs flaming across the water.
The detail that seems to be missing from all the reports this week is whether there’s an anti-air component to Iran’s swarm strategy. In the notional Persian Gulf dust-up we all hope never happens, attack jets and helicopters would likely be what U.S. commanders send against the swarm, rather than letting things devolve into the knife fight the Iranians apparently want. (Those splashy, bouncy watercraft are said to make great targets for air-to-surface missiles.) So do the Iranians just assume they’ll have more boats than the Navy has weapons? Or would they also try to contest the ocean airspace as a part of their monstrous wave of death? If so, how? An aircraft swarm?
The LCS name strategy at work
August 25th, 2010 | leadership Ships Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
The littoral combat ship Fort Worth under construction in Wisconsin. The city fathers of its namesake met the ship's COs this week. // Lockheed Martin
On Monday we posited that the latest delay in the littoral combat ship program could have some upsides for the Navy, one of which was freeing up time in which to think of some awesome names for the next batch of 15 ships. We got some great suggestions — sarcastic and otherwise — but today brings fresh evidence of just what the brass had in mind with its “medium cities” strategy: Showing the flag.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has a story about the commanding officers of LCS 3, Fort Worth, paying a visit to introduce themselves and their ship to their namesake city. Absolutely nothing new about making these kinds of ship-city connections — the crew of the fast attack sub Toledo even got hot dogs out of it — but with a planned class of 55, the Navy seems to hope it can make inroads in many places that aren’t accustomed to their names gracing a warship.
The question is, what governs which name goes where? Arlington, LPD 24, could easily have been an LCS under this scheme, and Coronado, LCS 4, already was the name of an amphibious command ship. Many names that might’ve been good LCS candidates (Boise, Asheville, Scranton) are already taken by Los Angeles-class submarines — which used an identical “if we name ‘em for cities people will like that” strategy. Are there 53 more “medium-sized” cities in the United States worth mining, if many of today’s ships are going to stay around for awhile? What are they?
Or should the Navy change course again and try a different tack? It breaks naming conventions all the time these days, anyway — what about a class named for rivers? USS Ohio? USS Missouri? Oh, wait…
Navy: Instead of a medal, take this sheet of paper
August 24th, 2010 | Historical | Posted by Phil Ewing
Adm. Porter's gunboat squadron ran the Mississippi River blockade at Vicksburg in April, 1863. // NavHistHerCom
All they wanted up in Lockport, N.Y., was to put up a nice display about a local hero — Navy Fireman Michael Huskey, who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1863 for heroically helping to save a Navy river tug under heavy fire from those treacherous Johnny Rebs. Poor Huskey died a year later, before he ever received his medal — in fact, he may not even have known he rated it — so Lockport officials asked the Navy if they could have it instead. Instead, the Navy sent them a letter with a picture of a Medal of Honor.
That did not make people happy, according to this story: “The 8½-inch-by-11-inch letter sent by the Navy is supposed to be ‘suitable for framing,’ County Historian Catherine Emerson said. “It’s an embarrassment.”
So they’re frustrated, but it gets worse — not only are there no boxes of Medals of Honor just lying around the Pentagon, the actual Civil War-era medal Huskey merits is different from today’s, and the old ones are all gone, said retired Army Col. Frank Foster, a medals expert and author of “A Complete Guide to U.S. Military Medals.”
“There really is no way for them to get one of those,” Foster told Scoop Deck. “I think the only thing they can do, really, is to put the picture up there with the certificate the Navy sent them.” But even that’s not an ideal solution, because the medal on the Navy’s letter is not the same as the Civil War-era one Huskey would’ve gotten.
So the Lockportians are kind of stuck. They could commission a reproduction Civil War-era medal; try to find a reproduction present-day medal; or stick with what they’ve got. What do you think?
The mids are back in town
August 24th, 2010 | Naval Academy | Posted by Phil Ewing
MC1 Chad Runge / Navy
Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. Mike Miller welcomed the Brigade of Midshipmen on Monday for another meritorious year in Annapolis, although, in one respect, it’s is already looking like an uphill battle: Despite doing well in several unofficial preseason rakings, Navy will not start in this AP Top 25 this year. But as one commenter on our siblog After Action wrote, “It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.”
The oyster conundrum
August 24th, 2010 | Environment Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
After its visit to Seattle, the cruiser Port Royal went down the Hood Canal to a Navy training range, where it may have washed oysters ashore. // MC1 Thomas Brennan / Navy
Could a warship’s wake have washed 178,000 oysters onto a beach on the Hood Canal in Washington State? It took the work of many volunteers to throw all those things back in the water, and locals are blaming the cruiser Port Royal for this mollusk mess. It’s plausible, but let’s do some quick beer math on this thing.
If a ship were blasting around at flank speed, throwing out a Freedom-style rooster tail, you could easily see all that water discomfiting nearby sea life. But it’s more than two miles from Scenic Beach State Park across the strait to Oak Head, and according to this chart, there’s plenty of depth out there under the keel to absorb disturbances. And Port Royal probably did not make a “Top Gun”-style flyby of Misery Point on its way to the Navy operating area, marked in purple on the chart. The ship was probably underway at something closer to 12 knots or less.
So could Port Royal have washed all those oysters ashore? Sure, it’s possible. The Navy says it’s investigating. But maybe it’d be wise to hold off blaming the big gray ship until all the facts are in.
Another LCS delay — but look on the bright side
August 23rd, 2010 | Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Another delay could give the littoral combat ship Independence another shot to show its stuff. Maybe. // General Dynamics
Last September, the Navy’s acquisitions bosses announced they were changing their strategy for their new littoral combat ships: Instead of copying both the Freedom and Independence as parallel classes, they were going to select just one, and try to get the best deal possible. Which one would they pick? We’d know by “early 2010,” they said. Then it became “summer 2010.” Now the Navy has apparently given itself until Dec. 30 to choose an LCS, although officials say they would like to pick one sooner, if possible.
So… more waiting. But at least this gives extra time to come up with names for all the ships the Navy is building! This pending LCS deal involves a total of 15 warships, all of which will need cool names. The Navy has said it wants the class to take the names of “medium-sized American cities,” hence LCS 3 Fort Worth and LCS 4 Coronado, but should that continue? Is it time for LCS to get back to its roots and use some of the tougher names our own Andrew Scutro once recommended, such as Sledgehammer, Cutlass, Ice Pick and Machete? What would you pick?
The longer wait also could give the Independence more time in the limelight. It only got a very brief chance to really show what it could do before the “summer 2010″ deadline, when we all thought the proverbial flag would come down, but its frenemy Freedom got to do not just a “trial deployment” to 4th Fleet but also a whole Rim of the Pacific Exercise. Maybe the Independence could use the LCS reprieve for its own “trial deployment” and see how much cocaine its crew takes off the streets — if it beats Freedom’s haul, maybe it should get extra points toward the down-select.
A ‘dangerously weak’ Royal Navy
August 23rd, 2010 | Royal Navy | Posted by Phil Ewing
The destroyer Liverpool and aircraft carrier Ark Royal -- and their eventual replacements -- should continue to exist, the Royal Navy says. Will Britons agree? // Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is spiraling down a whirlpool, according to an unsurprising new report making waves in the British press, and if the fleet looses any more ships and sailors (say, as the result of major, austerity-driven cuts) the United Kingdom will effectively stop being a sea power. Today’s Royal Navy is already “inadequate for the most fundamental, enduring and vital tasks,” concludes the latest study, and an even smaller, older force could make Britain irrelevant.
The study’s authors, retired Vice Adm. Sir Jeremy Blackham and professor Gwyn Prins, go so far as to argue that without a strong Royal Navy, “goods on supermarket shelves that shoppers take for granted might disappear,” as The Telegraph put it, presumably because there won’t be enough ships under the White Ensign to protect the U.K.’s imports of Hershey Kisses or goji berries. That might be a bit of a stretch, but it does remind Britons that their island is almost completely dependent on maritime trade, and if you want those big container ships to keep rolling in, it’s useful to have your own warships to protect them.
The Royal Navy isn’t just enjoying a nice spot of tea during all this: It has formed a “presentation team” that now tours the U.K., giving a multimedia brief about why Britons need their navy. Here we come to the essential difference between American and British attitudes about the military — even as we start to venture down our own budgetary tunnel of doom here in the States, can you imagine the U.S. Navy ever needing to sell Americans on why it should exist?