Realism, circa 1929
April 12th, 2011 | Aviation Historical Naval aviation Naval aviation centennial Navy Sea Air Space | Posted by Joshua Stewart
Developed in 1929, Edwin Link's "Pilot Maker" trained aviators for $85 each. By World War II, some 500,000 aviators had trained on the system. // Joshua Stewart/Staff
An F/A-18F Super Hornet simulator provides panoramic views and complex flight technology, but it doesn't have a hydraulic motion system. // Joshua Stewart/Staff
Tucked between displays of what will become the future of naval aviation is a tribute to the previous century of naval flight.
An early flight simulator is one of the more interesting attractions. It looks like a really intense kiddie ride, one of those machines found outside of grocery stores that that blare really loud music and buck kids around for a quarter. Basically, the aviation simulator is a miniature open-cockpit airplane — it’s around the size of a golf cart — sitting atop a hydraulic system. The cockpit has a series of controls that make the whole device move around.
It was developed in 1929 by Edwin Link and dubbed the “pilot maker.” Training included ground school and two hours of flight time. Cost: $85 per student.
In 1934 Link made his first big sale, six machines. And by World War II, about a half-million Allied pilots were training on roughly 10,000 of the devices.
Not too far away is a Super Hornet simulator. That one has three projectors that give a panoramic view of the ground and skyline and two seats positioned behind a panel of complex controls and interfaces. Despite its sophistication, it doesn’t have one of the biggest components of the pilot maker: the hydraulics.
UAVs and fantasy flights
April 12th, 2011 | Naval aviation Navy Navy secretary Sea Air Space | Posted by Joshua Stewart
Unmanned aerial vehicles made an appearance at the Sea Air Space Expo. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the next UAV milestone will be deployment on a carrier. // Photos by Joshua Stewart
Unmanned aerial vehicles aren’t brand-spanking new to naval aviation; UAVs the Navy uses include the rotary-wing Fire Scout and the RQ-2A Pioneer. But the next big thing in unmanned flight at sea will be an aircraft that can take off from and land on a carrier. Several companies are in the process of making that happen.
The big names in flight are displaying wares that they hope become the backbone of the Navy’s collection of UAVs at the Sea Air Space Expo at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md.
Look at the pictures above. At left is Northrop Grumman’s X-47B, a UAV that made its first flight in February. The one on the right is Boeing’s X-45C. The one in the center, while not labeled, is almost certainly the X-47B — it’s at the Huntington Ingalls Industries display; HII is a Northrop Grumman spin-off, and the airframe has the same shape as the X-47B UCAS. It’s tough to tell in this picture, but it’s shown positioned on the flight deck of the carrier Gerald R. Ford, a ship being built in Newport News, Va.
The HII picture merits another look because, well, the whole thing is a mock up of what may someday be the face of unmanned naval aviation on the flight deck a non-existent ship. Sitting nearby the now hypothetical UAV is an F-35C Lightning II joint strike fighter. In case you’re keeping track, that’s an aircraft that had not joined the fleet sitting on the flight deck of a carrier that’s under construction near an another plane that’s currently being tested. Like flying cars and undersea bubble cities, it’s all fantasy, for now at least.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus emphasized during his luncheon speech Monday that unmanned craft will play a prominent role in the Navy’s future.
“Over the next decade, we will move aggressively to develop a family of unmanned systems including underwater systems that will be able to operate for a extended periods of time in support of our ships, our expeditionary units and our special warfare teams, and a low-observable, carrier-based intelligence surveillance reconnaissance strike unmanned air system,” he said.
The virtual Navy
April 11th, 2011 | Carriers Naval aviation Newport News Sea Air Space | Posted by Joshua Stewart
Huntington Ingalls Industries must have made a Best Buy run before they set up their stall at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space Exposition. Exhibitors use all sorts of displays to show off their goodies, but HII’s came complete with video games and a huge 3-D television, which would make teenage boys everywhere incredibly jealous … at least if they came here.
The video game ran on an X-Box but it wasn’t getting much attention, maybe because the objective was to fight fires on a flight deck. It’s just not quite the same as “Call of Duty.”
Nearby was a projection of one of the pump rooms for Gerald R. Ford, the first ship in the next class of nuclear aircraft carriers. A half dozen people donning heavy 3-D glasses gathered around and looked at the computer-generated pictures of color-coded pipes and pumps.
As the company representative said, the 3-D module lets people involved with the design, construction and maintenance of Ford see exactly where everything is positioned, what can be improved and how personnel can move around “with only a few getting motion sickness.”
As of 10:30 a.m. nobody seemed to need any dramamine.
While HII had 3-D technology and video games, Boeing had a Super Hornet simulator. A few people were waiting to take the front seat but nobody was interested in sitting in the back to play virtual flight officer.
Seven in Seven
May 7th, 2010 | Carriers Congress Foreign navies leadership Life at Sea Maritime operations Naval Academy Navy NECC Officers Sea Air Space SEALs Ships Submarines The Middle East Washington | Posted by Lance Bacon
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead meets sailors and their families at Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington, Tenn. Roughead was in Millington to get a first-hand look at damage sustained from flooding. (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ronda Spaulding)
Defense Secretary Robert Gates dropped the bomb of the week. In his first invitation to the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space symposium, Gates suggested a need for cutting carriers, sinking SSBN(X) and eliminating Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles. You can read Gates’ speech here, and find out how this affects you in Monday’s edition of Navy Times.
Speaking of amphibious operations, the personnel bubbas in Millington are starting to dry out. Two days of rain dumped more than 14 inches in the area. A levee couldn’t hold the water back and the base was flooded. This delayed one promotion board and threw many administrative matters into chaos, but the crew weathered the storm in true Navy fashion.
Here’s seven stories in seven minutes from the past seven days that you may not have seen, but are worthy of notice:
A new name, and much easier to say
May 5th, 2010 | Sea Air Space | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Navy of yesteryear — the one that slashed through an entire class of Spruance-class destroyers; early Ticonderoga-class cruisers; Osprey-class coastal minehunters, etc. — is gone. In its place today is the Navy of lifecycle management, with an explicit commitment to get as much juice as possible from as many ships as possible. So goes the official line, anyhow.
The armored spearhead of this offensive, to mix a military metaphor, comes from Naval Sea Systems Command, which stood up its Surface Ship Life-Cycle Management Activity last year to give the ship-life concept a brick-and-mortar office and its own box in the org-chart PowerPoint slide. Problem was, the phonetic versions of this agency’s name, “slick-mah,” and then “sslick-um” could be considered… ah… gross.
Problem solved. NavSea Executive Director Brian Persons said today that SSLCM will soon become “SurfMEPP,” modeled after its undersea counterpart, the Submarine Maintenance Engineering Planning and Procurement Activity, from which it had already borrowed many philosophies. SurfMepp will be bigger than SSLCM when it gets going, said NavSea spokeswoman Pat Dolan, and we’ll be writing more about it soon in Navy Times.
Meantime, if it comes up in conversation, no need to get nervous: Just say “surf-mep.” Whew.
The hospital ship of the future
May 4th, 2010 | Military Sealift Command Sea Air Space Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The hospital ship Mercy sailed this week for a humanitarian mission to the Pacific. A future hospital ship might be smaller and with a shallower draft to get closer to shore, two top officials said. // MC2 Jon Husman / Navy
Although Navy, Military Sealift Command and civilian officials have raved about the hospital ships Comfort and Mercy, they’re 25 years old and can be difficult to manage — their size (70,000 tons) and deep draft (about 30 feet) means they often must anchor in deep water and accept patients by air or boat. So we took the chance Tuesday to ask Navy Surgeon General Vice Adm. Adam Robinson and Rear Adm. Mark “Buz” Buzby, head of Military Sealift Command, what they would incorporate into a new generation of hospital ships, if they could start with a clean sheet of paper.
Obligatory caveat: There is no serious talk about replacing Comfort and Mercy, and if it happened, Naval Sea Systems Command would build new hospital ships, not BuMed or MSC. But Robinson and Buzby’s thoughts on the subject are illuminating — and in Robinson’s case, hilarious:
At least he’s got a sense of humor
May 3rd, 2010 | Sea Air Space | Posted by Phil Ewing
Northrop Grumman’s vice president for LPD 17 gave an update for reporters today about the state of the San Antonio class — only the ships under construction, of course, because Northrop can’t comment on the ones it has already delivered to the Navy. They’re all in great shape, said program head Tim Farrell; the next ship, San Diego, is “the most complete LPD to date” and is expected to float off into the Pascagoula River this week.
Farrell did acknowledge that there had been some problems with earlier copies in the class, and when he introduced himself as Northrop’s LPD 17 program manager he quipped: “I’ve got the life expectancy of a gnat right now — no, I’m planning on being here for a good long time.”
Things are going so well, Farrell said, that he is already looking forward to the brief he’ll give this time in 2011: “Here’s my prediction — I’ll be back here next year and I’ll be talking about all the good things that are happening with the LPD — or you’ll see my picture on a milk carton.”
An airship for LCS
May 3rd, 2010 | Aviation Science and technology Sea Air Space | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Fire Scout may not turn out to be the only unmanned aerial vehicle that sails with the littoral combat ships of tomorrow, according to the Navy’s program manager for the LCS mission modules. Engineers with Naval Sea Systems Command have tested using a miniature blimp, also known as an aerostat, with the LCS mine countermeasures equipment, said Capt. Mike Good, and he said it worked well.
In an aerostat test in Panama City, Fla., NavSea demonstrated that it could operate the LCS mine-countermeasures vehicle at distances of up to 35 miles, Good said, which is much longer than it’s designed to operate from the ship at sea. The aerostat loiters at high altitude and functions as a relay antenna so that an LCS can bounce off signals for its robot.
“Basically we create our own cellphone tower,” Good said — one that can stay in the air for much longer than the ship’s Fire Scout unmanned helicopter.
SecDef fires for effect
May 3rd, 2010 | Carriers Sea Air Space | Posted by Phil Ewing
You could hear a pin drop in the luncheon hall at Sea Air Space on Monday when Defense Secretary Robert Gates went straight after two topics dear to the hearts of attendees and Navy League members across the U.S.: Amphibious warfare and aircraft carriers. Gates acknowledged it was useful during the Gulf War to be able to threaten the Iraqi army with a potential Marine invasion off the Kuwaiti coast, but times have changed, he said:
GATES: We have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious landing again — especially as advances in anti-ship systems keep pushing the potential launch point further from shore. On a more basic level, in the 21st century, what kind of amphibious capability do we really need to deal with the most likely scenarios, and then how much?
Second, aircraft carriers. Our current plan is to have 11 carrier strike groups through 2040. To be sure, the need to project power across the oceans will never go away. But, consider the massive over-match the U.S. already enjoys. Consider, too, the growing anti-ship capabilities of adversaries. Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?
Breaking the ice on icebreakers
May 3rd, 2010 | Coast Guard Sea Air Space | Posted by Phil Ewing
For years, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen has been making the case for improved ships and equipment to enable the lifesaving service to better operate in the thawing Arctic. Now that he is only weeks away from retirement, he hinted Monday in a panel discussion at Sea Air Space that the Coast Guard, the Congress and other officials haven’t even begun to seriously tackle these questions.
“We need to have a serious, national discussion about icebreakers,” Allen said. “It has not concluded — it has not even begun yet. You may see me be a little more vocal about this on the 26th of May because my change of command is the 25th. Thank you very much.”
Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway gave remarks after Allen at the panel discussion, and apparently had no hard feelings that Allen had called him “Mike” during a discussion about how closely the sea service chiefs worked together. Conway asked Allen to stand and be recognized, and said:
“When I was a young officer aboard ship the rule was, leave your spaces better than you found them, and I think we can say that about Adm. Thad Allen, United States Coast Guard.”
The crowd gave Allen a standing ovation.