Elizabeth Taylor and the Carl Vinson
March 24th, 2011 | Carriers Congress Facebook Movies Photos | Posted by Joshua Stewart
Elizabeth Taylor and her then-husband, former Navy Secretary and Sen. John Warner, alongside the Carl Vinson. // Photo from Carl Vinson Public Affairs.
Nearly 28 years ago to the day, the carrier Carl Vinson had a visitor whose death is one of the biggest news stories of the week.
Elizabeth Taylor, who died Wednesday, attended the ship’s christening (or maybe commissioning) with her husband, former Navy Secretary and then Virginia Sen. John Warner. The two are shown together in a photo posted on the carrier’s Facebook page, which described her as a “friend” of the ship.
The photo’s origins are unclear. The caption says it’s from the christening March 13, 1982. The ship, however, was christened March 15, 1980. The picture is probably actually from the commissioning, which took place March 13, 1982, the date of the photo.
There’s nothing else she can say
September 21st, 2010 | Congress Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Citizen Gaga: The pop songstress rallied this week in Maine in support of repealing "don't ask, don't tell," but her efforts may not be enough. // AP
No question that being an international art-pop phenom brings in a lot of money, but apparently not enough for Lady Gaga to order her own destroyer from Bath Iron Works. Despite Gaga’s rally in Portland this week, Maine Sen. Susan Collins says she’s leaning against permitting a repeal of the ban on open military service by gays and lesbians to move forward in the Senate. But if Bath won’t be building a neon Popsicle-orange USS Gaga (complete with disco-ball radars, a zebra-stripe mast and a topside dance floor in place of a flight deck) neither will the U.S. Navy, Collins seems to be saying.
Collins says she supports repeal of the law known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but she wants more time for debate and “more amendments” for the Christmas tree defense bill that congressional Democrats are using as their vehicle for this thing. Unless congressional leaders or the White House can make Collins or other Republican moderates happy by this afternoon, a block backed by Republican Sen. John McCain will likely remain in force and this round of “Repeal or No Repeal” will be over for now.
That might not last for long. According to reports this week, a majority of Americans now favor permitting open service, and according to anecdotal evidence from today’s young-people service members, having gay and lesbian shipmates is effectively a non-issue.
UPDATE: Just as it appeared, Democrats could not come up with enough votes to end McCain’s filibuster, proof that even Lady Gaga’s clout in Washington has its limits.
What do you think? Is the Navy ready for a repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell?’
The new normal seems awfully familiar
September 15th, 2010 | Congress Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Chaff, flares, fancy flying -- can they keep the Navy safe from congressional cuts? // OS3 Kevin Murray / Navy
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been running at a full sprint, metaphorically speaking, to try to keep ahead of the 535-headed monster known as America’s legislative branch. He has been tossing scraps of meat over his shoulder to try to slow it down: command closures, efficiency efforts and tough talk about the profligate spending in his five-sided office building. But the scraps apparently aren’t enough — a Senate subcommittee voted this week to cut $8 billion from this year’s defense budget, including a whole littoral combat ship, and more snips could be on the horizon.
But y’know what else happened this week? House Reps. Todd Akin, a Missouri Republican, and Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, announced that they’ve rescued the Navy’s planned multi-year deal on F/A-18 E and F Super Hornets (and E/A-18G Growlers/Grizzlies), which locks the service into a single mega-deal that obliges it to buy every last fighter in its current program. What’s more, Akin and other lawmakers want the Navy to pursue additional multi-year deals and buy still more Super Hornets.
That’s odd … so, even as some members of Congress are pressing for cuts to certain parts of the defense budget, others are advocating the Pentagon spend more! And even as the Pentagon itself tries to get control of its budget, there are lots of forces at work to slow or stop that, too, as described here by big-dog defense analyst Loren Thompson. So even as the reports continue to roll in about tomorrow’s austerity, or a ‘new era’ in the defense game, things seem pretty normal.
So how good is the pirate lobby?
August 18th, 2010 | Congress Pirates | Posted by Phil Ewing
Sailors from the cruiser San Jacinto paid a visit to some maritime risk-adjustment professionals this spring. // MC2 Ja'lon Rhinehart / Navy
Hate to say it, but the warning signs were there — as feared, a federal judge in Norfolk has thrown out piracy charges against the Somali Six, taking the teeth out of the case against the men who allegedly attacked the dock landing ship Ashland in April. U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson ruled that the government had “failed to establish that any unauthorized acts of violence or aggression committed on the high seas constitutes piracy as defined by the law of nations.” In other words, just because you shoot at another ship, even a U.S. Navy warship, you’re not a pirate.
People are peeved about this, but, as Eagle1 points out, Jackson has apparently kept to the letter of a very old law: “In the cases involving ignorant men shooting at warships apparently in the mistaken belief they were some other sort of prey and then getting their boats blown away by counter fire, you have . . . assault and very poor target selection. So, in the absence of a congressional act that defines piracy to include something more than ‘robbery upon the sea’ the result, based on this case — which, admittedly, has been buried under dust for some time — [is] not a surprise.”
So will grid-locked Congress act to amend this? The chances for that are better than they might seem: In 2008, after the Coast Guard had struggled to prosecute cocaine smugglers who’d been intercepted in semi-submersible drug subs, Congress made the very act of operating an unregistered semi-submersible illegal. It was a lightning turn-around, by Washington standards, and it gave the Coast Guard a new tool for use in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The question now is whether lawmakers think it’s worth the energy to try the same thing for piracy statutes. Who knows? Maybe Congress will bow to pressure from the powerful ninja lobby.
In their own words: Extra helpers for LCS
July 30th, 2010 | Congress Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Contractors help LCS crewmembers with a lot of stuff when the ship's in port, the head of NavSea said this week. // MC2 Corey Truax / Navy
We’ve been hearing for years that the Navy will run and maintain its littoral combat ships in a way very different from the old-fashioned methods of the surface force, most notably in the amount of support LCS needs from contractors. But what does that mean, exactly?
On Wednesday, House lawmakers heard answers to that question from a man who knows: Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy, head of Naval Sea Systems Command, whose job is to build and maintain just about everything the Navy has that floats. McCoy detailed what the fleet has experienced so far in its contractors model, and as you’ll see, shore workers are supplementing active-duty LCS sailors all over the place:
MCCOY: We have had to augment the crew with contractor support to do fundamental preventive maintenance, where we have not done that before on previous ships, but when you’re down to a 40-person crew, we need to do that.
In their own words: Harvey’s caution on LCS
July 29th, 2010 | Congress leadership Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Navy must take time to get to know its new littoral combat ships, like the Freedom, and not force them to be something they're not, the top fleet boss said. // MC2 Jon Dasbach / Navy
Your correspondents went up to see Fleet Forces boss Adm. John Harvey appear before a House Armed Services Committee panel on Wednesday, a session that included so much interesting stuff that we’ll be writing about it for some time. In addition to Harvey’s we-can-fix-the-fleet-in-two-years pledge, and revelations about yet another set of new problems aboard a San Antonio-class amphib, Harvey gave his vision for how the Navy should proceed with the littoral combat ship.
It’s like asking a girl to the dance: The Navy has to go to LCS, Harvey said; it can’t force LCS to come to it. The fleet has to learn about LCS’ personality, its likes and dislikes, its favorite albums, get to know its friends — but not too well — and it can’t be too restrictive or controlling or this thing is just never going to work. Here’s what he said:
MMs are losing steam — or are they?
June 14th, 2010 | Congress The deckplates | Posted by Phil Ewing
When the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk went away, many machinist's mates went with it. Many more are expected to go away when the Navy decommissions many of its steam ships -- if it does. // MC3 Kyle Gahlau / Navy
My eminent colleague Mark D. Faram and I had a story in the print edition of Navy Times last week about what it could mean for Navy engineers if Congress goes through with its requirement that the Navy keep around many more ships than it now plans. Basically, if the fleet has to keep the steam powered ships it now wants to decommission, it also has to keep around machinist’s mates to run them, even though the rating has been shrinking for the past couple of years.
Check out the story here — then come back and tell us what you think. Are lawmakers taking into account the effect their changes could have on sailors? If you’re an MM, what do you think of the future of your rate? Is this all much ado about nothing?
DoD: Don’t rename Navy Department
June 8th, 2010 | Congress Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Marines already know they're a part of the Department of the Navy, according to the old joke -- they're the men's department. This jest does not take into account the many women on active duty throughout the world. // Navy
Somebody switched on the giant mechanical octopus installed hundreds of feet below the Pentagon and asked it — as it has been asked tough questions many times before — what the Defense Department thinks about the Department of the Navy being renamed the “Department of the Navy and Marine Corps.” Just as the machine has been saying for years it doesn’t want more C-17 cargo planes, and it doesn’t want the alternate engine for the F-35 Lightning II, it decided there’s no need for the name change. (pdf)
But the giant mechanical squid deep under the Capitol hates the Pentagon octopus. It has been pushing C-17s and alternate engines for years, and now its powerful, steel-belted tentacles have been moving levers into position on its latest campaign — House and Senate sponsors are lining up to endorse a name change, as our colleague James K. Sanborn reports, despite the Pentagon’s opposition.
So what’s going to happen? Which of these clockwork cephalopods, whose tendrils are so often tangled in the secret tunnels that connect them under the Potomac River, will outlast the other? What do you think?
(You didn’t know two of America’s most important institutions were run by enormous, steam-powered, mechanical sea creatures buried deep below the surface? What else would explain the decisions they make?)
False start for the Iron Nickel
May 21st, 2010 | Congress Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The amphibious assault ship Peleliu delayed its deployment from San Diego this week after engineers found the ship needed a few more last-minute repairs. // MCSN Patrick House / Navy
We told you a week ago about one lawmaker’s latest scheme for growing the fleet, which involves keeping the last two Tarawa-class amphibious assault ships, Peleliu and Nassau, well past their planned departure dates. It didn’t take long for a real-life lesson in how tricky that could be: On Wednesday, the Navy announced Peleliu couldn’t sail on a deployment as scheduled this week because it needed some last-minute repairs before the ship was ready to go.
Navy officials say the fixes aren’t that big a deal, and only put the ship a few days behind — from Thursday to sometime “this weekend.” Still, the delay is a reminder that as old ships get older, they need ever more work, as any sailor aboard the carrier Enterprise will attest.
Seven in Seven
May 21st, 2010 | Aviation Carriers Coast Guard Congress Foreign navies Maritime operations Mishaps Naval Academy Navy Personnel Ships Sports Submarines The Pacific Washington | Posted by Lance Bacon
Sailors aboard the carrier Ronald Reagan conduct a test of the aqueous film forming foam firefighting system during a planned incremental availability maintenance period. Ronald Reagan is completing its first underway period since October 2009. (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Alexander Tidd)
It’s been another busy week for the Navy. Here are seven stories in seven minutes from the past seven days that are worthy of notice:
1. Defense Bill passes HASC. This bill has tons of important stuff – far too much to put in this blog. You can check Monday’s edition of Navy Times for the complete scoop. But among the highlights is this news that lawmakers bucked the Pentagon’s 1.4 percent pay raise request, and looks to instead give service members a 1.9 percent boost.
In addition, the bill aligns the 30-year shipbuilding plan with the QDR, which bodes well for the 313-ship Navy. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., and the Seapower committee he chairs, put the following in the bill: