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.
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.
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.
Port visit links
November 13th, 2009 | Ballistic missile defense Carriers Maritime operations Royal Navy Science and technology Ships Submarines | Posted by Phil Ewing
Sailors aboard the carrier Nimitz mustered to get ready to man the rails for a port visit in Japan, much as today's links are mustering to provide you with news and updates // MCSA Robert Winn / Navy
Restricted maneuvering doctrine settin’, ATM cash-withdrawin’, rail mannin’ links, eager to tie up, race down the brow and get into the bars town as quickly as possible:
- After a triumphant visit and commissioning in its namesake city, the amphibious transport dock New York, like so many other newcomers to the Big Apple, is taking refuge in New Jersey.
- The Royal Navy’s newest attack submarine, the Astute, is on its way to the Royal Navy’s famed submarine base in Faslane, Scotland.
- The littoral combat ship Freedom is making a visit to Naval Station Mayport, Fla., the local newspaper reported, nervously pointing out that LCS will “replace” the frigates homeported there.
- Have you heard about this amazing discovery of these World War II Japanese submarines off Hawaii?
- The Missile Defense Agency has announced the next six ships that will be upgraded with ballistic missile defense capability, and, as expected, they’re all East Coast destroyers.
- Remember that movie in which the decommissioned carrier John F. Kennedy inexplicably crushes the White House in a tidal wave? It comes out today.
San Juan and the SANDF
November 6th, 2009 | Carriers Foreign navies Historical Submarines | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Groton-based fast attack submarine San Juan arrives in South Africa for "regional security cooperation activities" and other events.//USN
In what’s becoming almost a habit, another U.S. Navy ship has stopped to visit South Africa. On Nov. 4, the fast attack submarine San Juan pulled into Simon’s Town for what 6th Fleet bills as a “first-ever, at-sea” engagement with that nation’s undersea fleet.
San Juan follows the destroyer Arleigh Burke, which arrived in Durban on July 13 for a similar visit. And last October, the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and cruiser Monterey stopped in Cape Town, marking the first time a U.S. flattop had been to South Africa since the Franklin D. Roosevelt made a stop in 1967.
The U.S. Navy has been building ties with the South Africans steadily in recent years. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead met naval leadership there in April.
For most of the second half of the 20th century South Africa was an international pariah because of its segregation policy known as “apartheid,” which was repealed in 1991. Check out the South African military here.
The new Ford model
November 5th, 2009 | Carriers | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Northrop Grumman has announced a date for the ceremonial keel-laying of the Navy’s new class of aircraft carrier. On Nov. 14, dignitaries and media will crowd into the Newport News shipyard for a ceremonial beginning of the Gerald R. Ford, CVN 78.
The last of the Nimitz-class carriers, the George H.W. Bush, was commissioned on a bright but chilly Jan. 10 by the former president himself. President Ford’s daughter Susan Ford Bales is CVN 78’s sponsor and her initials will be welded into the ship’s steel.
Like the first President Bush, Ford served in the Navy during World War II. The first of the Ford carriers is expected to join the fleet in 2015 with a host of new technologies and design changes from the Nimitz ships.
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
New ovens take the work out of chow at sea
October 27th, 2009 | Carriers Chow Life at Sea Science and technology The deckplates | Posted by Phil Ewing
In the future, CS3 Jermaine Thompson, of the carrier Enterprise, could need to only push a button and his oven would know exactly how long to bake this bread // Navy
The Navy operates some of the most advanced equipment on the planet, what with all the fighter jets and nuclear reactors and Aegis radars and such, but less so in the galley, where culinary specialists depend as much on their own skill as new technology. That’s changing, though — sailors aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln are testing three new high-speed ovens that can basically cook meals on their own, and which promise to make work much simpler for the CSes of tomorrow.
The Blodgett Hydrovection, Rational Combi, and Alto Shaam Combi-therm all can be programmed with the Navy’s standard menu items, which means that sailors can prepare entrees the way the rest of us push the “popcorn” button on the microwave:
“Now the culinary specialist doesn’t have to read off the card and set everything accordingly. It’s as simple as pressing a few buttons,” said Culinary Specialist 1st Class Eric Russell…
For example, the menu card for beef roast rib says to roast the meat for three to four hours at 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Since the oven knows this, the CS just has to look under the beef section for roast rib and the oven knows the exact temperature and time left to cook.
In cases like beef rib roast where the menu card instructs the CS to insert a thermometer and roast until it reaches a certain temperature in the center, the new oven has another convenient feature. There is a sensor the CS can insert in the meat so the oven can keep track of the temperature itself. It knows that according to the menu card, beef rib roast must be roasted until the center is at least 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So it adjusts the remaining time according to the temperature of the meat.
It’s the galley practices of tomorrow — today! If your ship makes a lot of special requests for chow, these new ovens eventually will include the ability for local cooks to program them, according to this story.
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.