All you need to know about Fleet Week. Except the ships.
March 18th, 2010 | Life at Sea Maritime operations Morale | Posted by Phil Ewing
Friendly neighborhood Spider-Men are just one of the attractions for sailors and Marines participating in this year's Fleet Week in New York // SN Kevin Murray Jr. / Navy
Navy Region Mid-Atlantic burst onto the scene Thursday with a multi-platform social networking explosion designed to start the hype for this year’s Fleet Week up in New York — yes, the one made infamous by “Sex and the City.” There’s a Web site, there’s a Facebook page, there’s a Flickr page; you can even look for #fltwkny if you’re following @NavyPAO on the Tweets. Just one problem: the Navy apparently hasn’t decided which ships it’s sending.
Even though the announcement proclaimed that “approximately 3,000 Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen will descend upon the city,” it neglected to mention how they’ll all get there. Never fear — Navy sources tell Scoop Deck to expect a full list of the ships involved in Fleet Week about 30 days before it starts May 26.
In all likelihood, the Navy will send a big-deck amphibious ship, a cruiser, a destroyer and maybe a couple of other smaller ships. Last year included two patrol coastal ships; could this year include the littoral combat ship Independence? (It will be cooling out for the next few months in Norfolk, Va.)
It’s a cinch which ships won’t be there, though: New York has some kind of ban — maybe informal, maybe not — on visits from nuclear-powered ships. Even though the city’s mayors keep saying they’d have no problem with a carrier or a submarine visiting as part of Fleet Week, the Navy is probably not going to test that.
What’d you do in the Navy today? Answer carefully
March 18th, 2010 | Blogs Life at Sea The deckplates | Posted by Phil Ewing
Hey, GSMFN Justin Munger and FC2 Justin Wong, what'd you do in the Navy today? // MC2 Mark Logico / Navy
After a slow start, the Navy is all about social networking these days — top decision-makers are on Twitter; you can check out videos on YouTube in which sailors walk really fast, then normal, then really slow; and, of course, the fleet is on Facebook. And as part of its outreach to the ‘Bookoisie, the Navy periodically asks what sailors (or fans) are doing that day, to put together a composite snapshot of all the goings-on throughout the global force for good.
Sometimes you get what you’d think. “Looking at a beautiful view of Tokyo Harbor, thanks to the Navy,” wrote Janet Luff. Sometimes you get what you wouldn’t think — or maybe, what the Navy might not prefer billions of web-users to see. Examples:
“Being in pain;” “Making a robotic tank to shoot plastic bbs and fixin my atv;” “i am listening to Metal and studying………GO NAVY!!!!!;” “haten life out to sea………..;” “sitting with my sailor in Pittsburgh where he got his small bowel transplant;” “today is my wedding anniversary to a wonderful guy that served in the Navy!! Unfortunately I’m celebrating by myself since he passed away a few years ago;” “enjoying my navy retirement;” “wondering when a corpsman job will open up to someone like myself;” “Sittin here on a nice 8 hour fire/security rover….HOOYAH!;” “waitin’ and waitin’ and waitin’ on the Navy…”
So what did you do in the Navy today?
CNO helps out the hacks
March 18th, 2010 | Congress Washington leadership | Posted by Phil Ewing
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead answered reporters' questions after a Senate hearing Feb. 25. // MC1 Tiffini Jones Vanderwyst / Navy
As part of our very occasional series in which we try to convey what it’s like to be a member of the disheveled glamorous, grouchy and grumpy high-profile Washington defense press corps, take a look at the transcript below from Wednesday. It is definitely not typical.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus were asked for an update about what the Navy is doing to resolve workmanship problems with ships built at Northrop Grumman’s yards on the Gulf Coast, a matter about which there has been little information since the first announcement by Naval Sea Systems Command. As you’ll see, the discussion wound up with an unexpected bang:
Navy vice
March 17th, 2010 | Coast Guard Life at Sea Maritime operations Military Sealift Command | Posted by Phil Ewing
Sailors and Coast Guardsmen from the Freedom carried bales of cocaine back to the ship after picking them up at sea March 12 // Lt. Ed Early / Navy
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead seemed very pleased this morning when he told Senate lawmakers that the littoral combat ship Freedom has made three drug busts in the four weeks it’s been at sea down in the 4th Fleet area of operations. All told, Freedom’s crew of sailors and Coast Guardsmen have seized four tons of cocaine, he said, which he said has a street value of about $89 million.
(That would cover a little more than 16 percent of Freedom’s follow-on sibling, the littoral combat ship Fort Worth, now under construction up in Wisconsin. No wisecracks, please, about ‘how does CNO know what all that coke is worth?’)
In addition to confiscating all the dope, Freedom’s Coast Guardsmen used their law enforcement powers to arrest five suspects after a March 3 interdiction, who stayed aboard for two days, said Lt. Cmdr. Colette Murhpy, a spokeswoman for 4th Fleet. The alleged smugglers “were provided with food, water, dry clothing, cots to sleep on and medical attention. They were transferred to a Coast Guard cutter for transport ashore,” she said.
At least they got cots. Freedom’s racks are maxed out and it has two “berthing modules” aboard for spillover personnel, but the smuggler-suspect accommodations do sound nicer than one alternative — Military Sealift Command’s pirate-suspect brig.
Hoo-ya, U.S. water polo-playing community
March 16th, 2010 | Recruiting SEALs Sports | Posted by Phil Ewing
If you enjoy water polo, the Navy thinks you'll also enjoy submerging yourself in freezing water in Alaska, among other pursuits. // MC2 Erika Manzano / Navy
All right, let’s get right to the heart of this thing: Water polo. Does anyone have any idea what it is? Until an hour ago the answer would likely have been no. But today is your lucky day, water polo, because according to this story, you just became the stairway to Naval Special Warfare.
The Navy spent half a million dollars last year on a study that concluded water polo players are the best candidates to become SEAL special operators, given that they spend their days splashing around in pools and also have an understanding about rules of engagement like this:
If a defensive player commits a foul inside of the 5-meter line, which prevents a “probable goal,” the defensive player is charged with a penalty (personal) foul and the opposing team is awarded a penalty throw (a “5-meter”). If an offensive player is fouled outside of the 5-meter line, the offensive player may pick up the ball and take an immediate shot at the opponent’s goal (i.e., two players do not have to touch the ball before a goal can be scored).
Accordingly, SEAL recruiters are now targeting America’s high school water-polo players. Safety advocates will be relieved in the change of strategy from their showing-guns-to-kids initiative:
MCC Robert Fluegel / Navy
Flag matters
March 16th, 2010 | Life at Sea Morale The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing
A Haitian bicyclist carried an American flag shortly after U.S. troops responded in the aftermath of Haiti's quake in January. American forces didn't display their own flags, however. // MC2 Julio Rivera / Navy
If you’re sitting by the window when the plane lands at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, you can see ruined parts of the city, some old junked helicopters, and a big Canadian maple leaf flag flying in the breeze. That was the only flag Scoop Deck saw on a visit March 1, but according to this story, it’s not the only one down there. There’s also one you won’t see:
France’s tricolor, Britain’s Union Jack and even Croatia’s coat of arms flap in the breeze. But the country whose contributions dwarf the rest of the world’s — the United States — has no flag at its main installation near the Port-au-Prince airport.
At this point, some observers might say the flag situation in Port-au-Prince is almost academic, as U.S. troops and Navy warships depart for home. Not only that, all the helicopters flying overhead that say “Navy” and “Marines” are good clues the U.S. military is there, and as one official says in the story, all the troops were wearing American flags on their shoulders.
Not good enough, one critic said:
The absence of the American flag bothers former Navy man Arthur Herriford, national president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. “It’s very improper,” Herriford said. “Our military people always engage and function under the American colors — always have and always will.”
What do you think? Is Old Glory an icon of imperialism that conveys a message of conquest no matter what America’s involvement, or are the Stars and Stripes the best way to remind locals which nation has dispatched its global force for good?
Postcards from the bottom of the continent
March 16th, 2010 | Carriers Foreign navies Life at Sea Photos | Posted by Phil Ewing
The carrier Carl Vinson was accompanied by Chilean attack craft on a transit through the Straits of Magellan on Monday // MC2 Ashley Van Dien / Navy
Thanks to a highly capable team aboard the carrier Carl Vinson and its “shotgun” escort, the cruiser Bunker Hill, we have a highly motivational set of photos of the ships’ transit this week through the treacherous Straits of Magellan, connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Check out a panorama from Carl Vinson’s bridge, and this panorama that looks like it’s from vulture’s row, and this shot of QMSN Erich Hoffman actually plotting the ship’s transit, and this shot of Bunker Hill in the straits, and here’s another one of Vinson with some Chilean fast-attack craft and here’s a great one of an HH-60H Seahawk from HS-15, the “Red Lions,” in an otherworldly sunset on the carrier’s flight deck.
Although Scoop Deck has never had the pleasure of going through the straits, it’s a narrow run that can include unpredictable winds and currents, according to our amateur understanding, which makes it all the more interesting when big capital warships go through. They have no choice, though, because carriers are too wide for the Panama Canal.
Nuke deal implications for the Navy
March 15th, 2010 | Ballistic missile defense Submarines Washington nuclear weapons | Posted by Phil Ewing
The ballistic missile sub Wyoming sailed toward its home at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Ga. Observers are watching for the effect on boomers of a planned new round of nuclear talks // Lt. Rebecca Rebarich / Navy
Our big-time colleagues at Defense News have a story that says the Kremlin and the White House could be getting close to a new strategic arms reduction deal, and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could begin talks with her Russian counterparts as early as this week. Here’s an interesting detail:
The New York Times reported March 9 that Obama had been “frustrated” after a February phone call with Medvedev, who told him Moscow wanted to reopen issues that Washington had thought settled, including the missile shield. Russia’s foreign ministry later denied that disagreements over the missile defense system were holding up the negotiations.
Denials notwithstanding, it’s entirely believable that Russia will again make an issue of ballistic missile defense in Europe — for which the Navy will take responsibility next year — as part of a possible need for a ‘U.S.-is-mean-to-us’ storyline for internal domestic consumption. So the question is, will high-level talks this week over nuclear posture have an effect on the surface Navy’s Euro-BMD mission?
Using cruisers and destroyers to protect Europe from Iranian missiles was itself a compromise intended to appease a Russian government unhappy with President Bush’s plan for ground-based missiles. If Russia is still upset, could President Obama make more concessions to get the weapons reductions he wants — which could let the fleet somewhat off the hook? We’ll be watching.
Bonus discussion question: What could the double-whammy of a new nuke deal with Russia and the release of the forever-pending Nuclear Posture Review mean for the Navy’s fleet of SSBNs?
Commonwealth navies links
March 12th, 2010 | Coast Guard Foreign navies Life at Sea Royal Navy Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Much as Commonwealth nations often cooperate in missions at sea -- as these Royal Navy, Royal Australian Navy and U.S. Navy warships (including the classic Spruance-class destroyer Fletcher, center) operated together in 2002 -- so too do today's links work together to create a clearer understanding of the news // Navy
Tea-drinkin’, “cheers”-sayin’, Bovril-eatin’, short pants-wearin’, pirate-fightin’, boomerang throwin’ links, helping you say ‘g’day’ to naval developments around the world:
- The Royal Navy doesn’t need carriers after all, a former Defence Staff chief said this week, and instead it should build more small ships to grow its fleet.
- England’s Prince Philip, Duke of Edinborough — Queen Elizabeth II’s arm candy — met an instructor of Royal Navy sea cadets this week and asked her if she worked in a strip club. Continued The Daily Mail: “The 88-year-old royal then appeared to think better of the suggestion in the current weather and joked that such an occupation would be ‘too cold.’
- The Australian navy is reeling from a new round of revelations in a sex scandal that Scoop Deck first told you about all the way back in July.
- Up in Marinette, Wisconsin, the littoral combat ship Fort Worth is about 30 percent complete, says shipbuilder Lockheed Martin.
- Russian President Dimitri Medvedev acknowledged problems in his country’s armed forces, which comprises mostly conscripts, although one analyst said the Russian navy could become an all-volunteer force.
- Costs for the Coast Guard’s Deepwater modernization program have risen again, our colleague Susan Schept reports.
SecNav becomes a chief, drives a YP, joins Twitter
March 11th, 2010 | Blogs Science and technology Washington leadership | Posted by Phil Ewing
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, now on Twitter, is the latest leader to navigate the murky waters of social networking. He also navigated a non-metaphorical yard patrol craft this week in Annapolis. // MC2 Kevin O'Brien / Navy
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is having a hectic week. He became an honorary chief petty officer — at the Naval Academy, of all places! — piloted one of the midshipmen’s beloved yard patrol craft and today is scheduled to appear with Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead before the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.
Never fear: No matter how busy he gets, you can now keep track of Mabus’ every thought because he has joined Twitter. After initial experiments last year, now he has his own permanent account, @SECNAV, spokeswoman Capt. Beci Brenton confirmed. Mabus plans to post updates himself sometimes but also enlist the help of his staff, Brenton said.
With the addition of Mabus, now you can follow all the Navy’s top leaders, including Roughead, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (SS/SW) Rick West and even Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who already has used his account to great effect.
Do your civilian and military commanders do a good job with social networking? What do you want to see and hear from them on Facebook and Twitter?