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.
The end of the JATO era
October 29th, 2009 | Aviation Morale Navy The greenside Video | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Blue Angels' beloved Marine-crewed C-130T, "Fat Albert," will do its last jet-assisted takeoff Nov. 14, to the dismay of males everywhere // Navy
A seldom-discussed but important rite of passage for every American boy is the first time he hears the story of “the JATO car,” the infamous station wagon whose owner augmented it with Jet Assisted Take Off rocket bottles. The cops found the wreckage of his car crashed into the side of a mountain, the story goes, clear evidence of a man who sacrificed his life to absurd speed-demonism. You can do insane, dangerous, awesome things in this world, the boy learns.
The rite is completed when that boy, perhaps by then a man, learns the story isn’t true. It never happened. And the chances it could ever happen are dwindling, because the world is running out of JATO rockets, according to this story by Scoop Deck shipmate Amy McCullough of Marine Corps Times. One of the last U.S. aircraft to regularly execute jet-assisted takeoffs — the Blue Angels’ beloved, Marine-crewed C-130T “Fat Albert” — will do its last one next month. The end of the “JATO car” legend can’t be far behind. Wrote McCullough:
“Everyone in the Fat Albert shop is really sad,” said Maj. Drew Hess, the Blue Angels’ senior C-130 pilot. “It is a significant chapter [in the team’s history] that unfortunately is being closed.”
To execute a JATO, Fat Albert uses eight solid-fuel rocket bottles, which supply enough momentum for the aircraft to leave the runway after traveling just 1,500 feet. Climbing at a 45-degree angle, it can reach 1,000 feet in just 15 seconds.
The [one-time use] fuel bottles, which weigh about 150 pounds when full, were designed to thrust C-130s skyward in austere conditions where traditional runways are unavailable, said 1st Lt. Craig Thomas, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. But the Corps hasn’t used JATO in combat since the Vietnam War, he said, and it’s unlikely to do so again, as newer KC-130Js have engines built to exert the same thrust as C-130Ts outfitted with rocket bottles.
Cruel, inescapable progress. Kind of like growing up.
Check out this motivational video of Fat Albert doing its thing:
Navy’s top techie approves social media tools
October 23rd, 2009 | Blogs Navy Science and technology | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
Anybody see the Navy’s Chief Information Officer’s blog this week? Rob Carey, the Navy’s top techie, approves of sites like Facebook.
3. Social Media as a Tool to Build Trust. Social media is an inherent part of the toolbox for members of the millennial workforce, while baby boomers are just adopting it. Social media tools should become the standard by which we can share and collaborate on information inside and outside the network boundaries.
Nevertheless, there is a downside.
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.
This ain’t no Love Boat
October 2nd, 2009 | Life at Sea Maritime operations Navy Ships | Posted by Gidget Fuentes
Guided missile frigate McClusky at sea in this 2003 photo. // MC2 Michael D. Kennedy/Navy
The Drug Buster could be a moniker for the San Diego-based frigate McClusky, which has nearly cornered the market among the gray hulled fleet over the years during deployments while cruising off the coasts of South and Central America. The ship’s crew is preparing to depart for yet another counter-drug deployment on Oct. 5, taking along some SH-60B Seahawk helicopters and a law enforcement team from the Coast Guard, who largely lead the take-down, chase-down, maritime interdiction missions at sea.
The “Mighty Mac” has collected its share of drug busts when it heads to sea on such deployments to support U.S. SouthCom’s Joint Interagency Task Force-South, the Key West, Fla.-based command that heads the military’s drug-busting arm for the past 20 years. During last year’s deployment, McClusky helped nab more than eight tons of cocaine headed to the United States. Just during a three-month deployment in 2007, the ship’s crew helped seized about 12 tons of cocaine, worth a reportedly $306 million.
In October 2005, the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate hauled in about 5,800 pounds of cocaine aboard the fishing vessel Jose Antonio and helped, along with an embarked team of gun-toting Coast Guardsmen, to detain 16 suspected drug traffickers. Just weeks earlier, McClusky interdicted a high-speed boat and found it carried three and a half tons of cocaine, worth almost $100 million.
Since 2000, according to Navy officials, McClusky has made more than 20 drug seizures during deployments to the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Last year, it earned a prestigious honor – the U.S. Interdiction Coordinator Award – given by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy for “superior operational expertise and outstanding teamwork.” The award noted 11 operations in the U.S. Southern Command region that collected $300 million worth of cocaine.
But going out to sea isn’t all about countering the drug trade. In 2004, McClusky’s crew helped save 169 Ecuadoran migrants stranded for two weeks on two boats and, in the summer of 2002, rescued a Los Angeles man adrift on his sailboat in the Pacific for nearly four months after his mast broken in half. The crew passed around the cap and gathered a collection, handing the mariner $800 to help him on his way.
Will Ospreys work as the Navy’s new COD?
September 22nd, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Navy | Posted by Andrew Tilghman
In this week’s paper, we reported a story about how the Navy is thinking of making the V-22 Osprey the Navy’s next Carrier Onboard Delivery aircraft — colloquially known as the COD.
I had a chance to speak to a C-2 pilot this weekend, as I flew from Norfolk out to the carrier Harry S. Truman. The pilot noted some drawbacks for the Osprey — it has about half the range, it’s a little bit slower and it can’t pressurize its cabin.
The pilot said he’d love to see a completely new aircraft, specially engineered for the COD mission — but he agreed that’s probably not going to happen.
Over here at Navy Times, the biggest drawback we see to an Osprey COD would be depriving civilians of catapult-shot takeoffs and trap landings.
Doubts about the Navy’s Euro-BMD mission
September 21st, 2009 | Ballistic missile defense Navy Science and technology Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Commentators online wonder if the Navy's Aegis warships, like the destroyer Decatur, are up to the task of protecting Europe from ballistic missiles // MC3 Kathleen Gorby/ Navy
There are still many questions to be answered about the Navy’s new mission of providing two or three Aegis warships to protect Europe against missile attacks by 2011. And in the few days it has taken to process President Obama’s announcement that he was changing the U.S. missile defense plans, people have started asking them.
Information Dissemination’s Bryan McGrath wonders if the Navy shouldn’t consider forward deploying the BMD cruisers and destroyers somewhere in the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, an idea that could create a whole new Navy outpost abroad, as in Japan.
Hot Air’s Dafydd ab Hugh rejects the principle that Aegis BMD is a “new” answer for ballistic missile defense, because it’s been around for years, along with the notion of using it instead of developing new land-based missiles: “It’s like saying we must kill development of the Joint Strike Fighter because intelligence reveals that the most imminent enemy air threat can be countered by deploying our existing F/A-18 Hornets… and by golly, we can’t do both,” he wrote.
And this comment at Floppin’ Aces has the most detailed objections yet on the Web to relying on the Navy to protect Europe. Here are some of the highlights:
♦Positioning ships and maintaining them on station indefinitely is problematic.
♦If Turkey is pressured into denying access to the Black Sea to our ships, what then?
♦Aegis is a very expensive system that involves more than 600 different contracting entities by itself. Ships are maintenance intensive, spending months in dry docks or at pier side, and require more personnel to operate than land systems. The rotation of crews for training and rest is another factor to be considered. At the very least, the USN will need to increase the size of its current fleet of Aegis equipped vessels and add the corresponding personnel to complement them. The process will take a great deal of money and a long, long time.
♦The financial cost of relying on a single system like Aegis will be staggering but the costs should that single system fail, could be incalculable.
What do you think — can the Navy pull it off?
Salty sayings
August 25th, 2009 | Historical Life at Sea Navy Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Naval History and Heritage Command
The Navy’s official acceptance last week of the destroyer Dewey — named for Adm. George Dewey, who commanded the U.S. fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay — means the fleet now has destroyers named for the men on both sides of his famous command. On May 1, 1898, Dewey’s flagship, the cruiser Olympia, commanded by Capt. Charles Gridley, advanced with its squadron into Manila Bay under fire from the Spanish fleet. (The destroyer Gridley was commissioned in 2007.)
The American ships held off opening up with their guns until they had reached the ranges they wanted, at which point Dewey gave his famous order:
August is Snipe Month
August 14th, 2009 | Historical Navy Personnel Ratings Ships The deckplates | Posted by Mark Faram
If you are a Navy snipe, then August is your month.
That’s because on Aug. 31, 1842, the first enlisted engineering ratings — fireman and coal heaver — were created.
Steam technology was in its early days at sea when the Navy built it’s second steam ship, the Fulton II, in 1837. And sailors would be needed to operate and maintain the boilers.
With the commissioning of the second Fulton, steam had entered the fleet to stay -- note the paddle-wheel -- a design that would dominate early sea going steam ships.
To man these new ships, Congress passed a law on on Aug. 31, 1842, establishing the two ratings. Those already skilled in steam and machinery skills would be enlisted as firemen. Those with no skills could join as a coal heaver.
Navy regulations dated Aug. 1, 1847, stated that no one would be enlisted as a fireman or coal heaver until he has passed a medical exam that attests to his “health and vigor” for the job.
Prospective firemen would also have to pass a practical exam given by “one or more engineer officers of the Navy upon their ability to manage fires properly with different kinds of fuel, and to use skillfully smiths tools in the repair and preservation of steam machinery and boilers.”
This establishment marked the beginning of enlisted engineering careers as sailors could enlist with no experience as coal heaver and progress to become firemen and eventually qualify as a third assistant engineer — the equivalent of a warrant officer position today.
Speicher’s remains found in Iraq
August 2nd, 2009 | Navy | Posted by Dave Brown
Navy photo
The remains of Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, the F/A-18 Hornet pilot who was shot down over Iraq at the start of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, have been found, according to a Navy spokesman.
The remains were found by Marines stationed in Anbar province, who received a tip from an Iraqi citizen in early July, Rear Adm. Frank Thorp, the Navy’s top spokesman, said early Sunday morning.
“The Iraqi citizen stated he knew of two Iraqi citizens who recalled an American jet impacting the desert and the remains of the pilot being buried in the desert,” Thorp said. “One of these Iraqi citizens stated they were present when Captain Speicher was found dead at the crash site by Bedouins and his remains buried.”
He said the remains were recovered over several days during the past week, and were positively identified by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. The remains included bones and “multiple skeletal fragments,” Thorp said. “Positive identification was made by comparing Captain Speicher’s dental records with the jawbone recovered at the site.”
Although the dental records were a match, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, based in Rockville, Md., is comparing the DNA results with samples submitted by Speicher’s family, Thorp said, adding that the results should take “about a day.”
“Our thoughts and prayers are with Captain Speicher’s family for the ultimate sacrifice he made for his country,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a statement.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said: “Our Navy will never give up looking for a shipmate, regardless of how long or how difficult that search may be. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Captain Speicher and his family for the sacrifice they have made for our nation and the example of strength they have set for all of us.”
Speicher, who was shot down Jan. 17, 1991, was the first casualty of the Gulf War. He was a lieutenant commander at the time and his since been promoted twice in his absence.
On March 19, then-Navy Secretary Donald Winter changed his status from “missing/captured” to “missing in action” based on available evidence.