SecNav returns to prime time in ‘NCIS’
November 9th, 2009 | Blogs Morale Washington leadership | Posted by Phil Ewing
"Janie, I need your help solving the mystery of the disappearing shipbuilding budget." // CBS
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus apparently so loved being on “The Daily Show” last month that he is returning to prime time — only for his forthcoming guest spot, he has taken a pretty steep demotion in rank. Mabus will play an agent in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on an episode of its eponymous drama, “NICS,” scheduled to air Nov. 24, TV Guide reported Monday.
“He will be making a cameo appearance,” confirmed Mabus’ spokeswoman, Capt. Beci Brenton. He filmed his scenes during a trip last month to the West Coast that included a speech at the Pacific Council and a visit, with LCAC ride, to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. The Navy’s West Coast public affairs office arranged the cameo with CBS, Brenton said, although she wasn’t clear about whether the process began with the Navy offering Mabus or “NCIS” asking for him.
Is Mabus a regular viewer of “NCIS?” Brenton said: “I believe he is.”
Other Navy officials, including the then-head of the real NCIS, have made appearances on the show before, but that precedent didn’t make it all right with at least one commenter over at TV Squad, who thinks Mabus probably has more important things to do than act in TV dramas:
I do not believe the secretary of the navy has any business being on television. If this is all he has to do, he needs to have someone review his “To Do” list. The sailors under his command need him more than NCIS. I hope Obama fires him! We have many more issues for our leaders to deal with. Bad choice by this secretary of the navy!
Another potential controversy here is Mabus’ choice to appear on the original “NCIS” and not its inexplicable spin-off, “NCIS: Los Angeles,” with Cool James and Robin. And if Mabus really wants to flex his acting chops, he needs to play a guy who loves LSU and the New York Yankees.
What would the Navy do without GPS?
October 23rd, 2009 | Aviation Life at Sea Maritime operations Science and technology Ships Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
QMSN Antonia Mack plotted a course the old fashioned way aboard the destroyer O'Kane // MC2 Mark Logico/ Navy
Pity the poor visitor who brings a car here to the National Capital Region. Washington and its suburbs can be an impenetrable maze unless you know the territory or you have help from the Global Positioning System. That said, just imagine what it’d be like to try to sail an amphibious assault ship from San Diego to Guam without it. So if GPS stopped working, a lot of people all over the world would (literally) be lost.
And it could, in fact, stop working: According to a Government Accountability Office report quoted by Avionics Magazine, GPS users could start seeing “brownouts” as soon as next year because the GPS satellite constellation is over-burdened and wearing out. Although it would still be available to Navy, other military and civilian users, no one is quite sure whether it will remain as accessible as it is today:
The impacts to both military and civil users of a smaller constellation are difficult to precisely predict,” the agency [GAO] said. “For example, a nominal 24-satellite constellation with 21 of its satellites broadcasting a healthy standard positioning service signal would continue to satisfy the availability standard for good user-to-constellation geometry articulated in the standard positioning service performance standard. However, because the GPS constellation has been operating above the committed performance standard for so long, military and civil users have come to expect a higher level of service, even though this service is not committed to them. Consequently, some users may sense an operational impact even if the constellation were to perform at or near its committed standards.
So Navy navigation teams should probably keep their charts and rulers, and the rest of us should probably hang on to our paper maps.
H/T: Kennebec Captain
CNN discovers skepticism of “Global Force for Good”
October 20th, 2009 | Morale Personnel Video Washington leadership | Posted by Phil Ewing
Sailors from the dock landing ship Tortuga conducted global goodness operations in the Philippines last week. The Navy's new slogan, "Global Force For Good," has encountered some early critics // MC1 Geronimo Aquino/ Navy
How influential are Navy Times readers like you? When CNN wanted to hear what no-kidding Navy people thought about the sea service’s new recruiting slogan, “America’s Navy, a Global Force For Good,” the network quoted posts on Navy Times’ forums that showed, for the most part, today’s sailors aren’t quite captivated by it.
CNN’s Lou Dobbs program aired the piece Monday night, and you can view it here.
There’s just something about this story… even after our article appeared summarizing responses from many of the sailors we asked about “Global Force For Good,” the emails have kept pouring into the Inbox of Excellence. Just yesterday we heard from Intelligence Specialist 1st Class (SW/AW) Grant Miles, who was watching TV with his wife this weekend when he saw the ad for the first time:
“…[O]nce it was done I asked her what she thought. She said, ‘It’s a good commercial, but what is with that slogan? It makes it sound like you guys are the world’s police force or a bunch of conquerors.’ So I think the latest commercials have been great but with the changing of the slogan I don’t think people are going to join because they can do good things.”
It’s been a few weeks since the debut of “Global Force For Good.” Is it growing on you?
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?
If naval heroes had Twitter feeds…
October 13th, 2009 | Blogs Historical Washington leadership | Posted by Phil Ewing
With the Navy turning 234 years old today, it really makes you stop and realize: All this social networking, Twittering, blogging, Facebooking, silicon chips and such hasn’t been around very long, comparatively speaking. So here at the Center of Excellence we got to wondering — what would it have looked like if John Paul Jones had his cellie along when he fought the British off Flamborough Head? Or if Adm. George Dewey had set up his laptop on the bridge of the Olympia as his ships squared off against the Spanish? It might’ve looked something like this:
Tom Ricks’ ship name suggestions
October 12th, 2009 | Blogs Military Sealift Command Ships Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Military analyst Tom Ricks suggests a future attack submarine, like the New Mexico, seen here, could be named for the Native American Chief Crazy Horse // Northrop Grumman
Big-dog military analyst Tom Ricks, who blogs for Foreign Policy magazine, wrote Monday that he likes that Military Sealift Command’s next dry cargo and ammunition ship is to be named Medgar Evers. Inspired by the civil rights activist theme, he had some other suggestions for names for future Navy warships:
Now, how about honoring a Hispanic such as Cesar Chavez? And I’m still waiting to see Nat Turner get his due, perhaps with an escape & evasion course named for him.
I’d also like someday to ride aboard a Malcom X-class destroyer, or the USS Crazy Horse, which would make a cool attack submarine. And USS War Chief Joseph would be a good name for a flagship.
The names of Navy ships always provoke discussion — for or against — whether it’s an aircraft carrier named Barry Goldwater or a submarine named Jimmy Carter. What do you think of Ricks’ ideas about honoring more controversial Americans with future Navy ships?
Time to decelerate your life, become a force for good
September 30th, 2009 | Personnel The deckplates Video Washington leadership | Posted by Phil Ewing
"Oh yeah, that part, where it says your life will be accelerated? Just disregard. Instead you'll be part of a global force for good." // MCC Hugh Laughlin/ Navy
If you’re thinking of joining the Navy, be advised: When you enlist, your life will proceed at the same speed at which it’s currently traveling. But on the other hand, you will go from being a neutral recruit to a global force for good. That’s right: The Navy is pulling back “Accelerate Your Life” as its advertising slogan and rolling out a new one — “America’s Navy: A Global Force For Good” — in hopes that it will appeal to today’s generation of youngsters.
When you picked up this week’s Navy Times — you did, right? — you might have seen an example of the Navy’s new print ads on page 2, right inside the cover. And here is one of the first TV spots, hosted on the Navy’s official YouTube channel:
What do you think? Will the idea of joining a “force for good” really appeal to the kids today? If you’re one of these kids today, does the new slogan make you want to join up?
Achieve full military cleanliness with WASHEX 09
September 23rd, 2009 | Life at Sea Morale The deckplates Video Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Proper cleanliness is important, according to the Navy, from the barrel of a 5-inch gun to your own hands. A new video demonstrates how to wash them the Navy way // Navy
Navy work is dirty work. Whether you’re elbow-deep in a gas turbine or handling delicate china teacups at a black-tie embassy reception in Jakarta, it’s gonna get messy out there. That, presumably, is what spurred the creation of this video demonstrating how you should wash your hands — the Navy way. ‘Cause you’ve been doin’ it wrong, shipmate!
According to the Navy video, you should spend enough time working in the soap lather to hum “Anchors Aweigh,” and then treat every surface in the restroom like a mysophobiac: Don’t touch the faucet after you’ve rinsed! You’ll get germs! Get a paper towel, dry your hands, and then use the towel to turn off the water. Then, use the towel to open and close the door to the head. When you have exited, you are authorized to dispose of the towel.
The only problem with this technique is letting the water run during the time it takes you to obtain a paper towel, conduct hand-drying operations, and then secure the flow of water from the tap. Leaving the tap on uses at least 3 gallons of water per minute — imagine the amount of water that would be wasted if everyone in the Pentagon washed their hands this way.
And aboard a ship? That could mean everybody’s favorite words underway: Water hours.
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?
From ‘greyhounds of the sea’ to surface boomers?
September 18th, 2009 | Ballistic missile defense Life at Sea Morale Science and technology Ships Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
The destroyer The Sullivans, one of three East Coast warships scheduled for the Aegis BMD upgrade, could be tasked with a BMD cruise in European waters // MC2 Daniel Barker/ Navy
The Navy’s cruisers and destroyers got a new mission this week after President Obama’s announcement about his changes to U.S. ballistic missile defense goals. Designed as multi-mission combatants with enough firepower to level a city or bring down an air force — at the same time — two or three of the Navy’s Aegis warships instead will serve as BMD barges, loaded up with SM-3 missiles and ordered to patrol the North Sea and the Mediterranean. Starting in 2011, two or three must be on station protecting Europe at any given time.
Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described his vision Thursday for why the Navy should get the assignment:
A single Aegis can carry a hundred-plus or minus a few, depending on their mission configuration, of the SM-3. So this is a substantial addressal of the proliferation of the threat that we’re seeing emerge.
It would also be a substantial change for an Aegis warship’s load-out, which usually is a smorgasbord of SM-2, SM-3, Evolved Sea Sparow, anti-submarine and Tomahawk missiles. And it would be an even more substantial change for the ship’s crew, which would have a deployment more like a ballistic missile sub than a surface ship. Instead of swashbuckling high-seas adventure and visits to exotic ports, the ships will steam a box.
Or will they? Navy officials on Thursday had no details for what the new Aegis in Europe commitment will look like. Maybe a BMD cruise in the Med would be nothing but luxury — a sunshine circuit of Rivera, Italian and Greek port visits.
What do you think? You’ve got to have at least three cruisers or destroyers sailing around Europe at any one time. How would you set up the deployments?