A New Navy Term
November 16th, 2009 | Carriers Life at Sea Maritime operations Navy The deckplates | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
Looks like the Navy has coined a new term.
I heard it for the first time a couple of months ago when I was out on the Truman and talking to Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, the strike group’s commander. He was explaining how they would remain ready despite a six-month gap between the JTFX and an actual deployment.
Driscoll said the strike group would probably go out for another large-scale excersise.
“The Navy loves acronyms, so we’ll probably call it ’sustain-ex’ or something like that,” Driscoll said casually.
Looks like that term Driscoll was trying out has been formalized. A few days ago, the Navy public affairs office announced that the carrier John C. Stennis is heading out for a “sustainment excersize (SUSTAINEX).”
Add that to the next edition of the Dictionary of Naval Abreviations, or DICNAVAB.
Navy’s top techie approves social media tools
October 23rd, 2009 | Blogs Navy Science and technology | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
Anybody see the Navy’s Chief Information Officer’s blog this week? Rob Carey, the Navy’s top techie, approves of sites like Facebook.
3. Social Media as a Tool to Build Trust. Social media is an inherent part of the toolbox for members of the millennial workforce, while baby boomers are just adopting it. Social media tools should become the standard by which we can share and collaborate on information inside and outside the network boundaries.
Nevertheless, there is a downside.
EA-35? Not so fast.
October 23rd, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Navy Science and technology | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
A few weeks back, we wrote a story about the future of electronic attack aircraft in the Navy and Marine Corps.
That story made a reference to preliminary talk of the Marine Corps eventually using the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter for electronic warfare.
But I was over at the annual Electronic Warfare conference this past week and bounced that idea off an EW expert from the Joint Electronic Warfare Center and he called the idea “ridiculous.”
The jamming signals emitted by the EW pods are “loud” and make the aircraft easily identifiable on any radar, he said. Why would we spend billions of dollars developing a stealthy fighter jet just to attach EW pods that eliminate all the advantages of the stealth features?
Good thing the Corps has another a few years until it has to decide what will replace their Prowlers in 2017.
Will Ospreys work as the Navy’s new COD?
September 22nd, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Navy | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
In this week’s paper, we reported a story about how the Navy is thinking of making the V-22 Osprey the Navy’s next Carrier Onboard Delivery aircraft — colloquially known as the COD.
I had a chance to speak to a C-2 pilot this weekend, as I flew from Norfolk out to the carrier Harry S. Truman. The pilot noted some drawbacks for the Osprey — it has about half the range, it’s a little bit slower and it can’t pressurize its cabin.
The pilot said he’d love to see a completely new aircraft, specially engineered for the COD mission — but he agreed that’s probably not going to happen.
Over here at Navy Times, the biggest drawback we see to an Osprey COD would be depriving civilians of catapult-shot takeoffs and trap landings.
Silence is helping push for more Super Hornets
September 8th, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Washington | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates haven’t really said anything about the push to buy more F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.
And that silence may be telling.
Now that summer’s over, Congress is back in session this week. And lawmakers may finally hammer out a deal allowing the Navy to buy a new batch of Super Hornets.
So far, the Super Hornets haven’t gained any of the attention that some other hot-button aviation issues have.
For example, Gates recently threatened a White House veto of the entire defense bill if it includes cash for a extra F-35 engine that he says is unnecessary. A similar stand off arose around the Air Force’s F-22 earlier this year.
But so far, the friends of the Super Hornet have not faced the same pressure.
“It’s not a dead issue,” one retired aviator who keeps close tabs on wheeling and dealing in Washington tells Scoop Deck.
“I find it encouraging that all the same people at the White House and the representatives [in Congress] who say they will come out and veto the bill if it has the extra engine or the F-22 haven’t said anything about the Super Hornets,” he said.
Cool F-35 video
August 18th, 2009 | Aviation Video | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
Last week, Lockheed Martin conducted the first in-air refueling test for the F-35B (with a KC-130J tanker).
Check out this video shot in the skies over Texas.
Fly a UAV with your iPhone
August 12th, 2009 | Aviation Video | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
So check out this video — some of the geniuses up at MIT in Boston have developed an application for the iPhone that can fly a UAV.
Just tilt the phone, and the plane moves.
One of those geniuses was Missy Cummings, one of the Navy’s first female fighter pilots back in the early 1990s. She was at a UAV conference in Washington.
“My lab’s general philosophy is that anybody should be able to operate a UAV,” she said.
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.
New(?) report of delays for the F-35
July 23rd, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Navy Washington | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
Capitol Hill is buzzing about this report today from Congressional Quarterly:
The Pentagon’s Joint Estimating Team, established to independently oversee the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, determined that the plane won’t be able to move out of the development phase and into full production until 2016, rather than in 2014 as the program office has said.
But we’re not so sure this is really all that new.
We’ve heard about the Joint Estimating Team’s critical assessments before, in this GAO report from May. That report notes a two-year gap in completion dates cited by the Joint Estimating Team and the JSF program office. [see pdf page 12 of 51]
And if you read the CQ piece closely, the CQ reporter doesn’t actually have a hard copy of any new report.
Nevertheless, they’re all talking about it over on the Hill. One Congressional staffer tells the Scoop Deck this afternoon:
“We’ve been asking a lot of questions in the last few hours. At this point, we haven’t gotten any answers or info from DoD. …If we get anything hard, I’ll definitely share it.”
Will a new national defense strategy mean fewer planes?
July 23rd, 2009 | Aviation Blogs Carriers Navy Washington | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
There’ve been a lot of rumors swirling around Washington that the 50-year-old national defense strategy (being able to fight two big wars at the same time) is about to get canned in favor of a new one.
Really? What happens if the senior-most military leaders decide that preparing for asymmetrical conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan is more important than fighting a second peer competitor? What are the implications of that for the Navy?
That was a question posed by Navy guru Ron O’Rourke the other day during a panel discussion of Naval aviation in Washington.
“That would amount to a change in the current force sizing construct. The question that flows from that is: What value carriers and Naval aviation have in that strategy?”
Unfortunately, O’Rourke didn’t answer his own question.
But take a look at what Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill on July 9. He was talking about fighter jets and said:
“…the number of those fighters probably does not need to be sufficient to take on two simultaneous peer competitors, that we don’t see that as the likely. We see that as the extreme.”
So will the new national defense strategy brewing over at the Pentagon call for fewer fighter jets? … If so, will we really need 11 aircraft carriers? Will we still have a fighter gap?
Tell us what you think.