Home for Dad’s day
June 18th, 2011 | Ballistic missile defense Homecoming Libya Maritime operations Navy Norfolk Naval Station Personnel Photos Ships SURFLANT The Med Tomahawk | Posted by Bill McMichael
The destroyer Stout came home to Norfolk Saturday following a Med cruise in support of theater security operations and ballistic missile deterrence …
Tugboats move the destroyer Stout into its berth pierside at Naval Station Norfolk after returning from a six-month deployment to the Med. // U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class (SW) Lolita Lewis
… and just in time for Father’s Day:
Fire Controlman 2nd Class (SW) Gary Richard greets his family and meets his newly adopted daughter for the first time after returning home from a six-month deployment onboard the destroyer Stout. // U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class (SW) Lolita Lewis
Stout took part in the coalition strikes on Libyan forces that began in mid-March. Stout was the first ship on station and fired multiple salvos of Tomahawk cruise missiles at Libyan air defenses, surface-to-air sites and communications nodes, along with the destroyers Stout and Barry, the attack submarines Providence and Scranton and the guided missile submarine Florida, according to the Navy.
The crew also had to deal with the March 1 firings of its commanding officer and command master chief., and a junior officer, six chiefs and one petty officer were also kicked off the ship. The disciplines centered around what 6th Fleet called a “pervasive pattern of unprofessional behavior” among members of the ship’s crew related to misbehavior in Mediterranean liberty ports.
Take that, Kim Jong-il
November 1st, 2010 | Ballistic missile defense Foreign navies Maritime operations Navy North Korea Photos | Posted by David Larter
An SM-3 missile is launched from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer JS Kirishima, successfully intercepting a ballistic missile target launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii. // U.S. Navy photo
The Japanese destroyer JS Kirishima shot down a medium-range ballistic missile during a joint exercise with the Navy. Read about it here.
Reporter’s Notebook: CNO @ Heritage Foundation
May 14th, 2010 | Aviation Ballistic missile defense Carriers China Environment Foreign navies leadership Maritime operations Navy Personnel The Middle East The Pacific Washington | Posted by Lance Bacon
Adm. Gary Roughead speaks at the Heritage Foundation's annual series of events aimed at highlighting key national defense and homeland security issues. (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist First Class Tiffini Jones Vanderwyst)
Date: May 13, 2010
Location: Heritage Foundation, Washington D.C.
Subj: CNO comments
In a speech and response to questions offered at the Heritage Foundation Thursday, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead urged fiscal responsibility yet downplayed talk of further cuts to Navy ships and programs.
He agreed with Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ call for greater scrutiny in procurement, and said he is a “proponent” for considering revisions to decades-old laws governing personnel issues. (You can read more about that in Monday’s edition of Navy Times).
Other highlights: Read the rest of this entry »
When you care enough to send the very best
March 29th, 2010 | Ballistic missile defense Foreign navies Maritime operations Military Sealift Command North Korea The Pacific | Posted by Phil Ewing
The destroyer Curtis Wilbur -- one of four U.S. ships sent to assist the South Korean search and rescue operation -- is one of two of the ships equipped with ballistic missile defense capability. // MCSN Anthony Martinez / Navy
Maybe it means absolutely nothing. Maybe it’s an unsubtle message: Of the vessels U.S. commanders sent in answer to South Korea’s request for help after their patrol ship Cheonan sank last week, three are Aegis warships and of those, two are ballistic missile defense-capable.
Responding to the South Korean sinking are the BMD cruiser Shiloh; the destroyers Curtis Wilbur — which is BMD-equipped — and Lassen; and the Military Sealift Command salvage ship Salvor, which is carrying a team from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 1. South Korean commanders want to try to salvage the Cheoan so they can be certain about what happened to it — did it have an accident? Did it strike a mine? Was it hit by a torpedo? What they find will probably determine a lot of important decisions in the Western Pacific.
As part of that, maybe the U.S. message was, ‘hey, South Korea, we just happened to have these ships participating nearby in a multi-national exercise, so you’re welcome to use them to help look for your missing guys.” Or maybe the message was, “hey, North Korea, we’re sending out three front-line battle force vessels, two of which can track and kill ballistic missiles, so let’s everybody just cool out, all right?”
One convenient thing about seapower is that American commanders could send both those messages at once, if they wanted, and without saying a word.
Nuke deal implications for the Navy
March 15th, 2010 | Ballistic missile defense nuclear weapons Submarines Washington | 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?
Pearl Harbor links
February 10th, 2010 | Ballistic missile defense Carriers Foreign navies Maritime operations Ships The Pacific | Posted by Phil Ewing
Much as liberty in Honolulu promised to divert the sailors of the carrier Ronald Reagan, so too do today's links offer a minor diversion from the snow impacting the window horizontally because it's being driven by 50-mph gusts of wind // Navy
Warm, clear-sky, soft ocean breeze, lei-wearin’, delicious-cocktail-in-a-coconut-drinkin’, battleships Arizona and Missouri-visitin’, Hawaiian shirt-wearin’ links, helping you say “aloha” to the latest updates out on the Web:
- Here’s a shocking bit of news: Russia is upset with the latest U.S. plans for ballistic missile defense of Europe. What’s next in this topsy-turvy world, a second debilitating blizzard in the National Capital Region? Nah, no way.
- Remember that deal in which France would agree to build at least one Mistral-class amphibious ship for the Russian navy, with the potential to license more copies to be built in Russia? Well, it’s happening.
- The cruiser Normandy, the frigate Underwood and the Nassau Amphibious Ready Group, carrying the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, all have been released from the Haiti rescue operation.
- After a few false starts and disappointments, momentum seems to be building Down East to bring the retired carrier John F. Kennedy up to Portland, Maine, for a second career as a museum ship — even though skeptics up there warned it’d be “a long row to hoe,” the Maine House just passed a resolution supporting the idea, saying it would “create jobs” and “wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything.” What you’re hearing now is the sound of 10,000 South Carolina taxpayers disagreeing.
- Via Galrahn, check out this story in The Times about Chinese military attitudes toward the U.S. — more than half of the people questioned said they thought “a cold war” would break out between China and the U.S. Well, if it prevents this from happening, a “cold war” might not be so bad.
Death knell for CG(X)
February 2nd, 2010 | Ballistic missile defense Science and technology Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
The results of a search Tuesday on the Navy's excellent photo site // Screen-grab by Scoop Deck
Ah, the advanced next-generation cruiser known as CG(X) — we hardly knew ye. Sure, some people knew ye very well — 500 pages well, in the fabled analysis of alternatives that only appeared once a year, on fire, on the horizon off Ocracoke. But for the rest of us, this is as much of an obituary as we’ll get for the massive, maybe-nuclear surface combatant that never was:
CG(X)
The Department proposes to terminate the CG(X) program. This decision was driven by affordability considerations. Instead of procuring CG(X), the Navy is considering other options including maturing the air and missile defense radar program and using technologies from other kinds of ships such as DDG-1000 and DDG-51 destroyers.
The Navy Department’s top budget officer, Rear Adm. Joseph Mulloy, told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that he didn’t know exactly what kind of savings the Navy’s program had realized from the cancellation of CG(X): “Whatever money was laid in the plan was harvested out of it,” he said.
The Navy’s current strategy is to combine the SPY-3 radar from the Zumwalt class with the latest Advanced Capability Build-edition of the Aegis system on an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer hull, Mulloy said. They’ll start design work in fiscal 2014 on the “radar test ship,” as he called it, and try to build it in fiscal 2016.
The massive .pdf file with the Navy’s 2011 budget is online here, but be advised that it can take a few moments for that bad boy to load up.
When finite funds meet infinite needs
January 19th, 2010 | Aviation Ballistic missile defense Carriers leadership Maritime operations Mine warfare Navy Pirates Ships Submarines | Posted by Lance Bacon
It’s no secret the naval fleet has more gaps than O.J.’s alibi.
The Navy is lacking surface vessels, especially amphibs. Submarine and aviation gaps are on the horizon. Even the carrier fleet will drop below requirements for at least three years beginning in 2012.
Adding the crushing blow on this already sizable dog pile is the fact that SSBN(X) will cost $80 billion — which the Navy doesn’t have. Unless Congress coughs up the cash, the shipbuilding budget will be cut by half for a whopping 14 years.
Ouch.
Since it’s very unlikely the Navy will get everything it needs, the question of priorities comes into play. So what tops that list? Depends who you ask.
SNA: Unicorns, leprechauns and the CG(X) AoA
January 12th, 2010 | Ballistic missile defense leadership Science and technology SNA Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Within certain very narrow circles in Washington, it’s amazing how much influence is wielded by pieces of paper. The budget, the 30-year shipbuilding plan, the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Ballistic Missile Defense Review — although these would all sound to most Americans like a buncha nonsense (and they might not be wrong) the right documents still get select pulses going. So it is with the most elusive wraith of them all — the Flying Dutchman of Pentagon deliberation — the specter on the moor known as the analysis of alternatives for the next-generation cruiser, aka the CG(X) AoA.
People tell fantastic tales about it. It’s supposed to be 500 pages long! But like Brigadoon, word of the CG(X) AoA materializes only when the tides and the stars are right, as was apparently the case Tuesday for Rear Adm. Frank Pandolfe, who is in charge of surface warfare for the Navy Staff in the Pentagon. It was he, in response to a question, who mentioned that he couldn’t talk about future ship developments, but in doing so, he mentioned that the CG(X) AoA — gasp! were your ears playing tricks? — was finished. That itself isn’t new, but when Scoop Deck had an opportunity to ask Pandolfe whether this phantom would ever step into the light of day, here’s what he said:
“The decisions that flow from the CG(X) AoA will unfold in time. I can’t talk to them right now. I can talk to the [fiscal year] 10 budget, but I can’t talk to future shipbuilding plans or the [fiscal year] 11 submission. In due time we can have this conversation, but I can’t commit to it today. I can’t say what [the Defense Department] will do. The work is done. It has been submitted. It will be acted upon. The path that [the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates] takes to unveil that decision and to share the decision-making process, I can’t discuss. I don’t have that information.”
SNA: Just how smart is Aegis BMD?
January 12th, 2010 | Ballistic missile defense Maritime operations Science and technology SNA | Posted by Phil Ewing
Defense giant Lockheed Martin is giving a slew of briefings this morning at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium just outside Washington, and although it has been crowing about its products, officials didn’t want to say too much.
After a presentation about the advanced new variants of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system, Scoop Deck asked whether tomorrow’s smarter, more discriminating Aegis BMD could distinguish missile targets from the active countermeasures that worriers say could fool interceptors. As far back as the bad old days of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, aka “Star Wars,” skeptics said that Soviet missiles could fool American defenses by ejecting chaff, balloons, twirling in mid-air, or using other techniques to blind or trip up BMD systems.
Here’s how LockMart program manager Nick Bucci responded:
“We can’t get into details of what the Aegis signal processor can do, but we are trying to expand the threat set to go after more advanced threats as the threat evolves.”