Watch your step out there, sir
November 18th, 2009 | Foreign navies Life at Sea Maritime operations The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
Climbing up or down a Jacob's ladder can be a tricky job, as when this Mexican sailor boarded a German warship this spring during an exercise // Coast Guard
Quick sea anecdote: One time Scoop Deck was standing in the upper vehicle stowage bay of the amphibious assault ship Makin Island, at sea in the Gulf of Mexico, waiting to climb down a Jacob’s ladder into a boat moored alongside. It was clear and sunny, but the sea was choppy enough that people were nervous about reporters not being able to get on the boat without taking a bath.
One chief boatswain’s mate counseled not to step down the ladder below the gunwale of the launch, because it would catch your leg and mangle it against the amphib’s hull. (”That’ll ruin your whole day,” he said.) But don’t step from the ladder to the launch when it’s at the peak of a wave, because as it starts to fall, he said, so will you. Scoop Deck stepped off at the peak, did a few semi-splits and cartwheels around the slippery deck, got covered with sea slime, but at least stayed aboard.
The presence of this story, hopefully, won’t make it sound too mean to point out these hilarious photographs of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had some trouble climbing from an inflatable boat to a Jacob’s ladder this week. “Trouble,” as in, he fell into some poor sailor’s lap.
Netanyahu wanted to congratulate the crew of an Israeli warship for interdicting a load of weapons bound for Hezbollah, but from the looks of it, the sailors probably congratulated him for not swimming in the Mediterranean.
Have you ever acquitted yourself less than gracefully when climbing on or off a small boat?
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.
Another new LCS mission — BMD picket?
November 17th, 2009 | Ballistic missile defense Blogs Foreign navies Science and technology Ships The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
An international export version of Lockheed's littoral combat ship fired an imaginary missile in this artist's conception. The company is now saying it can augment its Aegis-edition LCSes with ballistic missile defense capability // Lockheed Martin
As Galrahn and Phib discuss the latest news about the littoral combat ship Freedom’s upcoming deployment, one of our senior shipmates at Defense News has some other interesting LCS gouge: This week at the Dubai Air Show, Lockheed Martin is pitching a “Surface Combat Ship” to the navies of the Gulf states — a variant of its Freedom-class LCS modded with Aegis radar and ballistic missile defense capability.
LockMart and its LCS rival, General Dynamics, both have shown off concepts for Aegis-equipped export versions of their designs, but neither of the trade-show fliers just pulled from Scoop Deck’s desk drawer say anything about BMD. They do include the possibility of a Mk 41 Vertical Launch System — which the U.S. Navy’s version doesn’t have — that could carry a battery of SM-3 or SM-6 interceptors. Or, as Defense News’s Pierre Tran wrote, an Aegis BMD LCS could be the eyes for land-based missiles:
Given fears in the region of a possible missile attack from Iran, a deployment of the Surface Combat Ship in the narrow waters of the Gulf would provide early warning of a missile launch and allow early destruction in the upper atmosphere by the SM-3 missile or at lower altitude by the Patriot PAC3 or other weapon.
No word on the price tag for this souped-up “SCS,” but given the cost issues the first two LCSes have had, it could be steep. It could also have implications for the U.S. Navy’s pending mission as the BMD protector of Europe, for which commanders could want as many hulls as possible, maybe including cruisers, destroyers and BMD-LCSes.
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.
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.
Canadian Navy: It’s Timmies or nothin’, eh?
November 4th, 2009 | Chow Foreign navies Life at Sea Morale | Posted by Phil Ewing
U.S. and Canadian airmen unloaded a mobile Tim Hortons from a C-17 at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan. Tim Hortons coffee fuels Canada's military in the same way that F76 and JP-5 fuel the U.S. Navy // Canadian Forces
Why do Canadians love Tim Hortons so much? Good question. Why do boatswain’s mates wear those funny hard hats? These are mysteries to which there may never be good answers, but their effects are quite plain — especially that first one. Canadians love their “Timmies,” as they call it, in the same way they love power plays and those French fries with that weird gravy on them. Well indeed does Scoop Deck remember spotting a Tim Hortons, dispensing piping hot coffee, on a 115-degree afternoon at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan.
The Canadian Forces needs its Timmies so bad that it has issued a solicitation for the coffee in Halifax by name. Starbucks, Peet’s, Gevalia — none need apply, the CBC reports:
“There shall be no acceptable substitute,” according to the tender issued Monday. “Tim Hortons has been determined by MARLANT” — the navy’s Maritime Forces Atlantic command — “as the product of choice based on expressed customer taste and preferences for boosting morale in Afghanistan, Sudan and Sierra Leone.”
You can’t get a much bigger endorsement than a nation’s military requesting your product to the exclusion of all those other hosers. Is there an equivalent coffee in the U.S. Navy? Or do you rely on command ingenuity to create a distinctive product — i.e. “boat coffee?”
H/T: Springbored (who praised the U.S. Navy’s decision to shed “fru-fru, gold-plated, 5th Generation stealth coffee.”)
Collision at sea: Aftermath
October 28th, 2009 | Foreign navies Life at Sea Mishaps Ships merchant ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Firefighters worked to put out the fire in the bow of the Japanese destroyer Kurama, which burned after a collision with a South Korean container ship // AP
The photos appearing from Japan this week are enough to unnerve any seafarer — a destroyer’s bow crunched, burned, gone after its collision with a freighter at sea. Six Japanese sailors aboard the destroyer Kurama were hurt in the accident, but no one aboard the South Korean container ship Carina Star was injured. The latest theory is that the Carina Star veered in front of the Kurama to avoid a third ship in the channel, although the final verdict likely won’t be in for weeks.
Even more galling for the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, the Kurama was on its way to serve as the flagship for a triennial fleet review this weekend.
Here’s what the ship looked like in happier times:
MC3 Daniel Viramontes/ Navy
The maritime strategy enters the terrible twos
October 20th, 2009 | Ballistic missile defense Coast Guard Foreign navies Maritime operations The greenside Washington leadership | Posted by Phil Ewing
The carrier George Washington trained with Korean warships in the Pacific last week. International cooperation was a key plank of the maritime strategy unveiled two years ago this week // MC3 Jeffrey Stewart/ Navy
The famed brown-shoe blogger SteeljawScribe — or as they’d say in Pittsburgh, “Stuhljawr-Scrub” — has reminded the Internet this week that we’ve reached the second anniversary of the unveiling of the maritime strategy (pdf), the document that was supposed to pave a clear road forward for the U.S. naval services and Coast Guard.
Asks Steeljaw: Did it? Answers Steeljaw: Kinda.
As a guidance document the strategy was useful, he writes, but it was incomplete because it contained no specifics for how many and what kinds of ships the U.S. would need to execute it. Those details were supposed to come in the “Naval Operations Concept,” the force structure document for which the world still waits. (Although incomplete initial versions have bubbled to the surface.)
The NOC, writes Steeljaw:
is increasingly important as planners inside and out of the naval services wrestle with new concepts and capabilities, the most recent example being the significant shift in BMD emphasis in the European theater … This redirection and the attendant gossamer-light expositions of how we will employ sea-based BMD in the maritime strategy has led to a fair degree of mis-information and erroneous assumptions as to general operational capabilities, requirements, and necessary force structure. More detailed explanation, as would be found in a NOC, would go a long ways to alleviate this condition.
On the anniversary of the MarStrat, it’s worth asking: How valuable has it proved for the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard?
China’s concrete carrier
October 19th, 2009 | Aviation Blogs Carriers Foreign navies Photos Science and technology | Posted by Phil Ewing
A building under construction in Wuhan, China, looks suspiciously like a giant aircraft carrier. What is it for? // tiexue.net
If you’re plugged in to the Navy inter-webs you may have seen the latest photo-set depicting China’s newest aircraft carrier, which is quickly taking shape but won’t put to sea any time soon — because it’s a building.
The giant pretend cement aircraft carrier is being built in the inland city of Wuhan, and it corresponds to your standard Russian-influenced notional Chinese carrier design: Large ski-jump bow and very large island, in this case much bigger than it would need to be on a real ship at sea.
The problem — as is often the case in these situations — is a severe shortage of actual facts about the carrier-building. Will Chinese aviators train on this enormous mock-up? Is it a tourist attraction? The blog ChinaSmack reports that parts of the island are already in use as office space. Which is kind of neat, if you think about it; it’s the grown-up equivalent of sleeping in race-car bed. Our Center of Excellence would definitely be better if it were a building shaped like a warship. Or a warship.
So what do you think the Wuhan carrier-building is?
Combination covers, combined
October 8th, 2009 | Foreign navies Officers Uniforms | Posted by Andrew Scutro
MC1 Tiffani Vanderwyst, Navy
When admirals from 100 different navies gather, they need a place to stack their covers. This was the pile-up outside a meeting of the International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. on Oct. 7. Scoop Deck usually has a sharp eye for detail but this one is a tough nut. Good luck placing more than three on a map.