Dolphin helicopter turns 25
November 19th, 2009 | Aviation Coast Guard | Posted by Susan Gvozdas
MH-65D, the latest iteration of MH-65 helicopter platform. // Coast Guard photo
The Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopter is celebrating its 25th birthday today. The service accepted the HH-65A Dolphin helicopter for service on Nov. 19, 1984.
The Dolphin has served the Coast Guard well, and they have another 18 years to go in service before they will be replaced under the Deepwater program. By the end of October, the service had moved 48 of the upgraded MH-65Cs through their third segment of upgrades. The biggest change is a new engine that provides 40 percent more power and offers greater reliability. The helicopters also have new weapon mounts. Pretty nifty birthday gifts.
The MH-65Ds began in-flight testing in March. Look for a new flight navigation system, which is common to DOD helicopters and replaces the current compass, gyro systems and GPS system.
When the $901 million upgrade is finished in 2017, the Dolphins also will have equipment that will allow them to be secured and transferred to the hangars of the new national security cutters.
How many carriers do you see in this image?
November 17th, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Foreign navies Maritime operations Photos The Pacific | Posted by Phil Ewing
Japan's "helicopter destroyer" -- wink, wink -- the Hyuga, joined the carrier George Washington for excerises this month in the Pacific // MC1 John Hageman / Navy
How many carriers? Just one. In the background is the carrier George Washington; in the foreground is Japan’s “helicopter destroyer” — or “carrier destroyer,” as one Deck commenter called it — the Hyuga.
Some observers might think it’s neat that the last time Japan and the U.S. both fielded aircraft carriers, they were at war, and that it’d be cool to see what could be the first photos of modern U.S. and Japanese flattops underway together. But that’s not what this is a picture of. Because Hyuga is not a carrier.
UK to sell 1 carrier to India?
November 16th, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Foreign navies Royal Navy | Posted by Phil Ewing
One of the UK's two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers could become an Indian carrier if a proposed sale goes through // Royal Navy
The shipbuilding future of the Royal Navy has grown so bleak that new stories about what could happen to it have almost lost their ability to dismay. After the Ministry of Defence raised the possibility that it could delete the ability to handle F-35B Lightning II fighters from one of its future aircraft carriers, now it’s raising the possibility of selling one ship outright — to India.
The financial penalties of not building one of the two Queen Elizabeth-class flattops are more prohibitive than going through with it, the UK’s Guardian newspaper reports, so selling one to India could presumably defray the economic impact of going ahead with two ships. It isn’t clear yet how that deal would affect India’s tortured attempts to buy the ex-Soviet aircraft carrier Gorshkov, or whether the upshot of it all means that the Indians could have two new carriers — a used Russian one and British one fresh off the showroom floor — when the smoke cleared in the next decade.
Other implications: Would India buy one of the CVFs as-is, meaning designed to accommodate the short-takeoff, vertical-landing F-35B, even though it isn’t a member of the Joint Strike Fighter club? Or would it ask for changes so the ship could handle a different jet, such as the Su-33? That’d be interesting.
Meantime, the UK could be left with one new carrier, half its original order of fighter jets, and, in a major crisis, could need support from the U.S. Navy more than ever.
He flew low over Cuba, then visited 39 years later
November 13th, 2009 | Aviation Historical nuclear weapons | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Some of us here at Scoop Deck prefer to take our news from paper. The deliberate design of words and images on pages you can turn allows a reader to find news or information he or she might have otherwise missed by pointing and clicking.
Take obituaries. They often make good reads not because someone is dead, but because the deceased enjoyed a rewarding life, a life worth sharing with strangers. It’s for that reason that we’d like to point out the obituary of one Capt. William B. Ecker.
It turns out this Omaha-native who went to University of Maryland became a naval aviator with a no kidding role in world history. Read his story to the end. He’s got a great take on one of the world’s most famous communists.
Astronaut pleads, headline writers harumph
November 11th, 2009 | Aviation Blogs NASA Science and technology | Posted by Phil Ewing
After a scandal that was out of this world, the Lisa Nowak story has returned to Earth, much as the space shuttle Discovery landed in December // NASA
Reporters, editors, bloggers and late-night comedians are losing an icon this week — the most infamous astronaut of all time, Capt. Lisa Nowak, closed out the story that has brought NASA its most public attention since the moonshot.
Nowak pleaded guilty to assaulting a fellow astronaut, Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman, in a crime for the ages: Nowak drove more than 1,000 miles, from Houston to Orlando — geared up with a steel mallet, a wig, a BB gun, a knife, latex gloves, rubber tubing, garbage bags and pepper spray — and attacked Shipman as she tried to get into her car in a parking lot.
The motive? Nowak was apparently jealous that Shipman stol’d her man, Cmdr. Bill Oefelein, who was at the center of the astronaut love triangle. Other sensational elements? The infamous diapers. The e-mails. Just when you thought there were no other ridiculous ways for the story to go, there they were.
That’s all over now. But The Register isn’t wasting the last chance for this sort of thing — its headline today was “Astronaut love-dustup mace space ace Nowak cops plea,” with the sub-hed: “Anger management classes for wiggy carpark catfight.”
The end of the JATO era
October 29th, 2009 | Aviation Morale Navy The greenside Video | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Blue Angels' beloved Marine-crewed C-130T, "Fat Albert," will do its last jet-assisted takeoff Nov. 14, to the dismay of males everywhere // Navy
A seldom-discussed but important rite of passage for every American boy is the first time he hears the story of “the JATO car,” the infamous station wagon whose owner augmented it with Jet Assisted Take Off rocket bottles. The cops found the wreckage of his car crashed into the side of a mountain, the story goes, clear evidence of a man who sacrificed his life to absurd speed-demonism. You can do insane, dangerous, awesome things in this world, the boy learns.
The rite is completed when that boy, perhaps by then a man, learns the story isn’t true. It never happened. And the chances it could ever happen are dwindling, because the world is running out of JATO rockets, according to this story by Scoop Deck shipmate Amy McCullough of Marine Corps Times. One of the last U.S. aircraft to regularly execute jet-assisted takeoffs — the Blue Angels’ beloved, Marine-crewed C-130T “Fat Albert” — will do its last one next month. The end of the “JATO car” legend can’t be far behind. Wrote McCullough:
“Everyone in the Fat Albert shop is really sad,” said Maj. Drew Hess, the Blue Angels’ senior C-130 pilot. “It is a significant chapter [in the team’s history] that unfortunately is being closed.”
To execute a JATO, Fat Albert uses eight solid-fuel rocket bottles, which supply enough momentum for the aircraft to leave the runway after traveling just 1,500 feet. Climbing at a 45-degree angle, it can reach 1,000 feet in just 15 seconds.
The [one-time use] fuel bottles, which weigh about 150 pounds when full, were designed to thrust C-130s skyward in austere conditions where traditional runways are unavailable, said 1st Lt. Craig Thomas, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. But the Corps hasn’t used JATO in combat since the Vietnam War, he said, and it’s unlikely to do so again, as newer KC-130Js have engines built to exert the same thrust as C-130Ts outfitted with rocket bottles.
Cruel, inescapable progress. Kind of like growing up.
Check out this motivational video of Fat Albert doing its thing:
America’s first supercarrier museum ship?
October 29th, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Historical | Posted by Phil Ewing
The decommissioned carrier Ranger, seen here at sea in its glory days, could become a museum ship in Portland, Ore. // Naval History and Heritage Command
World War II carrier museums are all well and good, but for five decades naval aviation has been about the supercarrier — the big, angled deck, steam catapult-equipped monsters whose era began with the commissioning of the Forrestal in 1955. (Earlier flattops were retrofitted with steam cats. ) But even though many of those big ships are out of the fleet, your Cub Scout pack can’t do a sleep-over on one. Yet.
However, Portland, Ore.-area scouts and other propeller-heads can take heart about the news Thursday that the USS Ranger Foundation cleared the first of four hurdles with Naval Sea Systems Command to bring the decommissioned carrier Ranger to a berth on the Willamette River. It’s no small undertaking: The group still must raise money, find a suitable spot, tow the ship from Bremerton, Wash., and get it safe and set up to accept visitors and exhibits.
Getting and running a museum ship is really tough. Navy Times has reported on case after case — such as with the carrier John F. Kennedy — in which organizations’ vision far exceeded their ability to raise money or make the necessary deals. Still, if you have a waterfront somewhere you’d like to spruce it up with some haze-gray decoration, here’s NavSea’s list of ships available to become museums, including the famous Sea Shadow, the cruiser Ticonderoga (pdf) and even another supercarrier, the Saratoga. (pdf)
With the Ranger news peg, this Vietnam-era image of the Ranger and Task Force 77 is too good not to display:
Naval History and Heritage Command
Scratch one Royal Navy carrier — sort of
October 26th, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Royal Navy | Posted by Phil Ewing
One of the Royal Navy's planned carriers, scene in this illustration, could lose its capability to carry F-35Bs, the Ministry of Defence said Sunday // Royal Navy
Is it the first step toward the Royal Navy losing its new carriers? Or is it a compromise that will ensure they’ll both be built? Those seem to be the two options after the announcement Sunday that the Royal Navy is willing to delete the capability to handle F-35B Lightning IIs from one of its two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, now just beginning construction. That would mean the Ministry of Defence could buy fewer fighters, saving billions of pounds, but that for all its recent sacrifices, it would only field half the naval air power it originally wanted.
According to The Guardian, this could mean the Royal Navy might have to make even further concessions about its two carriers, including eliminating one or both altogether. And The Times reminds us the carrier change represents “another blow to the [Royal] Navy’s prestige,” after the British government announced not too long ago it was considering deleting one of the fleet’s four Vanguard-class ballistic-missile subs.
Here’s even more context: News broke on Friday that the Joint Strike Fighter could be billions of dollars over-budget and possibly in need of restructuring. So what would fewer jets going to the U.K. do to the rest of the program? Good question.
As it is, the Royal Navy is looking at a situation in which it’s spending a lot to get a ship it effectively didn’t need to build, writes Mike Burleson:
“We can only wonder if an upgraded Ocean class with a strengthened deck would have been less costly and less a burden to build during wartime.”
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.
What would the Navy do without GPS?
October 23rd, 2009 | Aviation Life at Sea Maritime operations Science and technology Ships Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
QMSN Antonia Mack plotted a course the old fashioned way aboard the destroyer O'Kane // MC2 Mark Logico/ Navy
Pity the poor visitor who brings a car here to the National Capital Region. Washington and its suburbs can be an impenetrable maze unless you know the territory or you have help from the Global Positioning System. That said, just imagine what it’d be like to try to sail an amphibious assault ship from San Diego to Guam without it. So if GPS stopped working, a lot of people all over the world would (literally) be lost.
And it could, in fact, stop working: According to a Government Accountability Office report quoted by Avionics Magazine, GPS users could start seeing “brownouts” as soon as next year because the GPS satellite constellation is over-burdened and wearing out. Although it would still be available to Navy, other military and civilian users, no one is quite sure whether it will remain as accessible as it is today:
The impacts to both military and civil users of a smaller constellation are difficult to precisely predict,” the agency [GAO] said. “For example, a nominal 24-satellite constellation with 21 of its satellites broadcasting a healthy standard positioning service signal would continue to satisfy the availability standard for good user-to-constellation geometry articulated in the standard positioning service performance standard. However, because the GPS constellation has been operating above the committed performance standard for so long, military and civil users have come to expect a higher level of service, even though this service is not committed to them. Consequently, some users may sense an operational impact even if the constellation were to perform at or near its committed standards.
So Navy navigation teams should probably keep their charts and rulers, and the rest of us should probably hang on to our paper maps.
H/T: Kennebec Captain