March Madness — Navy style
April 8th, 2010 | Aviation Carriers Foreign navies Maritime operations Military Sealift Command Navy ordnance Pirates Ships Submarines The Pacific | Posted by Lance Bacon
March was a busy month for the Global Force for Good. You’ve likely heard about the commissionings, the pummeling of pirates and all the other good tidbits. Here are a few highlights that may have slipped under your radar:
The carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower launched nearly 620 combat sorties and flew more than 3,600 cumulative hours from the North Arabian Sea supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
Nearly three dozen nuggets gave a collective sigh as the carrier John C. Stennis began the journey home to Bremerton, Wash., after 21 days at sea in support of fleet replacement squadron carrier qualifications. Stennis embarked five squadrons and qualified 34 new pilots who completed 641 arrested gear landings. You can read about it here.
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.
Unrep photo of the day
March 22nd, 2010 | Carriers Military Sealift Command Photos | Posted by Phil Ewing
Today’s highly sought-after Ship Photography Prize goes to MC2 Daniel Barker, who turned in some clear, bright shots of the carrier Carl Vinson doing an underway replenishment March 18 with the fast combat support ship Rainier. Barker has captured what can be a dangerous, stressful evolution in a way that makes it look calm and peaceful, complete with a nice touch of symmetry from the two Seahawk helicopters and a cloud bank in the distance that could be a mountain range .
In this special bonus photo, Barker also caught a glamor shot of Rainier after it broke away from the carrier. Click on both images to see them in high-res.
This week in seabasing, vol. 2
March 22nd, 2010 | Military Sealift Command Science and technology The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing
A new container crane aboard the MSC crane ship Flickertail State will make it possible to unload container vessels at sea, Navy officials hope // John Williams / Navy
Here’s a hot shot for all the crane fans out there: Check out this Large Vessel Interface, Lift-On/Lift-Off crane aboard the Military Sealift Command crane ship Flickertail State loading some ISO containers from the pier last week. To a small cadre of seabasing devotees in Washington and Quantico, this is just as sexy as an F-35B vertical landing, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Seabasing advocates are always talking about the need to mate up ships offshore, unload their contents and get them to the beach, and the LVI-Lo/Lo is designed to help with that: Its advanced controls and sensors (yes, it’s a crane with “sensors!”) let it pick up and move ISO containers — the ubiquitous twenty-foot boxes that carry everything in the world — on ships in up to sea state 4. Moving containers means crews don’t need to break down shipments into standard Navy pallets, lets you move more stuff at once, and frees you from needing to dock in a deep-water port.
MSC, Naval Sea Systems Command and Marine Corps Combat Development Command were really proud of their last seabasing demonstration down in the Gulf of Mexico; maybe the next phase of demonstration will involve LVI-Lo/Lo doing its container trick out at sea.
Sea trials links
March 22nd, 2010 | Foreign navies Historical Military Sealift Command Royal Navy Science and technology | Posted by Phil Ewing
The British destroyer Dauntless and fast attack sub Astute sailed for sea trials this month, exploring their capabilities much as today's links expore the latest info online // Royal Navy
Just-built, crash-back testin’, detect-to-engagin’, high-speed S-turnin’, missile-launchin’ links, advising you to make sure your gear is stowed for sea and to prepare for a full power run toward the Web’s latest news:
- The hospital ship Comfort is back!
- Ex-Soviet Alfa-class attack subs could get their highest-profile job since the V.K. Konovalov hunted the Red October in the documentary “The Hunt for Red October:” Russian engineers say old Alfa reactors could be rigged to provide civilian electrical power, but environmentalists are leery.
- With those old boats getting chopped up or turned into power plants, the Russian navy will need a fleet of some 50 submarines “to counter overseas threats,” fleet officials there now say.
- Wouldn’t it be weird to see a space shuttle on the deck of an aircraft carrier? The Intrepid Air and Space Museum in New York wants one of the shuttles NASA plans to decommission next year.
- The Royal Navy has an iPhone app that lets you simulate being an engineer at sea. Are you going to take that, U.S. Navy Recruiting Command?
- The sail of the decommissioned fast attack submarine Indianapolis could wind up in its namesake city, if plans for a new memorial there go through.
- One navy’s “small boy” is another navy’s “floating city” — case in point, the Canadian frigate Fredericton, which really impressed a reporter from Montreal’s Gazette.
- Guardian columnist Julian Glover landed in a helo on the Royal Navy carrier Ark Royal last week, inhaled the jet exhaust from the Harriers taking off, and admitted, yeah, visiting a carrier deck is pretty awesome. Still, he had some cold, logical words about Britain’s naval future.
Navy vice
March 17th, 2010 | Coast Guard Life at Sea Maritime operations Military Sealift Command | Posted by Phil Ewing
Sailors and Coast Guardsmen from the Freedom carried bales of cocaine back to the ship after picking them up at sea March 12 // Lt. Ed Early / Navy
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead seemed very pleased this morning when he told Senate lawmakers that the littoral combat ship Freedom has made three drug busts in the four weeks it’s been at sea down in the 4th Fleet area of operations. All told, Freedom’s crew of sailors and Coast Guardsmen have seized four tons of cocaine, he said, which he said has a street value of about $89 million.
(That would cover a little more than 16 percent of Freedom’s follow-on sibling, the littoral combat ship Fort Worth, now under construction up in Wisconsin. No wisecracks, please, about ‘how does CNO know what all that coke is worth?’)
In addition to confiscating all the dope, Freedom’s Coast Guardsmen used their law enforcement powers to arrest five suspects after a March 3 interdiction, who stayed aboard for two days, said Lt. Cmdr. Colette Murhpy, a spokeswoman for 4th Fleet. The alleged smugglers “were provided with food, water, dry clothing, cots to sleep on and medical attention. They were transferred to a Coast Guard cutter for transport ashore,” she said.
At least they got cots. Freedom’s racks are maxed out and it has two “berthing modules” aboard for spillover personnel, but the smuggler-suspect accommodations do sound nicer than one alternative — Military Sealift Command’s pirate-suspect brig.
Comfort comes home. Gators stay in place?
March 9th, 2010 | Life at Sea Maritime operations Military Sealift Command | Posted by Phil Ewing
The hospital ship Comfort was ordered home this week after seven weeks on station off Port-au-Prince, Haiti // MCC J. L. Chirrick / Navy
The hospital ship Comfort, which discharged its last patient Feb. 27, was released from the Haitian disaster assistance mission on Tuesday. Military Sealift Command officials think the big white ship will be back in Baltimore by March 14. That doesn’t mean the relief effort in Haiti is finished — not by a long shot — and it also evidently doesn’t mean the other big ships stationed there can go home yet.
The amphibious assault ship Bataan and the dock landing ship Fort McHenry, along with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, still evidently are needed off Port-au-Prince. One gator, the dock landing ship Carter Hall, was released last week, but it’s likely that commanders in Haiti want to take advantage of the Marine helicopters flying off Bataan for as long as possible.
The two remaining amphibs are the last American warships left off Haiti. Other U.S. vessels include the salvage ship Grasp, the crane ship Cornhusker State, and a few Army logistics vessels, one of which recently called at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
No word yet on when they’ll be able to come home, either.
This week in seabasing
March 4th, 2010 | Maritime operations merchant ships Military Sealift Command | Posted by Phil Ewing
USNS Soderman and the Mighty Servant 3 did an MLP-style dry run Jan. 29 in the Gulf of Mexico // Naval Sea Systems Command
Thursdays get pretty hectic here at the Center of Excellence, what with looming deadlines for the print edition of Navy Times, but every week we rely on one thing to provide an oasis of calm: Naval Sea Systems Command’s regular email round-up of official press releases, known affectionately as the “NavSea News Wire,” which is how insiders (or, rather, anyone) can stay in the loop about the Navy’s biggest systems command.
Today’s edition, for example, includes an update about the Navy’s test last month of the concept for its new Mobile Landing Platform, three of which are to be built by General Dynamics NASSCO out in San Diego. In January and February down in the Gulf of Mexico, the Military Sealift Command ro-ro ship Soderman unloaded a whole mess of green gear to the semi-submersible transport Mighty Servant 3, standing in for an MLP.
Continued NavSea: “Personnel and vehicles were successfully transferred between the ships in high sea state three and low sea state four during multiple days of testing in the Gulf of Mexico. Vehicles transferred included High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMWVVs), HMWVVs with trailers, Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacements, Logistics Vehicle System wreckers, Amphibious Assault Vehicles, M88 tank recovery vehicles, and M1A1 Main Battle Tanks.”
If it had been a real amphibious operation, a Landing Craft, Air Cushion hovercraft would have come along and swept all that stuff to the beach — or so commanders hope.
Aftermath
March 2nd, 2010 | Maritime operations Military Sealift Command | Posted by Phil Ewing
The hospital ship Comfort, on station off Port au Prince, has discharged it last patient // MCCS J. L. Chirrick / Navy
ABOARD THE USNS COMFORT — This 70,000-ton, 894-foot floating hospital is out of hand sanitizer. The dispensers in the triage areas, the surgery and even along the bulkhead in the chow line wheeze when you press for a squirt of alcohol disinfectant, so crew members have taken to carrying their own pocket-sized bottles.
The ship’s master, Capt. Bob Holley, passed visitors his own bottle during a brief tour Monday, not long after he pointed out the pallets of supplies and mail that had just come aboard in a vertical replenishment from the dry cargo and ammunition ship Sacagawea. The Comfort’s crew and its embarked medical team should have plenty of time to break down those shipments and load them up because Comfort has no more patients. More than 41 days after arriving off the wrecked city of Port-au-Prince, Comfort’s beds now are empty, and the ship lies in the harbor nosed against the tide, waiting.
The old fashioned way, vol. 2
February 26th, 2010 | Military Sealift Command | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Navy, MSC and General Dynamics plan to christen T-AKE 10, Charles Drew, this weekend in San Diego // NASSCO
If you’re lucky enough to have the right connections in San Diego this weekend, here’s a great way to spend your Saturday: The Navy, Military Sealift Command and shipbuilder General Dynamics are planning to christen the latest dry cargo and ammunition ship, Charles Drew, and slide it down the ways — the way a ship should be launched. Even though the forecast calls for rain, G-D NASSCO officials say the ceremony will go on.
Here’s a sneak preview — this is what it looked like when the previous T-AKE, Matthew Perry, was launched on a sunny day last year.