We're trying to find out more about the colorful artwork on the tail of this H-60 Seahawk helicopter, observed in Port-au-Prince // Sheila Vemmer / Staff

Check out the highly colorful, highly unusual tail on this S or MH-60 Seahawk, which was snapped at the airport in Port-au-Prince by veteran Navy Times lenswoman Sheila Vemmer. This is for all you rotor-heads out there: Do you recognize this helo? We’d like to find out what squadron it came from and learn more about its awesome tidal-wave-and-octopus livery.

If you can help, please leave a comment below or drop us a line at the Inbox of Excellence.

Thanks to this weekend's snowstorm, the crew of the destroyer Cole got an extra weekend at home before a seven-month deployment // MC2 Joshua Glassburn / Navy

Your friends at Military Times, just like everybody else here in the National Capital Region, have been beaten down by this weekend’s record snowstorm. Cars are caked with ice, their doors frozen shut; the roads have either become impassable with slush or turned into dangerous, friction-free runways; and even Scoop Deck’s favorite deli, around the corner from the Center of Excellence, is closed today “because of extreme weather.”

However, you can say this for the storm: It gave the crew of the destroyer Cole a few extra hours to be home with their families and friends over the weekend. The ship was originally scheduled to sail last Friday for a seven-month pirate-patrol/maritime security mission, but the departure was postponed because of worries about snow. Unpleasant as it can be to say goodbye to loved ones going away in a big warship, it sounds even worse to do so in a driving snowstorm. A spokeswoman for Surface Forces Atlantic confirmed this morning the Cole was on schedule to leave today.

Hope they didn’t have a lot of snow to shovel off … it was hard enough to get cars loose this morning — imagine trying to clear off a destroyer.

Now you can use the image of a naval hero when you send a birthday card to your aunt // MCC John Lill / Navy

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that you sent and received messages written on paper, taken or delivered once a day, by a federal employee, six days a week. (Even though you can reach everyone you know instantaneously using cheap, almost universally accessible consumer electronics technology.) Well, you’d need some kind of other, smaller piece of adhesive paper indicating you had paid for your message to travel from you to its recipient, right? Right. So what’re you gonna use, some kind of picture of a flower? No, that’s why you need these guys.

The Navy and the Postal Service on Thursday unveiled four new “stamps” — as the smaller paper proofs-of-purchase are known — with the images of some guys who should be very familiar to readers of the Deck. Vice Adm. William Sims, Adm. Arleigh Burke, Lt. Cmdr. John McCloy and Ship’s Cook 3rd Class Doris Miller are all pictured on the Postal Service’s new set of stamps, enabling you to include a little bit of Navy when you mail in the check for the gas bill. Unless you pay it online.

Navy Undersecretary Bob Work pointed out this week that for the cost of one destroyer, you can get a whole Riverine Squadron. This is RivRon 2, in Iraq, in 2007 // Navy

Our high-end colleague Antonie Boessenkool has a must-read story about some of the remarks that Navy Undersecretary Bob Work has been making this week out in San Diego, on his views of the Navy’s future budget and strategy needs. Take this gem, for example:

“The bottom line is, the [irregular warfare] stuff doesn’t cost a lot,” Work said. “You can buy a riverine [naval boat] squadron for a lot cheaper than you can buy a DDG-51 [destroyer]. … If you look at the increasing capacity for irregular warfare that we’ve had since 2006, it’s very, very impressive.”

But the fight for budget dollars will get tougher in future years as the U.S. government turns its attention to deficit reduction, Work said. The worst-case scenario is that that could change the nature of the Navy fleet, but that’s at least a far-off possibility….

“The whole competitive dynamic in the naval competition for the last 100 years has been based on a dominant Navy, a global Navy,” he said. “And if we lose that … then regional powers could actually start to say, ‘OK, I’ll take you out. I’ll actually get into a competition with you.’ We don’t want to do that, so I think the debate will be, at what point do you have to say we just can’t keep a global Navy? We’re not there yet.”

And that’s not all — wait’ll you read the historical context Work gave for the Navy’s enduring shipbuilding woes:

“Quite frankly, the Department of the Navy lost its technical authority in the ’90s. We lost too many professionals and we didn’t have a disciplined requirements process. It became more a thing where you could hang as many requirements on a specific ship as you wanted rather than a disciplined process” involving tradeoffs in requirements.

“We lost the ability to tell when our programs were really in trouble, because we didn’t have the right [amount] of oversight,” he said. “We lost the expertise to say, ‘We’re now in trouble. How do we fix it?’

Check out the full story here.

Lance Cpl. Tyler Woodard, of the 22nd MEU, swung with a friend Monday in Port-au-Prince // MC3 Samantha Robinett / Navy

The Haiti humanitarian relief mission no longer dominates the cable-news TV networks these days, and the Navy has already withdrawn some of the ships — notably the carrier Carl Vinson — that were first to respond. That doesn’t mean the work has stopped, though. The Bataan and Nassau Amphibious Ready Groups, and the 22nd and 24th Marine Expeditionary Units, are still on station hauling supplies, distributing aid and helping out with the recovery.

“Professionals study logistics”: With the dock landing ship Ashland tied up at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,  sailors and Marines broke down palleted shipments from ISO containers and loaded them aboard. Gators like Ashland, designed to send Marines ashore against a contested beach, have instead been tasked as cargo ships, picking up supplies and using their landing craft to deliver them. // Navy

When supplies reach the task force off Haiti, they’re broken down again and often hand-delivered, as was the case for these air crewmen from HSC 26, the “Chargers,” who carried food and medicine from their MH-60S Seahawk onto the hospital ship Comfort. // MC2 Kristopher Wilson / Navy

Big-birdfarm: The amphibious assault ship Nassau cruised off the Haitian coast and displayed its aviary of really large aircraft, including MV-22 Ospreys and CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters. Organizers have prized both as useful for delivering large quantities of supplies; the Nassau’s Ospreys have even flown cargo flights from Gitmo straight to Haiti. // MC1 W. B. Swoboda / Navy

The Royal Navy aircraft carrier Illustrious trained in 2007 with the U.S. carriers Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman. British dependence on U.S. seapower could increase as the U.K.'s defense woes endure // MC2 Jay Pugh / Navy

In addition to Anglophilia and a frank admiration for the tremendous heritage of Nelson, Jellicoe, et al.,  Scoop Deck likes to write about the Royal Navy because a case could be made that it represents a possible future for the U.S. Navy. Cut, shrunk, starved, downsized and sometimes humiliated over the past 30 years, today’s lot for the ships that fly the White Ensign is what happens, some argue, when people who stop caring about or even understanding seapower see no problems with letting it atrophy. Advocates worry about populations coming down with “sea blindness.”

Things for the U.S. Navy aren’t nearly as dire yet, and the latest step under consideration in Great Britain is inconceivable for the U.S. military: British commanders are considering merging their three services — the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force — into some kind of new mutant super-service, according to this must-read story in The Telegraph. As an added bonus, the piece quotes a man with a hilarious name: Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the Defence Staff:

[Said Stirrup]: reorganising the services could be part of a radical reordering of the country’s defences. The air force is thought to be the service most likely to lose out in any restructuring. Sir Jock spoke as ministers published a green paper conceding that Britain cannot afford all of its current defence commitments, and will in future become more reliant on allies like the US and France to conduct military operations.

On that score, there’s another story in the U.K. today about how the Royal Navy will ask France to contribute escorts for its two new aircraft carriers, because the British likely won’t be able to afford them.

Which brings up the other reason why it’s worth paying attention to whatever happens with the U.K. military services — if British ships get into a jam out there somewhere, American sailors could be called in to get them out of it.

DARPA's unmanned "robo-frigate" will be designed to track quiet diesel-electric subs, like this Russian Kilo-class boat, while providing continuous updates of their location // NATO

In keeping with the long-term trends in the fleet, this was only a matter of time: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking to build a completely unmanned surface ship that will cruise the oceans looking for submarines. DARPA has a request for proposal out this week on an “Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel” — or as The Register succinctly termed it, a “robo-frigate” — with some of the following characteristics:

• “Clean sheet” design “based on no person stepping aboard at any time in its operating cycle.”
• “Size optimized for mission requirements with disproportionate performance for displacement relative to conventional surface platforms.”
• “Sufficient range for independent theater or global deployment.”
• “Optimized for quiet diesel electric submarine track and trail; not a wide area ASW search system.”
• Ability to localize, track and trail a sub target while continuously reporting its location.

The RFP does not say that DARPA wants the robo-frigate to be able to launch a torpedo on an enemy sub; presumably, if it comes to that, it would call in a P-8 Poseidon or a surface ship to do the actual fighting. (Then again, if you built a robo-ship with a Fire Scout-sized flight deck and equipped the UAV with a Mk 54 torpedo, you’re in business.)

So what you’ve got here is a surface sonar platform that you could make only a few hundred tons — or smaller — that the Navy will keep at sea for weeks or months listening for Iranian Chinese North Korean Russian other navies’ SSKs, constantly reporting their locations. That’s not just a new surface ship, it’s an entirely new Navy mission.

Sailors today have already seen the implications of the Navy’s ever-shrinking crews — what do you think about the Pentagon designing a ship that will go to sea with no people at all?

Scoop Deck just spent an awesome week with the hard-working staff at Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tenn. You’ll be seeing the fruit of this visit in coming editions of Navy Times. In the meantime, here are a few comments that really caught our attention:

1. “We receive and process 7 million record updates annually.” – Dwight Stanton, deputy, Personnel Info Management Department. (For the record, that’s more than 19,000 letters every day. The personnel bubbas told me this mail alone weighs in at 130,000 pounds annually. That weight is equal to 356 links of anchor chain, 52 Humvees, three pre-boneyard F-14s, or one Trident II missile.  So if they don’t get your fix in 24 hours or less, well, just keep that in mind.)
2. “During boards, we only work half-days. That’s 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.” – Capt. Eric Anderson, director of Officer Career Progression
3. “We must have rock-solid integrity in the promotion system.” – Capt. Leo Falardeau, a 38-year Mustang who heads up Career Progression.
4. “Eleven ensigns are needed to build one captain.” – Capt. John Schultz, head of Military Community Management.
5. “Comparing the Navy’s promotion system to the other services is like comparing apples to bicycles.” – Katie Suich, Public Affairs Office
6. “Why do we treat people like they’re going into a different Navy?” – Cmdr. Daniel Harris, director of the Career Transition Office, describing new efforts to make the active-to-reserve transition easier.
7. “Up until 1996, everyone was a water-walker.” – Chris Zaller, director of the Selection Board Support Division, on changes made to correct grade inflation.

"Keeping my hands steady at the helm, I will pilot the ship of state to smoother, safer waters, comrades!" // davno.ru

The drumbeat continues online for including the Pentagon — with Navy programs inevitably singled out — in the federal government’s proposed spending freeze over the next three years. By continuing to increase the budget for the Defense Department even as the rest of the country feels the squeeze, the U.S. government is as bad as old Soviet Union, the argument goes.

Or so editorialized the Orange County Register, even as it praised Defense Secretary Robert Gates for “cutting” DDG 1000 — Do people not understand the Navy is still building three of them? And that Navy officials made the cuts themselves months before Gates’ infamous announcement last April? — in a piece that accused DoD of continuing the us v. the U.S.S.R. mentality:

What we have is a military still built to meet the challenges of the Cold War some two decades after the Cold War ended. With no prospective enemy that comes close to posing a challenge in air or naval power, in an era when the challenge comes from stateless terrorists who can best be countered by improved intelligence, nimble special forces and relatively inexpensive unmanned drone aircraft, we are spending as if the Soviet Union were still around and threatening us on every front.

The comparison came up again in a comment over at New Wars, which linked to another post with a specific list of weapons or programs the Pentagon should pare back. Specifically, guest blogger Lawrence J. Korb wrote that the Navy should only build two Zumwalts and just one Virginia-class submarine per year, to save money.

What say you? Is the Obama administration running the Pentagon as though we were still in the bad old days?

MC2 Mike Lenart / Navy

ABH3 Marcialiced Arrendondo, left, and ABAN Christina Marszalek built a snowman from the accumulation on the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge last week while the ship was underway off the East Coast. The concept of building a snowman on a big-deck gator immediately brought to mind another awesome idea: Wouldn’t it be cool if they set up this snowman beneath a Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier as it came in for a vertical landing? How long would it take for it to the plane’s jet engine to vaporize poor BMSN Frosty?

MC2 Aaron Burden / Navy

Oh yeah, we’ve got ‘em. The Navy’s new 30-year shipbuilding plan is online here and the Navy and Air Force “aircraft investment plan” is online here. Both links are .pdfs.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

H/T: @defense_news

The results of a search Tuesday on the Navy's excellent photo site // Screen-grab by Scoop Deck

Ah, the advanced next-generation cruiser known as CG(X) — we hardly knew ye. Sure, some people knew ye very well — 500 pages well, in the fabled analysis of alternatives that only appeared once a year, on fire, on the horizon off Ocracoke. But for the rest of us, this is as much of an obituary as we’ll get for the massive, maybe-nuclear surface combatant that never was:

CG(X)

The Department proposes to terminate the CG(X) program. This decision was driven by affordability considerations. Instead of procuring CG(X), the Navy is considering other options including maturing the air and missile defense radar program and using technologies from other kinds of ships such as DDG-1000 and DDG-51 destroyers.

The Navy Department’s top budget officer, Rear Adm. Joseph Mulloy, told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that he didn’t know exactly what kind of savings the Navy’s program had realized from the cancellation of CG(X): “Whatever money was laid in the plan was harvested out of it,” he said.

The Navy’s current strategy is to combine the SPY-3 radar from the Zumwalt class with the latest Advanced Capability Build-edition of the Aegis system on an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer hull, Mulloy said. They’ll start design work in fiscal 2014 on the “radar test ship,” as he called it, and try to build it in fiscal 2016.

The massive .pdf file with the Navy’s 2011 budget is online here, but be advised that it can take a few moments for that bad boy to load up.

The carrier Nimitz and its strike group pulled into Phuket, Thailand this week, where "ladyboys" are less of a problem, according to local reports // MC1 David Mercil / Navy

We turn again to our favorite Thai newspaper, the Phuket Wan, which has been covering this week’s port visit of the carrier Nimitz as only it could. When last we left Phuket and its great online daily, the site was covering the plague of “ladyboys” — yes, they’re what they sound like — who were attacking sailors during a visit by the carrier Ronald Reagan. That’s bad for business in a tourist town like Phuket, so authorities have worked to get the problem under control:

Local police are expected to take measures to ward off the counter-invasion of katoey ladyboys that has greeted the increasing number of visits by American warships recently… Security is expected to be increased but there have been no incidents so far as the US Navy opts to make Phuket its favorite stopping off spot in South East-Asia.

And the visiting crews won’t just be sampling Phuket’s… ah… nightlife, according to another report; sailors from the frigate Rentz and the destroyer Pinckney are scheduled to paint classrooms and help out at a city school.

There’s more — the Nimitz Strike Group won’t have the spotlight in Phuket all to itself for very long, as the Wan (which means “day”) put it:

A huge nuclear powered aircraft carrier, one of the world’s biggest warships, is difficult to upstage. But a star performer just as impressive and even more grand is due to arrive at Phuket on Wednesday, when the cruise liner Queen Mary 2 docks.

Sure, QM2 is a beauty, but there is definitely something to be said for haze gray, too.

The Royal Navy, under the command of Adm. Horatio Nelson, engaged the French and Spanish fleets in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 // UK National Maritime Museum

Normally, the Olympics would be of absolutely zero interest to Scoop Deck, but a story today out of Great Britain — site of the 2012 summer games — includes a neat item: Organizers want to use the games, and a bureaucratic reshuffling in the Ministry of Defence, to attract Olympics visitors in London down to Portsmouth to see Nelson’s grand flagship, HMS Victory.

According to this story in The News of Portsmouth, the fate of the Victory was in doubt as recently as last year, when MoD conducted a review about how to maintain the ship over the long term. (It’s not clear if the Ministry’s reviews go “from soup to nuts,” as is the cliche in our Pentagon.) Decision-makers decided to give HMS Victory to the new National Museum of the Royal Navy, whose director told the newspaper the ship could be the centerpiece of many attractions that would bring international visitors  down from the games in London.

A day touring HMS Victory, which can fire a 52-gun broadside, does sound much, much more fun than watching some guy throw the shot put.

The crew of the Green Bay, seen here on their commissioning day, is set to take on a squad of middle-schoolers in a geography bee this month // MC1 Jose Lopez, Jr / Navy

In the latest trial for the salty crew of a mighty U.S. warship, sailors from the amphibious transport dock Green Bay are getting ready to take on their biggest challenge yet — middle school kids.

Scoop Deck’s corporate cousins at the Green Bay Press Gazette report that sailors from  Green Bay, the amphib, will take on kids from Green Bay, the place, in a geography bowl scheduled for Feb. 12, answering questions via satellite link. The Navy guys already have one advantage: They’re dialing in from their sunny homeport of San Diego, while the contestants from Lombardi Middle School (motto: “we’re in-VINCE-able”) will be shivering up there in ice-choked Wisconsin.

Then again, the kids are probably studying furiously in preparation for the geography bee, while the sailors from the Green Bay have actual jobs busting rust, scraping paint and keeping an eye on the lube oil system. Whatever happens, chances are very good that everyone will enjoy themselves — the Green Bay seems to have a pretty good relationship with its namesake city; it went so far as to custom-decorate its capstans out of hometown pride.

(Just don’t tell the NFL.)

The Carl Vinson left the Haitian coast Monday and continued its trip around South America to its homeport // Navy

One moment you’re a 95,000-ton war machine just back from a refueling and complex overhaul, ready for a leisurely cruise around South America to your sunny West Coast homeport, and the next moment you’re steaming at top speed on a mission of mercy to a Caribbean island wrecked by a natural disaster. The life of a carrier is a life of extremes, and never has that been more true than for the Carl Vinson, which was excused today after spending half of January on station as a mobile airport for helicopters flying relief missions over earthquake-stricken Haiti. Also cut loose were the cruiser Bunker Hill — which will ride shotgun for Vinson on their trip to San Diego — the destroyer Higgins and the survey ship Henson.

This Navy story has the latest fun-facts about Carl Vinson’s accomplishments in the Haiti rescue mission, including 2,200 sorties by its aircraft, delivering more than 166 tons of food, 89,000 gallons of water and 38,700 pounds of medical supplies, although, as Galrahn has pointed out, the more attention you pay to the official Haiti aid statistics, the more confused you’ll be.

Here’s another one to make things even more complicated: Scoop Deck asked Rear Adm. Joseph Mulloy, who gave the Navy’s budget brief Monday at the Pentagon, about the cost implications of the Haiti mission to the Navy’s operations and maintenance account. He said the Pentagon’s latest figures showed the Navy’s “burn rate” for Haiti was about $3 million per day, although there were no estimates yet for a total cost because the response is ongoing. Mulloy also said the cost of the response was expected to shift as high-price, big-ticket assets like Carl Vinson and the Aegis warships retire, leaving behind the Nassau and Bataan amphibious ready groups and the panoply of Coast Guard and Military Sealift Command ships that will likely be needed off Haiti for several weeks more.

Vinson arrived off Haiti on Jan. 15. Not counting Monday, that’s 16 days on station. Sixteen times $3 million is $48 million. That’s not including the $100 million President Obama has committed to humanitarian aid for Haiti. But never fear, Mulloy said — the Pentagon was reprogramming about $400 million for Southern Command to provide stopgap funding for the Haiti rescue operations. So if the “burn rate” remains constant — and in reality it’s likely to decrease without the four ships that have already left — SouthCom will have enough money for just over 133 more days of Haiti operations. Then again, this is Pentagon math we’re attempting here, so who knows how the numbers will actually come out in the end.

AMT2 Lee Fenton of HITRON took aim with his .50 caliber sniper rifle at a mock smugglers' boat during a training event in Florida last March. The Freedom is training up in airborne use of force before sailing on its its trial deployment later this month // PA2 Bobby Nash / Coast Guard

Even before the littoral combat ship Freedom touched saltwater, people were talking about how it could work with the Coast Guard on counter-drug operations in the Caribbean — up to and including the notion that the Coast Guard would buy its own LCSes so it could have them full-time. Since Freedom and the Coast Guard’s first national security cutter, the Bertholf, have gone from concepts to actual ships and done actual things at sea, people don’t talk as much anymore about a Coast Guard LCS.

Still, every indication is that Freedom will be doing lots of Coast Guard missions during its trial deployment to the 4th Fleet area of responsibility; it will even have a Coast Guard boarding team for part of its cruise. If Scoop Deck were a betting blog, it’d lay good money on the notion that Navy commanders really want some exciting FLIR video of Freedom using its 45-knot sprint speed to chase down cocaine traffickers, then launching its Coast Guardsmen to finish off the take-down.

And those aren’t the only tools it’ll have: According to this Navy announcement, Freedom is undergoing “counter-illicit trafficking and airborne use of force training and certification” during a visit to Naval Station Mayport, Fla. So does that mean Freedom’s own MH-60S Seahawk helicopter will be firing on drug boats? Or that the ship will be collaborating with the MH-65C Dolphins of the Coast Guard’s Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron — aka HITRON?

Whatever happens, it sounds like the makings for some thunder in paradise.

"Thanks for savin' me, sailor -- hey, did you hear I've got a book coming out?" // MC3 David Danals / Navy

This week the Center of Excellence got a truckload of “advance uncorrected proofs” of “A Captain’s Duty,” a forthcoming memoir by Richard Phillips, the merchant captain saved by the Navy last year after he was taken hostage by Somali pirates. In his cover photo, Phillips wears a command baseball cap (although not a Pirate Brigade cap) from the destroyer Bainbridge, which was instrumental in his rescue.

Phillips’ book is full of new details about his ordeal.

According to his account, Phillips made himself a real pill for the pirates. He tried to escape the infamous lifeboat and talked back to them even as they held him at gunpoint;  once, when he pulled off his blindfold, a pirate slapped him across the face. “What are you going to do,” Phillips says he spat back — “shoot me?” Later, he shouted at the pirates that they were “going to pay for this, they were going to die in this boat and they were nothing but pirates. They hated that word.”

The pirate leader screamed at Phillips to shut up. “I won’t shut up,” Phillips says he said. “You’re nothing but freaking pirates and that’s how you’re going to die.”

In point of fact, he was correct: Three simultaneous shots fired by three SEAL snipers saw to that.

One note: Although the Navy said at the time that the snipers fired because they believed the pirates were leveling their weapons at Phillips, he makes no mention of that in “A Captain’s Duty.” Instead, he says he was about to get into a makeshift bed on the floor of the lifeboat when the now-famous take-down happened.

Also, when Phillips was flown from Bainbridge to the amphibious assault ship Boxer, he asked for, and got, a beer. In fact, sailors brought him a whole cooler full of beer, he wrote.

Here’s another interesting item from the promotional material that accompanied the “advanced uncorrected proofs:” There’s a movie deal in all of this.

According to information from publisher Hyperion, Columbia Pictures has optioned the movie rights with a group of producers that includes actor Kevin Spacey. Which raises the crucial questions: Who should play Phillips? Who should play Bainbridge skipper Cmdr. Frank Castellano? What high-speed young actors should play the anonymous SEALs who saved the day?

A camera crew from "National Geographic Explorer" interviewed Ensign Eric Julius of NMCB 74 at Camp Leatherneck in September // MC2 Michael Lindsey / Navy

Here are the ingredients for a TV program you can set your watch by: Start with a bunch of Devil Dogs from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Unit having some fun in the sun over in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, throw in some Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 74, and get National Geographic there to catch it all on film.

That’s what you can look for out of “National Geographic Explorer: Camp Leatherneck,” which is scheduled to air this Sunday. It’s the product of a visit to the Marines’ little patch of paradise by a Geographic film crew last September, and should have some good Seabee parts, judging by this story:

Mags Miller, a producer for the documentary, said that her directive came shortly after the head of National Geographic visited Camp Leatherneck with the National Security Advisor General James Jones about two months ago. According to Miller, he was absolutely amazed by the camp…

“From what I’ve heard and seen, it’s the Seabees who physically built the berms up and did the billeting in not so secure areas,” Miller said. “Without the Seabees, I don’t think the Marines would be able to have a camp like Leatherneck.”

If you can catch the show when it airs this weekend, come back here and let us know what you thought in the comments.

Information Technician 2nd Class Jose Estrada, from the 270-foot cutter Tahoma, rushes an injured Haitian girl to an awaiting Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter Jan. 19 in Killick.//PA3 Brandyn Hill/Coast Guard

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen took time out Thursday to give Coast Guardsmen a well-deserved pat on the back for being the first responders after the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti. The Coast Guard deployed 1,000 service members, eight cutters, five planes and five helicopters over the past two weeks.  The service also stood up a Homeland Security Task Force in Miami to help evacuate American personnel in Haiti.

In a five-minute video on his blog, Allen thanked service members:

“There will be difficult times in the days and weeks ahead, but I feel our men and women are up to the challenge…You have performed superbly and I thank you.”

Actress Michelle Rodriguez, who plays a space-helo pilot in "Avatar" signed the helmet of a real-life Navy helo crewman aboard the cruier Hue City // MC2 Gina Wollman / Navy

Judging by the box office receipts, every human being on the planet has now seen “Avatar” at least once, so there’s no worry about spoilers: In the far-off sci-fi planet where the movie takes place, gruff men with high-and-tight haircuts and digital camouflage uniforms really do a number on the planet’s indigenous population of Native Americans sexy cat people.

Viewers massaging their temples after the punishing, three-hour sensory Götterdämmerung might think that director James Cameron was criticizing the U.S. military by using a Vietnam War allegory built around space-Huey helicopters and white-guy grunts destroying the space forest. Not so, he says — he gave our shipmates at Marine Corps Times a detailed interview defending “Avatar” and the Marine Corps — and said the same thing to the sailors of the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and cruiser Hue City, according to this Pentagon story:

Finally, Cameron commented on the critics who said “Avatar” was anti-military. He disagreed completely, saying the movie’s main character is a strong-willed Marine who is courageous and dedicated and demonstrates he can adapt and overcome the odds to fight for what he believes in — just like the military today.

There, see? In addition to the warships at sea, Cameron and several of his actors visited sailors and their families at the headquarters of 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

Cmdr. Ed Thompson gets today’s coveted Ship Photography Prize.  The cruiser Shiloh, silhouetted against a sunset in the South China Sea, is looking powerful, peaceful, menacing and mysterious all at once. This shot could be the background of a movie poster — and Scoop Deck would line up to see a movie about a U.S. Navy cruiser — or the cover of an adventure novel. Click the image for a high-res version.

The amphibious assault ship Bataan stood off the coast of Haiti this week as its crew and Marines contributed to the international rescue mission // MC2 Julio Rivera / Navy

Y’never know what’s going to pop up in a Google Alert these days: From the risible-and-disappointing file comes this gem about the amphibious assault ship Bataan — whose aircraft, crew and landing craft have been working nonstop helping with the humanitarian crisis in Haiti — conducting secret “experiments” on the “prisoners” kept aboard.

Bataan actually did transport terror suspects back in the day, and according to the “Islam Times,” it has kept that assignment:

The ship’s flat hold bottom, designed to accommodate troops for disembarkment, has been equipped with cages. Prisoners are subjected to the same experiments as in Guantánamo… It appears highly unlikely that the prisoners were taken to another location after the earthquake and that the ship was overhauled to allow for the transportation of troops.

Right, see, so, the U.S. was in such a hurry to deliver badly needed food, water and medicine to earthquake-ravaged Haiti that it didn’t have time to rip out the experiment-cages in Bataan’s “flat hold bottom,” and the ship had to sail with its poor victims still down there.

Oddly, Scoop Deck’s senior shipmate Mark D. Faram happens to have just left Bataan after almost two weeks aboard and in Haiti — and y’know, it’s the strangest thing! — he said he didn’t see any of that.

“I’ll admit the evidence is overwhelming, but I didn’t see any cages or experiments going on,” Mark says. “Now, sometimes I felt like a prisoner — but that was it.”

One blogger calls for canceling the Zumwalt-class destroyers as part of President Obama's spending cutbacks //Image: Naval Sea Systems Command, photo illustration by Scoop Deck

In his speech last night, President Obama called for a spending freeze for most of the federal government, starting next year. He made exceptions for entitlement programs and “national defense” spending, but this has led many bloggers online to ask: Why? How come the Pentagon — and specifically, the Navy — gets to keep spending as before?

Change.org points out that when all the new U.S. troops reach Afghanistan after the plus-up there is complete next year, the cost to taxpayers will be around $82 million per day.

Online columnist Ivan Eland has some specific suggestions for how the U.S. could realize savings by not spending money on the Navy:

The Navy could cancel the CVN-79 aircraft carrier, terminate the building of littoral combat ships and LPD-26-class [sic] amphibious vessels, stop production of exorbitantly expensive DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers, and terminate production of SSN-774 Virginia-class submarines. The Navy has little relevance to the war on terror and, with existing equipment, has crushing dominance over any other fleet in the world.

So how about it? Is it fair that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or NASA, have to endure frozen budgets for the next three years, but the Pentagon gets to keep spending?

Seabees in Bahrain honed their fighting instinct. // MC2 Stephen Murphy / Navy

All you oldsters just never understood, did you — with your “fresh air,” “outdoor activities” and your “socializing” and such — the younger generation hasn’t been wasting time inside playing “Halo” all these years. It’s been developing itself into a legion of stone-cold killers!

Such is the conclusion from an Office of Naval Research scientist who finds that today’s gamers “perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than normal people that are non-game players,” according to this official DoD story:

[ONR program officer Ray] Perez described the war against terrorists as presenting significant challenges to [troops] on the ground because they must be able to adapt their operations to innovative and deadly adversaries who constantly change their tactics.

“We have to train people to be quick on their feet — agile problem solvers, agile thinkers — to be able to counteract and develop counter tactics to terrorists on the battlefield,” said Perez. “It’s really about human inventiveness and creativeness and being able to match wits with the enemy.”

Good point. For example, Scoop Deck’s normal load-out is the ACR (with M203 grenade launcher and holographic sight) and the M1014 shotgun (with suppressor) but sometimes, if it’s a big map, you need the WA2000 sniper rifle (with thermal scope) or if one of these other clowns calls in a helicopter gunship, you need a Stinger to bring it down. See? That’s flexibility across the full spectrum of make-believe warfare.

H/T: Joystiq

People, including these students at Naval Air Station Meridian, Miss., are the Navy's most expensive weapons // MC1 Jennifer Villalovos / Navy

Here are some great factoids from a presentation this morning at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments given by Todd Harrison, their senior fellow for defense budget studies. They’re all interesting, but if you don’t have time, here’s what you need to know: Running the Navy, and the rest of the military services, costs a ridiculous amount of money.

• Although overall end-strength across the four services has stayed relatively constant from 2000 to 2010 — with increases in the Army and Marines offsetting draw-downs by the Navy and Air Force — the over-all cost for personnel has gone from $90 billion in ‘00 to more than $150 billion in ‘10.
• Funding for personnel and operations and maintenance accounts for about 60 percent of the DoD budget, or about $322 billion in fiscal 10.
• Military health care costs grew at an annual rate of about 6.3 percent over the decade — that’s base cost, not including the expenses for care related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Over the past decade, here’s how the Navy’s spending on shipbuilding has broken down: 29 percent for submarines; 26 percent for destroyers; 21 percent for carriers; 15 percent for amphibious ships; and 9 percent for “other.”
• Harrison said he thinks it’ll be “difficult” to achieve a fleet of more than 300 ships with what he called “the fiscal realities of the future.” As in, it’s gonna cost more than the U.S. wants to pay.
• Six of the seven largest DoD satellite programs are over budget; together they are $35 billion over budget.
• The cost per troop — including Navy individual augmentees — in Afghanistan is $1.1 million per person, per year. Of that, only $66,000 goes for her or his pay, benefits and health care. The rest, Harrison said, is for the logistics to feed, fuel and house the troops.
• Of the cost per year for an individual sailor, less than half — 48 percent — is for her or his actual paycheck and immediate remuneration. Most — 52 percent — goes for long-term deferred expenses such as pensions and health care.

"So who've you got in the big game, admiral? Colts or Saints?" "I'm waiting for the QDR on that, sir." // MC1 Chad McNeeley / Navy

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a big-time, high-powered Washington defense reporter? This transcript will give you a taste:

YOU: Admiral, what is the Navy doing about its forecast for a fighter gap?

ADM: We’re waiting for a decision about the way forward on that in the Quadrennial Defense Review.

YOU: How should the Navy and Marines resolve their disagreement about amphibious lift?

ADM: That’s absolutely a critical question. We’re looking to the QDR for an answer.

YOU: Oh. Ah — sir, which do you prefer, Coke or Pepsi?

ADM: There is lots of mission-critical analysis on this question as a part of the QDR, and I’d rather wait until then to comment.

And now you know what it’s like. The only problem is, this year’s QDR, expected with the Pentagon’s budget submission next week, may not actually answer any of those pressing questions, a trio of experts said Tuesday.

In a briefing for reporters at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Jim Thomas, the center’s vice president for strategic studies, said he expects the 2010 QDR to provide “the most strategic consistency” for the U.S. since the Cold War — meaning very little will have changed wince the 2006 report.

Thomas expects “no significant force structure changes” — meaning forget all those the-sky-is-falling rumors about the Navy losing two carrier strike groups. Or maybe you shouldn’t. Who knows until the thing comes out?

“QDRs tend to be dumping grounds for all sorts of tricky things to be thrown in. That’s the beauty of a document that’s all things to all people,” Thomas said. “There’s a lot of hype about QDRs. We probably put too much emphasis on them.”

Sailors in the littoral combat ships' mission control centers -- where FC1 Ronila Ivory stood ready to fire Freedom's 57mm gun in November -- could begin listening for submarines if the ships get a towed array sonar // Lt. Ed Early / Navy

The littoral combat ships weren’t designed with an onboard sonar because the Navy wanted LCS to use the sensors aboard its unmanned vehicles — including a remotely operated boat and submarine — but that, apparently, could be changing: Naval Sea Systems Command’s Underwater Warfare Center at Newport, R.I. has a request for proposal (pdf) out this month seeking ideas from contractors about a variable depth sonar for LCS with a towed array, like the ones carried on cruisers and early Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

(Navy officials said that one reason they canceled DDG 1000 in favor of more DDG 51s was the Burkes’ better anti-submarine capabilities (pdf), even though the newer ones don’t have a towed array. Funny, that.)

As Scoop Deck waits for Navy officials to respond to requests for comment on this, it’s worth thinking through how an onboard sonar could change the way LCS could operate.

It could mean the ships might get their own torpedoes — as designed, they have no launchers, and an LCS must use its helicopter to drop on an enemy sub.

It could mean that LCS has an on-board backup in case its sub-hunting robot breaks, but it also takes away one of the main selling points for doing missions with remotely operated vehicles: Part of the strategy for LCS is to “take the sailor out of the minefield,” enabling the ship to stand off while its accessories do the work hunting for mines or enemy submarines. But if a ship has its own towed array, it could become a target, especially if it has arrived at its patrol box anywhere close to its 45-knot sprint speed, which seems like a great way to alert every submarine in the hemisphere that you’re there.

Also worth remembering: The Navy deleted the Remote Mine-hunting System from the anti-submarine LCS mission module at some point last year, which caused it to breach a congressional cap on program costs. Maybe a towed array is a relatively easy way to give LCS another sensor for finding submarines?

And one more thing: The Navy already issued a contract for some kind of wham-o-dyne robot arm to launch and recover boats from LCS. What ever happened to that?

Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Katie Blankenship of the dock landing ship Fort McHenry carried a Haitian patient to a helicopter to be flown ashore for more medical help on Sunday. The sick bays aboard many of the Navy warships in the Haitian task force — including the hospital ship Comfort — were at or near capacity at the beginning of the third week of the rescue operation. // MC1 Rachael Leslie / Navy

Why has it been so difficult to get the port of Port-au-Prince working again? This photo shows why. Wrenched seaward by the quake, one of the port’s main cranes is mostly underwater, as are several of the cargo containers it had previously unloaded. Here’s another view; in the second photo, if you look closely, you can see the hospital ship Comfort out on the horizon. // MCC Daniel Pearson / Navy

Marines returned to the amphibious assault ship Nassau after a flight aboard one of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit’s MV-22 Ospreys, flown by VMM-162, the “Golden Eagles.” Nassau’s Ospreys began flying Sunday to look for suitable landing spots — the big, twin-engined birds need more room to operate than traditional helicopters. // Sgt. Alex Sauceda / Marine Corps

]]> http://militarytimes.com/blogs/scoopdeck/2010/01/25/fleet-photos-haiti-edition/feed/ 0 http://militarytimes.com/blogs/scoopdeck/2010/01/25/more-management-lessons-from-a-carrier/ http://militarytimes.com/blogs/scoopdeck/2010/01/25/more-management-lessons-from-a-carrier/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:12:20 +0000 Phil Ewing http://militarytimes.com/blogs/scoopdeck/?p=3530

Marines from VMFA 312, the "Checkerboards" and a sailor from VFA 32, the "Swordsman," were looking pretty hard-core aboard the carrier Harry S. Truman last year. // MC2 Felicito Rustique, Jr. / Navy

Although it might not seem possible from the perspective of ABH3 Joe Deckplate — they make you do a FOD walkdown, button everything up, set flight quarters and then the Marine 53s never arrive because they broke down — outsiders are perpetually fascinated by the Navy as an exercise in good management.

Scoop Deck saw this not long after it stood up, when a carrier visitor pulled out “10 tips to run your business like a carrier” after a visit to the Nimitz in the Pacific. It has happened again, this time on the East Coast: An “executive coach” came back from a visit to the Harry S. Truman underway in the Atlantic with three lessons. Here they are, with excerpts; you can see the whole thing online here:

• People Can Handle More Than You Think: If you ever have the opportunity to hire someone who worked in an operations role on a carrier, hire them. They probably had more responsibility for life and death situations at age 19 or 20 than most of us will ever have in our lives.
• Systems and Processes Matter: It takes a synchronized effort among hundreds of people on at least four different decks and eight locations to land or launch a jet or plane every 45 seconds in a 4.5 acre space for hours at a time.
• Motivation is Adrenaline: The people on the Truman work long hours (12 to 18 hour shifts) in arduous conditions (noisy, confined and sometimes smelly spaces that require a constant focus on safety). And yet everyone we met or encountered (which was well into the hundreds of people) was motivated, energetic, courteous and, for the most part, seemed to be having fun.

Are these the same lessons you’d draw from life at sea? What would yours be?

An SH-60 Seahawk from HS-15, the "Red Lions" took off this week from the carrier Carl Vinson off Haiti, transporting cargo and passengers much the same way today's links bring updates to you // MC2 Adrian White / Navy

Sonar dippin’, Mk 54 torpedo droppin’, VERTREP cargo haulin’, Hellfire missile shootin’, humanitarian aid deliverin’ links, standing by to fly you to the carrier for your lunch with the admiral, where you’ll probably get a lot of interesting updates like these:

• The hospital ship Comfort has about 1,000 beds, 80 intensive care wards, 12 operating rooms and a burn-care unit, but the flood of patients from Haiti means the ship is already at capacity.
• A French amphibious ship, the Siroco, has joined the international humanitarian armada off Port-au-Prince.
• Sometimes all it takes is an email: After the cruiser Bunker Hill got a note from some people worried about a priest on an island off Haiti, the ship went to check on him and delivered more than 1,100 meals and 2,200 gallons of water.
• Here’s an unusual development in another ongoing Navy mission: The destroyer Porter came to the aid of a North Korean-flagged cargo ship this weekend after it was attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden.
• The plans are proceeding apace for the new Gulf Coast museum that organizers hope will include the cruiser Ticonderoga, the Navy’s first Aegis warship and first of the big dogs of the surface force.
• If you’re a chief or an officer and you’ve always wanted to look just like John Wayne’s Capt. Rockwell Torrey of “In Harm’s Way” — you’re in luck!

Sailors with Task Force 48 at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay are moving lots and lots of stuff to and through the international armada off Haiti // MCC Bill Mesta / Navy

The commanders of the Navy’s rescue operation have deputized amphibious ships to make cargo runs from Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where supply shipments are piling up on the airfield, to the shores of earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Rear Adm. Patricia Wolfe, who is commanding the logistics operation at Gitmo, told bloggers Saturday that she had just loaded up the dock landing ship Carter Hall with tents and some 5,000 cots, she said, which its landing craft will carry ashore. Other ships are carrying humanitarian rations and even sailors from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2.

The Navy isn’t doing anything it doesn’t already know how to do, she said, but the biggest challenge is just “throughput,” as she called it — managing the sheer volume of all the boxes and cases and pallets. Wolfe had some fun facts ready to go about the quantities of stuff the Navy has moved either through Gitmo to Haiti or sent directly to Haiti:

• 32,400 gallons of bulk water
• 440,000 bottles of water to 50 different places
• 1,200 pounds of medical supplies
• More than 2,000 Meals, Ready to Eat
• Navy ships have treated 444 patients and performed 35 major surgeries
• There are about 8,000 total sailors on the ground in Haiti, offshore, or supporting the operation at Gitmo

This notional illustration of a Chinese aircraft carrier appeared in an Office of Naval Intelligence report from last year // ONI

Here’s something to chew on over the weekend: An artist’s conception of what China’s aircraft carrier, probably now under construction, could look like when it hits the water.

This illustration comes from a July 2009 report by the Office of Naval Intelligence about the People’s Liberation Army Navy — the Chinese navy — that includes the latest unclassified details about China’s fleet. Scoop Deck had the privilege of meeting a few officers from ONI’s SABER division at the Surface Navy Association’s trade show earlier this month, as well as getting a physical copy of their report. You can see a pdf version online here.

So let’s take a quick look: ONI’s notional China-carrier looks as though it’s not nuclear — note the stacks under the red ensign, which look like they could be for gas turbine or steam boiler exhaust. It’s got a phased-array radar facing aft on the island, as well as a dome up top for some kind of satellite dish, although no TacAn like you’d see on an American warship.

Plus: Steam cats! That’s interesting. The notional sketches that often appear of a Chinese flattop show it with a Russian-style ski-jump bow (or doubling as a submarine) but this ship has a level deck. The striking power of the air wing comes from Su-33 Flanker Ds, it looks like, although maybe they’re a Chinese copy of the Russian originals.

The helicopters are Z9Cs, but that airborne early warning bird parked by the island looks a lot like an American E-2 Hawkeye — maybe, in the future, the U.S. Navy sold one to the Chinese. Or the Chinese found some other way to replicate it.

What do you think of the illustration?

An LCAC from ACU 4 came aboard the Bataan off Norfolk Jan. 14. Those same hovercraft began their first landings in Haiti on Friday. // MC2 Kristopher Wilson / Navy

Our man in Haiti, Mark D. Faram, was with the Marines and sailors aboard the first Landing Craft, Air Cushion hovercrafts that came ashore today, carrying supplies and armored vehicles. The Marines planned to use the four LAV-25s, from the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, to set up a perimeter around a new base camp, Mark wrote.

Meanwhile, the sailors from Assault Craft Unit 4 planned to spend Friday running regular shipments of supplies from the amphibious assault ship Bataan to the beach at Grand Goave.

Check out Mark’s story here.

The battleship Iowa, seen here with Task Force 38 at sea in the Pacific in 1944, is one of the ships illegally contaminating a bay in Calfornia as part of the rotting "ghost fleet." // NavHistHerCom

Scoop Deck gets a sick feeling sometimes when contemplating the circumstances of the battleship Iowa, a naval superstar moored at the end of a row of rust-buckets in the grandly named National Defense Reserve Fleet — aka the ghost fleet — at Suisun Bay, Calif. It’s hard not to connect the ship with another legendary mariner, Edmond Dantès, wrongly exiled as he rotted away in the infamous Château d’If.

The plight of the Iowa was driven home again this week when a federal judge ruled Thursday that the ships in the ghost fleet are disintegrating so badly they violate federal and state environmental laws. The case isn’t over yet — the state of California and environmental groups want to force the Maritime Administration, which oversees the ghost fleets in California, Virginia and Texas, to remove the ships. For now, though, the judge’s ruling confirms that the contaminants seeping off the old ships are hurting the bay.

You can see the full story here.

There may eventually be a silver lining for the Iowa, which planners in California hope to convert into a museum ship… although, as we’ve written before, that can be awfully tricky.

In the meantime, because this will be a highlight on any future tour, here is a photograph of Iowa’s bathtub — the only one installed on a U.S. warship. The Navy put it there for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s convenience when he took the ship to the Cairo and Tehran Conferences in 1943.

A hearing convened by Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., seen here in 2007 aboard the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, could have foreshadowed NavSea's announcement this week // MCSN Jon Dasbach / Navy

On Thursday, the program manager of the San Antonio-class gators announced at the Washington Navy Yard that several of the ships have lube-oil problems, one of them has a defective engine and every ship built on the Gulf Coast needs to be re-inspected because their pipes weren’t welded to Navy specifications. It wasn’t what the reporters who had been invited to the briefing at Naval Sea Systems Command expected to hear — they thought the day’s session was just going to be about the bearing problems that sidelined the latest LPD 17, New York.

But if you had known what to listen for, you could have picked up on an early hint this week that Navy and congressional types were in the loop on this situation. It came at Wednesday afternoon’s hearing on Capitol Hill in the form of some lighthearted banter between a witness before the seapower subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee and two of its members.

The defense analyst Loren Thompson was discussing the implications for the U.S. industrial base of various Navy shipbuilding policies, when he got into this exchange with Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine — whose district includes Bath Iron Works — and subcommittee chairman Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., whose district includes Northrop Grumman’s shipyard at Pascagoula, Miss. That’s one of the two yards where all pipe-welders and Navy inspectors had to be de-certified and re-certified last year because the Navy found so many problems with their work.

From the transcript:

THOMPSON:  Well, if — if we knew 10 years ago what we know now, we wouldn’t have built any DDG-1000s, and we would have built three or four DDG-51s in various upgraded variants instead. And we’d being doing it now and well into the future. Bath is not going to suffer. If the Navy had its way, it would send the service combatants to Bath.

PINGREE: We appreciate you saying that.

THOMPSON: Well that’s what the Navy tells me.

PINGREE: I’m sure the chair [Taylor] would differ, but I appreciate it.

Laughter/crosstalk

TAYLOR: Mr. Thompson, do you… I’m sorry, you are just way out of line.

PINGREE: We know Secretary Mabus would never let that happen.

THOMPSON:  As a matter of fact, he’s been quite vocal on maintaining the industrial base, so you’re right about that. But I think as a practical matter, Bath probably is not looking at any serious shortfall in workload going forward, given the fact that it’s got all of the Zumwalt class and will get some of the DDG- 51s.

When Pingree’s questioning was finished, Taylor moved on, thus:

TAYLOR: The chair thanks the gentlewoman and, as we’re coming upon the season of Lent, the chair is going to try to be forgiving to the gentleman from New England [Thompson] for making a very reasonable remark, however inaccurate.

Just as the dock landing ship Carter Hall prepared to offload supplies and troops offshore, so too do today's links bring the latest updates about the humanitarian mission in Haiti // MC2 Kristopher Wilson / Navy

Heavy-lift helo flyin’, cargo pallets loadin’, well deck floodin’, LCU launchin’, force-for-good-bein’ links, anchored offshore and ready to deliver the latest updates on the biggest Navy amphibious operation since Inchon.

• The U.S. is sending a second amphibious ready group to join the one already on station off Port-au-Prince and delivering shipments of food and medicine. The amphibious assault ship Nassau, the amphibious transport dock Mesa Verde and the dock landing ship Ashland are to arrive in the Caribbean within a week.
• The quiet professionals of the Coast Guard are continuing to evacuate Americans, deliver supplies and help clear the port of Port-au-Prince.
• Typically the Royal Navy would be a part of such a major international response to Haiti, The Times reports, but budget cuts mean Great Britain doesn’t have its normal naval presence in the Caribbean.
• How important is the port of Port-au-Prince to getting serious quantities of relief supplies into Haiti? Galrahn’s got a great post that talks about that and many other things. Sample factoid: 13 C-17 shipments = 1 USNS Sacagewea.
• Doctors aboard the hospital ship Comfort are peeved they haven’t been able to give more aid so far.
• Our salty senior colleague Mark D. Faram, on the ground with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, has some great shots of the Marines setting up their supply drop in Leogane.

Workers loaded supplies from the U.S. Agency for International Development onto the prepositioning ship 1st Lt. Jack Lummus this week outside Jacksonville, Fla. // Military Sealift Command

Were you wondering exactly what — in terms of actual stuff — all these ships are taking to Haiti? In a case study, Military Sealift Command has given a thorough accounting for one of them. Here’s what the maritime prepositioning ship 1st Lt. Jack Lummus, now docked at Blount Island Command, Fla., is taking aboard, among other things:

Lummus is loading supplies and equipment from both the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Marine Corps, as well as cargo from other U.S. government agencies.

USAID is providing more than 120 pallets of relief supplies, and more than 400 16-ounce bottles of propane for the shipment.

The Marine Corps is providing cargo to support the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit as it gives humanitarian assistance to the people of Haiti. The cargo includes dump trucks, bulldozers and other heavy equipment. The Marine Corps is also providing electrical generators, water purification units, lumber and building materials, and limited medical supplies.

In addition, the Army is providing three containers of port opening equipment, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is providing four medical resupply vehicles and more than 90 pallets of relief supplies, including kitchenware and plastic sheeting. The U.S. government is also providing containers carrying 24,000 gallons of gasoline and 24,000 gallons of diesel fuel. The ship will also transport Navy lighterage – motorized and non-motorized barges – to transport the Lummus’ cargo to shore.

The T-shirt in question is the 50/50 cotton/polyester version identified by “Soffe” in red letters on the collar label. Only the cotton version is authorized.

NEXCom has pulled the 50/50s from the shelf and is offering refunds (with receipt) or store credit (without receipt) for unworn shirts.

Interestingly, Navadmin 015/10 encourages sailors to retain (but not wear) the 50/50s “and await the outcome of a study to determine if it is suitable for wear in all/any environments.”

When will that study be out? I don’t yet know, but have asked the folks at Navy Personnel Command, so expect an answer very soon.

In the meantime, don’t come cryin’ if a chief grabs you up by the collar to see if you are 100-percent cotton. You’ve been warned.

It’s no secret the naval fleet has more gaps than O.J.’s alibi.

The Navy is lacking surface vessels, especially amphibs. Submarine and aviation gaps are on the horizon. Even the carrier fleet will drop below requirements for at least three years beginning in 2012.

Adding the crushing blow on this already sizable dog pile is the fact that SSBN(X) will cost $80 billion — which the Navy doesn’t have. Unless Congress coughs up the cash, the shipbuilding budget will be cut by half for a whopping 14 years.

Ouch.

Since it’s very unlikely the Navy will get everything it needs, the question of priorities comes into play. So what tops that list? Depends who you ask.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., sits on the House Armed Services subcommittee on seapower and expeditionary forces. He told me his priorities were SSBN(X) (and he is pushing to boost the funds to get it), upping the amphib fleet to 38, completing the down select on the littoral combat ship and getting more DDG 51s on line, especially for BMD.

The Chief of Naval Operations listed his priorities a little differently. During a flight to Mobile, Ala., on Saturday, he talked at length about the SSGN (X), F-35, DDG 51 and amphibs. But most conversations, from Haiti aid to mine warfare to anti-piracy, came back to the littoral combat ship.

“I’m very impatient in regard to LCS,” CNO said, calling it a top priority for the service. “I need numbers. We have a capability gap over our adversaries, but I need numbers.” (You can read the story here.)

That day he commissioned Independence, General Dynamics’ LCS version. The first LCS, Lockheed Martin’s Freedom, was commissioned Nov. 8, 2008. Next comes the choice between the two that will lead to the production of 53 more ships.

Where we go from here is anyone’s guess, but the coming weeks will be very telling. The House Armed Services subcommittee on seapower and expeditionary forces will discuss Navy force structure tomorrow at 3 p.m. And, of course, everyone anxiously awaits the Quadrennial Defense Review.

Stay tuned … this is going to get interesting.

Marine CH 53 Sea Stallions ferried the first troops ashore Tuesday from the amphibious assault ship Bataan. // MC2 Kristopher Wilson / Navy

Scoop Deck’s senior shipmate Mark D. Faram reports (by text message) that the first Marine elements from the amphibious ship Bataan and its small-deck companions are on the ground near Port-au-Prince.

They arrived yesterday and job one was to find places ashore where the ships’ amphibious craft and Marine helicopters could land. Mark got to ride along aboard a Marine CH-53 Super Stallion looking for landing zones, and you can see his story and photos online here. You can see official updates on Bataan’s Facebook page here.

One of the many unusual aspects of the Haiti humanitarian operation is that Marines aren’t the only ones flying 53s down there — Navy MH-53E Sea Dragons from Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 15, the “Blackhawks,” are flying supplies from the carrier Carl Vinson. Usually, Sea Dragons pull mine countermeasures sleds to clear “Q” routes so ships can get through minefields, but any big, loud (leaky) 53 can also carry lots of stuff.

Fixed-wing aviators have been tasked for the Haiti mission just like the rotor-heads. As described by this Navy blog post, E-2C Hawkeyes from VAW-125, the “Tiger Tails” and C-2 Greyhounds from VRC-40, the “Rawhides,” are taking command-and-control and resupply missions in the skies over Haiti. Normally those Hawkeyes would be orbiting high over a carrier strike group on lookout with their powerful radars, and the Greyhounds would be flying supplies and passengers out to the ship.

But this humanitarian mission in Haiti has forced everyone to adapt and improvise.

The Sea Stallion's seldom-seen Navy cousin, an MH 53E Sea Dragon, delivered bottled water to Haiti on Jan. 15. // MC2 Candice B. Villarreal / Navy

]]> http://militarytimes.com/blogs/scoopdeck/2010/01/19/haiti-update-gators-on-station/feed/ 1 http://militarytimes.com/blogs/scoopdeck/2010/01/19/the-perils-of-being-a-pirate/ http://militarytimes.com/blogs/scoopdeck/2010/01/19/the-perils-of-being-a-pirate/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:25:36 +0000 Phil Ewing http://militarytimes.com/blogs/scoopdeck/?p=3434

Any pirate can pirate anyone else -- including other pirates. These hijackers seized the cargo ship Faina in 2008 // Navy

Sometimes it’s dangerous to get what you want. In piracy the maritime risk-adjustment industry, for example, the goal is to get as much money as possible for the crews, vessels and cargo you seize. When you succeed, however, there can be unforeseen consequences — as when two pirates enjoying a good day at the office this week were reportedly killed for their day’s pay.

Here’s what seems to have happened: According to this report by The Associated Press, hijackers holding the Greek oil tanker Maran Centaurus off the Somali coast were attacked by a rival crew of pirates as they waited for an airplane to drop off their multi-million dollar ransom. The ship is fully loaded with crude oil, and the pirates seemed to grasp that a firefight on top of a giant petroleum bomb would be a career-shortening decision — so the pirates holding the ship called for help from the international anti-piracy task force!

A European frigate in the area sent its helicopter to scare off the second group of pirates, and with them gone, the ransom-drop went down as planned. But as the first group of Maran Centaurus hijackers were en route back to their pirate lair, they were attacked again — maybe by the same guys as before — and two men were killed in the ensuing gunfight. The reports aren’t clear about whether the second pirates were able to finally steal the ransom from the first group.

Pirates pirating pirates — what has this world come to?

H/T: Eagle1

Some friends of a fired CO are rallying support online.

Check out this Facebook page named “Support Capt. John Titus,” in honor of the commanding officer of the Navy Supply Corps School who was relieved of command on Jan. 8.

The page creators want people to send letters of endorsement to the chief of naval personnel to consider along with Titus’ detached for cause package.

Michael Aldrich, a supply officer with a Facebook page, posts on the wall “CAPT Titus ROCKS!!!!”

That’s the fired CO himself up there (second from the left) in a photo from the groundbreaking for the new supply corps school in Rhode Island back in 2008.

As of Monday afternoon, Titus’ page had 128 “members.”

The destroyer Higgins and the carrier Carl Vinson are two of the warships on station off Haiti as part of the international humanitarian mission there // MC2 Candice Villarreal / Navy

Vice Adm. D.C. Curtis, commander of Naval Surface Forces, complimented the ships and sailors responding to the crisis in Haiti in a message sent Saturday, a copy of which was obtained by Scoop Deck. Here’s what he wrote:

Godspeed and fair winds as you respond to this important mission in Haiti’s hour of need.  You and your teams’ Herculean efforts in responding on short notice are noted with pride and demonstrate the flexibility and agility of our surface fleet.  You represent the very best of our Navy and nation, and I know your presence will make a difference and offer hope to the Haitian population.  I look forward to hearing about all of your great accomplishments as the global force.

Crew members from HSC 9, the "Tridents," unloaded water from a Seahawk helicopter Saturday in Port-au-Prince // MCSN Aaron Shelley / Navy

The scale of the blue, green and white-with-red-stripe response to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti is huge — we’re maintaining a full list of all the units on station or en route that you can check out here, which we’ll be updating every time we get new information. How is your ship or unit involved with the operation? Let us know.

The MSC salvage ship Grasp arrived at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on its way to help repair the port of Port-au-Prince, so aid shipments arriving by sea can start flowing into the country // MCC Bill Mesta / Navy

At least three ships — the cruiser Bunker Hill and Military Sealift Command’s salvage ship Grasp and survey ship Henson — are on their way to Port-au-Prince to survey the earthquake damage to the port facilities there. The damage to piers and cranes from last week’s earthquake is complicating the delivery of U.S. and international aid, so rescue coordinators want to get the port working as quickly as they can.

But there’s another Haitian port that can accept big, deep-draft, ocean-going vessels, according to this report from Britain’s Guardian newspaper, linked from mega-blog BoingBoing. Despite last week’s earthquake, Royal Caribbean cruise ships are still arriving at the private peninsula of Labadee, some 60 miles from Haiti’s earthquake zone, so tourists can drink, jet-ski and take it easy.

This has led to calls online for the ships not to dock, or to go ahead because their fees help the economy, or for passengers not to disembark, etc. A better question is: Could Navy and international ships tie up at Labadee and use its pier to unload their food, water and medicine?

It would require the goodwill of Royal Caribbean, which leases the peninsula as its own private paradise, and as such isn’t set up to accept, break down and trans-ship cargo. Still, Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas was to deliver a shipment of food this week, and that ship is 1,112 feet long with a draft of 28 feet. MSC’s dry cargo and ammunition ship Sacagawea, which is on its way to Haiti with supplies, is 423 feet shorter and draws about two more feet of water. It has its own cranes on deck. Labadee isn’t ideally located relative to damaged areas, but paired with Navy or MSC helicopters, could it become a second front for delivering supplies?

The Marines arriving in Haiti this week will bring supplies, equipment and the means to bring it all ashore, including Amphibious Assault Vehicles // Navy

Scoop Deck’s shipmates Mark D. Faram and Colin Kelly, who are aboard the amphibious assault ship Bataan, report they and their small-deck gator escorts will start to arrive today off Haiti. Then things are going to get really interesting: The ships are carrying an array of supplies and equipment that their sailors and Marines don’t need a functioning port to deliver. They can fly them ashore in helicopters and take them in Landing Craft Utility boats, or LCUs, and Landing Craft Air Cushion hovercraft, or LCACs, as we call ‘em.

There’s more: The dock landing ship Gunston Hall is carrying 10 amphibious assault vehicles, which their Marine crews can swim ashore and use provide armored transport on the ground. “They will not only be able to go ashore on their own, but will be invaluable in navigating many of the side streets that are now impassible to most vehicles,” Mark wrote.

Bataan is also getting ready to take aboard patients in its sick bay, which was built to accommodate injured Marines brought back to the ship after an amphibious invasion.

Check out Mark Faram’s full story here.

SH-60 Seahawks of HS-7, the "Dusty Dogs," and HS-11, "the Dragonslayers" -- note the awesome lighting-striking-the-serpent emblem -- flew out to the carrier Carl Vinson this week to help with humanitarian operations in Haiti // MC2 Gary Granger Jr / Navy

Sailors up and down the East Coast are contributing to the Navy’s mission of helping out in Haiti, whether they’re checking jet engines on the helicopters that’ll be indispensable in distributing food and water, or bringing LCACs into well decks or loading up the invaluable Red Bull.

Navy Times will keep you up on the latest developments, and you can also keep tabs online with a lot of the commands themselves. For example, the carrier Carl Vinson arrived off Haiti this morning, and although its crew and air wing are probably pretty busy, they also will be posting updates on Twitter and Facebook about what they’re doing. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also has been posting about the Haiti mission on his Twitter page. Here’s a compilation of official government and military Tweets about Haiti.

What feeds and pages are you following? Leave your favorite links in the comments. How is your unit helping out with the rescue mission? We want to hear about it.

Whether sailors are launching Tomahawks or scrubbing the deck of the carrier Nimitz, it's really expensive to run the Navy, and costs keep going up. // MC3 Kenneth Abbate / Navy

Here are some great “data points” — as they call them in the Pentagon — about the enormous amounts of money it takes to run the world’s most powerful Navy. They come from PowerPoint slides presented by Rear Adm. Philip Cullom, director of fleet readiness for the Navy Staff:

• If you’ve ever wondered where the money goes to operate a warship, here’s how the costs break down: Acquiring it costs 45 percent; its crew (or “manpower,” as Cullom wrote) costs 27 percent; fuel costs 13 percent; and maintenance costs 15 percent.
• Since 1991, the consumer price index has increased by 59 percent. Private sector port depot rates have increased in cost by 49 percent. Military manpower costs have increased by 114 percent. Energy costs have increased by 292 percent.
• Cullom’s Navy fuel bill was $1.2 billion in 2007, he said. In 2008, he paid $5.1 billion for fuel on the year.

• “Optimistically, we’re looking at a 275-ship Navy — which is even smaller than today’s. It’s a troubling realization, but however we slice it, that’s the bottom line.” // U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., who said the Navy would never reach its goal of at least 313 ships unless it asked for and got more money from Congress.
• “[People think] somehow, when we’re done with Iraq and Afghanistan, we can get back to more regular forms of like-on-like warfare — a lot of that does need to be done, but the good old days aren’t coming back, and [attacks] are coming to the United States, I’m afraid, too. The test will come. It’s inevitable, and we need to be ready.” // Retired Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, who was on a panel asked to discuss the implications of  “hybrid warfare” for the Navy.
• “I keep a list in my book of all the boutique ‘warfares’ that are accumulating out there.” // Rear Adm. Philip Greene, who heads the Navy’s irregular warfare office in the Pentagon.
• “That’s the difference between the Coast Guard and the Navy. We can deploy our forces fast. We radioed the captain of the cutter and said, ‘go to Port-au-Prince.’ That’s what makes us unique.” // Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen, on why the lifesaving service could respond so quickly to the disaster in Haiti. Coast Guard vessels don’t need to wait for the national military chain of command to act; they can take new tasking immediately, he said.