US Navy "Bumper Cars"

Yesterday's remark about our navy playing bumper cars ... Vice Admiral John "Crash" Aucoin is going bye bye.

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy plans to remove from duty the commander of the fleet that has suffered four recent collisions in Asia and the deaths of a number of sailors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing U.S. officials.

Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, the three-star commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan, will be relieved of command on Wednesday in connection with four collisions since January, including two involving fatalities, two U.S. officials said, according to the Journal. It said Navy officials declined to comment.

To Cruise Or Not To Cruise

Here's an interesting take on the use of cruise missiles to take out damage the Syrian airbase.

From Navy Matters:

By now, you all know that the US launched a cruise missile attack against a Syrian airfield in retaliation for a chemical weapon attack by Syrian forces. I’m not going to address the quality of the evidence for the chemical weapon usage or the geopolitical aspects of the retaliation. What I’m going to address is the military lessons that can be gleaned from the open source information about the cruise missile attack itself.

[...]Airfield Weapon Density. The US launched 60 Tomahawks at a single, relatively small airfield. That seems like a lot of missiles especially when the runways were deliberately not targeted and other structures were deliberately avoided that would likely have been targeted in an all out attack. Still, this gives us some idea of the weapon density the US believes necessary to destroy a single, small base.

[...]Had this been an all out attack to totally destroy the airfield, presumably many more missiles would have been used. This gives us some insight into the Tomahawk weapon density needed to take out a facility. It’s higher than I would have thought. Given that our total Tomahawk inventory is somewhere around 4000 missiles, that should tell us something about our ability to wage an all out war and how long our inventory would last. This has to be worrisome given that Tomahawks cannot be quickly replaced from the manufacturer.

Apparently the writer is a retired Navy Commander. Apparently he is not impressed with the prowess of the Tomahawk cruise missile. These missiles cost about a million dollars a pop. Other estimates place our Tomahawk inventory at about 3500 missiles.

Loyce Edward Deen

November 5, 1944

A WWII Navy gunner is buried at sea in the plane he was killed in.

A Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber of VT-15 Torpedo Air Group, approaches and lands on the deck of the USS Essex (CV-9) during the Battle of Manila Bay, in World War II.

Upon landing, Lt. Robert Cosgrove (Pilot) and Sailor Digby Denzek (Radioman) can be seen in their respective forward and middle crew positions.

But the rear gunner position, occupied by Aviation Machinist Mate 2nd Class, Loyce Edward Deen (Gunner) has been completely destroyed by enemy 40mm shell fire. AMM 2C Deen was decapitated as a result.

As the aircraft is parked amongst others, with wings folded, sailors of the Essex take fingerprints and cut dog tags from the body of AMM2C Loyce Deen in the gunner position.

Captain Carlos W. Wieber, Commanding Officer of the Essex, and her crew, participate in funeral services on the deck. A chaplain conducts the services from beside the aircraft, where Loyce Deen’s remains in the gunner’s position have been shrouded.

More here.

Make Our Navy Great Again

President-elect Trump has a full plate in front of him. Everything in this country has turned to shit under the stewardship of the cartoonish Kenyan Avenger. And that includes our Navy, once the most vaunted fighting fleet in the world.

From Military.com:

The Navy's littoral combat ship is costing taxpayers billions more than budgeted, failing survivability assessments, and may never live up to the original vision for the program, a panel of Navy and government oversight officials told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

USS Independence and USS Coronado

The hearing, which focused on continued testing and acquisition of the small surface vessels, came at the close of a 12-month period in which five of the eight littoral combat ships in service have suffered major mechanical and engineering casualties. Navy officials have ordered dramatic program overhauls and reviews of ship employment and training in response to the breakdowns.

Not only are these almost half a billion dollar tuna boats broken, they are not expected to survive in a hostile war environment. Shock tests on the USS Milwaukee had to be canceled this past summer as it was feared that further testing would severely damage the ship. And these tests were well below expected combat conditions.

Davy Jones is rattling around in his coffin at the Naval Academy, just achin' to plant his bony foot up some admiral's ass. This is a disgrace.

USS Zumwalt - $4 Billion Down The Crapper

The Navy's newest is broken ... again.
They can't shoot the guns and now they can't make it go for the second time in a month.
I'm wondering if they can keep the damn thing afloat.
But - hey - they got queers and transgender freaks on board so we're good.
I'm so happy that the US Navy has its priorities straight.

The US Navy's newest destroyer broke down while transiting the Panama Canal, colliding with the Canal lock walls and forcing the $4 billion dollar ship to resort to a tow from a tugboat. The USS Zumwalt was towed to a former U.S. naval station in Panama where it will undergo emergency repairs. This is just months after a similar incident in September.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Every ship has a shake down cruise to iron out the bugs, but it''s not supposed to shake itself to pieces.

Story here.

Hold My Beer And Hang On

In The Navy

In the Navy!

You can sail the seven seas!

In the Navy!

You can use your ovaries!

In the Navy!

In the Navy!

USS Eisenhower

The Navy says a sailor who never reported being pregnant has given birth to a baby girl aboard an aircraft carrier sailing the Persian Gulf.

U.S. Naval Forces Central Command spokesman Cmdr. Bill Urban told the Virginian-Pilot the 7-pound infant was recently born on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf.

Both mother and daughter are doing well and were airlifted to a shore-based hospital in Bahrain.

They called the kid Ensign Houdini because no one can figure out how she got there.
I'll leave the seamen jokes to you guys.

Story here.:

Anchors Aweigh, my boys, Anchors Aweigh.
We've got plenty of college joys, even if your jam is gay-ay-ay-ay.
Through my last week on shore, I spread my chromosomes,
And if we meet once more, I'm hoping you never find where I call home.

Hundreds of Billions Spent On Defense, For What?

The US defense budget for 2016 is $573 billion. But what are we spending all this money on if our soldiers and sailors are sent in harms way with little or no means to protect themselves?

We spend billions on incredible war craft that don't work as promised. Their only purpose it seems is to enrich political donors.

The following article does not give me any confidence in our martial prowess at sea.

DURING war games played off the coast of Florida last year, a nuclear-powered French attack submarine, Saphir, eluded America’s sub-hunting aircraft and vessels with enough stealth to sink (fictitiously) a newly overhauled American aircraft-carrier, Theodore Roosevelt, and most of her escort. An account of the drill on a French defence-ministry website was promptly deleted, but too late for it to go unnoticed.

Nor was this French victory a fluke. In 2006, in what was very far from being a war game, a Chinese diesel-electric submarine surfaced near Okinawa within torpedo range of another American carrier, Kitty Hawk, without having been detected by that carrier’s escort of more than a dozen vessels and anti-submarine aircraft. And, from the point of view of carrier-deploying navies, things are threatening to get worse. Saphir, launched in 1981, hardly represents the state of the art in underwater undetectability; in the decade since the Okinawa incident diesel-electrics have become even quieter. For an inkling of the silence of the new generation of such subs when they are running on battery power alone, without their engines turning, Jerry Hendrix, a former anti-submarine operations officer on the Theodore Roosevelt, asks: “How loud is your flashlight?”

Moreover, submarines are spreading. Since the cold war ended, the number of countries deploying them has risen from a dozen or so to about 40. Many of the newcomers are not part of the Western system of alliances. Some are actively hostile to it. And more may join them. A secondhand diesel-electric boat—not state of the art, admittedly, but effective nevertheless—can be had for as little as $350m.

More here.

H/T Lucianne

Russian Navy Celebrates New Ships, US Navy Celebrates Sodomites

Russia is quietly rebuilding its navy. Evidences are their new nuclear subs and other surface vessels that are being built or have already become operational, like this submarine:

The Russian Navy’s first Project-885 Yasen-class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine, K-329 Severodvinsk, is set to deploy on its first combat training mission.

The new submarine recently completed operational testing after being accepted into service in June 2014. Prior to that, the boat had been undergoing pre-delivery sea trials since September 2011.

[...]Severodvinsk and her more advanced Project-885M sister ships are capable vessels. “We’ll be facing tough potential opponents. One only has to look at the Severodvinsk, Russia’s version of a [nuclear guided missile submarine] (SSGN). I am so impressed with this ship that I had Carderock build a model from unclassified data.” Rear Adm. Dave Johnson, Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA) program executive officer (PEO) submarines said during the 2014 Naval Submarine League’s symposium in Falls Church, Va. “The rest of the world’s undersea capability never stands still.”

The Russians are also introducing a new frigate into their naval forces.

The first in a new class of Russian guided missile frigate arrived on Thursday to Sevastopol marking the first time the Black Sea Fleet has seen a new blue water warship since the end of the Cold War.

The Project 11356-class Admiral Grigorovich arrived in Crimea, the first of several new surface ships the Russian Navy intends to base in the Black Sea.

“This is the first vessel for distant water operation, which the Black Sea Fleet has received over the past 35 years,” fleet spokesman Vyacheslav Trukhachyov told the TASS news service.

The 4,000-ton frigate delivered to the Russian Navy in March and is the first of a planned class of six based in the Black Sea.

Of course the US has built the incredibly expensive (over $3b each) Zumwalt class destroyer (seriously, we used to build aircraft carriers for less), which is of yet an unproven design, but two new LCS littoral combat ships, the USS Milwaukee and the USS Fort Worth, both suffered mechanical failures and had to be towed for repairs.

But never fear, the Navy has decided that in this time of world unease the best way to prepare our warriors for battle is to name ships after sodomites. The USS Harvey Milk is a vessel planned for construction that will be named after a man who was sodomizing minors and shot to death. (H/T iOTW)

This is our new navy that sends sailors "poorly led and unprepared" into dangerous waters on ships that may or may not be combat capable. God help us.

The Brits Still Have Our Back

It should have been a cruise missile.

Royal Navy fires warning shot at Spanish patrol boat ‘hassling’ US nuclear submarine attempting to dock at Gibraltar

The Royal Navy has fired a warning shot at a Spanish patrol boat as it tried to 'hassle' a US nuclear submarine attempting to dock at Gibraltar, it has emerged.

Ohio Class USS Florida,  SSGN 728

560' long, 18,750 tons
Four 533mm torpedo tubes, 154 BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles

Spanish Guardia Civil vessel Rio Cedena twice tried to disrupt the visit by ballistic missile sub USS Florida as it was approaching the British Overseas Territory on the southern tip of Spain. Flares were fired across its bow as it sailed in front of the American submarine and the Royal Navy reportedly dispatched its squadron patrol vessel HMS Sabre.

Spanish Patrol/Party Boat SS Sangria
57' long, 8000 lbs.
MG-82 5.56mm machine gun, 24 six packs Alhambra Premium Lager

Story here.

This is not the first time that Spain has played sea squirrel with England, but now they have involved a warship of the US Navy. Smart.

In a 2010 incident the Royal Navy almost blew up another Spanish patrol boat:

The Civil Guard patrol boat ignored warnings as it came close to the heavily armed warship HMS Somerset and the fast patrol boat HMS Sabre.

The two Royal Navy vessels were carrying out an anti-terror exercise in an area where ships are always on high alert for attacks.

Britain has made an official complaint to Spain following the latest in a series of confrontations between the two countries around Gibraltar.

[...]Senior British military officials were said to be "furious" when they learned what happened, and said the Spanish ship risked being "blown out of the water" by its recklessness. A Navy source told the Gibraltar Chronicle: "Racing towards a well-armed warship is madness. It's irresponsible and incredibly risky."

The reason for this brash action? Spain has had a 300 year woody for Gibraltar.

Spain refuses to recognise that the waters outside Gibralter's three-mile port perimeter are British and has repeatedly tried to reclaim them. Britain was given Gibraltar and the waters around it in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, but Spain has said it will never renounce its claim to sovereignty.

US Navy Sub Hunter Drone

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

A US destroyer, the USS Lassen, passed within 12 miles of a Chinese artificial island in a disputed section of the South China Sea and the Chinese are squawking.

BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. guided-missile destroyer sailed close to one of China’s man-made islands in the South China Sea on Tuesday, drawing an angry rebuke from Beijing, which said it had tracked and warned the ship and called in the U.S. ambassador to protest.

The USS Lassen’s patrol was the most significant U.S. challenge yet to the 12-nautical-mile territorial limits China claims around artificial islands it has built up in the Spratly archipelago as Beijing exercises its growing maritime power.

Washington’s move followed months of deliberation by the administration of President Barack Obama and could ratchet up tension in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and increase strains in U.S.-China relations.

A U.S. defense official said the Lassen also went within 12-mile limits of features in the disputed sea claimed by Vietnam and U.S. treaty ally, the Philippines. They said such “freedom-of-navigation” patrols were expected to become more frequent.

According to international law (Article 60 of the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea) no nation can create an artificial island as national territory and impose a 12 mile limit around it.

Just six weeks ago five Chinese war ships violated the 12 mile limit to the Aleutian Islands near Alaska. One of these vessels, the Shenyang, is shown below.

According to US naval command, it was a legal exercise in "innocent passage" rights granted by international law.

Apparently the Chinese interpret international law in different ways depending on where the water is.

Victory At Sea

I grew up watching "Victory At Sea" serials.

My dad joined that Navy in 1943 at the age of 17. He became a hard hat diver and served in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. I remember something he told me when I was about 12 years old;  he said, "Just before the torpedo hits, get up on your toes else the force of the explosion coming up from below the deck will break your ankles."

I think he had been drinking and remembered how it felt when his ship was sunk by a Japanese submarine.

That's How You Do It

Just think how long the Somali pirate terrorists would have lasted if the US Navy had been allowed to do this instead of pussy footing around.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities blew up and sank 41 foreign fishing vessels Wednesday as a warning against poaching in the country's waters.

The vessels from a variety of countries were blown up in several ports across the archipelago, which has some of the world's richest fishing grounds.

Navy spokesman First Adm. Manahan Simorangkir said 35 vessels were sunk by the navy and six by the coast guard police.

Source.

Locusts To The Rescue

From the Office of Naval Research:

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — A new era in autonomy and unmanned systems for naval operations is on the horizon, as officials at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced today recent technology demonstrations of swarming unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — part of the Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology (LOCUST) program.

LOCUST can launch swarming UAVs to autonomously overwhelm an adversary. The deployment of UAV swarms will provide Sailors and Marines a decisive tactical advantage.

“The recent demonstrations are an important step on the way to the 2016 ship-based demonstration of 30 rapidly launched autonomous, swarming UAVs,” said ONR program manager Lee Mastroianni.

The LOCUST program includes a tube-based launcher that can send UAVs into the air in rapid succession. The breakthrough technology then utilizes information-sharing between the UAVs, enabling autonomous collaborative behavior in either defensive or offensive missions.

Since the launcher and the UAVs themselves have a small footprint, the technology enables swarms of compact UAVs to take off from ships, tactical vehicles, aircraft or other unmanned platforms.

The US Navy Has Ghosts

The Ghost uses a gyro-stabilized dual-pontoon supercavitating hull to run at top speed through 10-foot seas. Called small waterplane-area twin-hull (SWATH), it is controlled by 22 computer-controlled underwater control surfaces. When at rest or moving slowly, the Ghost sits in the water on its centerline module. At eight knots or faster, the high-grade marine aluminum buoyant hulls lift the vessel and achieve full stability.

Propulsion on the prototype is provided by T53-703 turboshaft engines, with the company planning to replace them with the General Electric T700 turboshaft.

The Ghost has achieved speeds of over 30 knots, and is being tested to 50 knots. It can perform several different missions including anti-surface warfare (ASuW), anti-submarine warfare (ASW), and mine countermeasures (MCM): ASuW armament consists of the M197 20mm rotary cannon and launch tubes that expel exhaust downward between the struts of the SWATH hulls, concealing and dissipating the thermal signature of the launch for BGM-176B Griffin missiles and Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System rockets, with an electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor and radar; an ASW version could be equipped with an EO/IR sensor, radar, sonobuoy launch tubes, a dipping sonar, and four aft-firing torpedo tubes; an MCM version could be equipped with a towing boom to lower and raise two towed mine-hunting sonars, such as the Kline 5000 or Raytheon AN/AQS-20A.

The current Ghost costs $10 million per copy, is crewed by 3-5 sailors, and can be partially disassembled to fit in a C-17 Globemaster III for transport if needed.

Hunting Diesel Subs

From the UK Daily Mail:

The US Navy is set to unleash an army of 'ghost drones' to scour the coasts for enemy submarines. They hope to end the growing threat of quiet, diesel powered enemy submarines enters American waters undetected.

The robot boats will go to sea for us to three months at a time.

The project began in 2010, when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, announced that they were building a 132-foot autonomous boat to track quiet, diesel-powered submarines.

The program was dubbed Anti-submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel, or ACTUV.

In six weeks of tests along a 35-nautical mile stretch of water off of Mississippi earlier this year, testers at engineering company Leidos and DARPA put the ACTUV's systems through 100 different scenarios.

The test boat was able to tail a target boat at 1 kilometer's distance, something military bosses say is a major step forward.

More at DARPA and here.

I wonder how easy it is to detect and destroy these 'ghost drones'? Are they capable of evasion or self defense? It sounds like the technology is not mature and will take a bit more development before it is truly mission capable.

Asking For Trouble

Two navy vessels have collided in the Gulf of Aden; the USNS Amelia Earhart and the USNS Walter S. Diehl.

The USNS Amelia Earhart

The USNS Walter S. Diehl

Someone got lost and crashed. Wonder which one?

Story here.

Ready To Rumble

Iran's navy is writing checks that it can't cash ... unless Obama has his way.

A top Iranian naval commander said that he is prepared to order suicide attacks, drone strikes, and missile technology to “destroy the U.S. Navy” in any upcoming confrontation, according to an interview printed in Iran’s state-run media.

Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi points out the precise location where Allah has

stockpiled thousands of virgins awaiting those who attack the US Navy.

Iranian Naval Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, a member of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that Iran is constantly training and preparing for a clash with the United States,according to a recounting of his remarks provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Standing by the navy's newest frigate, The Festering Goat, Iran's Supreme Moral Purity Minister turns his back and 

tweets his office - #BringMeRope - as one of the crew performs the ancient Irani 'you're my bunkmate' grab ass ritual.

Fadavi revealed that Iran “compensates for its technological inferiority to the United States with a strategy of asymmetrical warfare, including suicide attacks and the use of speedboat and its missile capability,” according to MEMRI.

Someone really needs to swat these people... hard.

Sponge Bob Gas Pants

This device makes gasoline from sea water

I really want to see what effect this has at the pumps. Then again, if the politicians have their way and get lubed up by the big oil companies, nothing much may change.
From the UK Daily Mail:

The US Navy has developed a radical new fuel made from seawater.

They say it could change the way we produce fuel - and allow warships to stay at sea for years at a time.
Navy scientists have spent several years developing the process to take seawater and use it as fuel, and have now used the 'game changing' fuel to power a radio controlled plane in the first test.

The development of a liquid hydrocarbon fuel is being hailed as 'a game-changer' because it would allow warships to remain at sea for far longer.

The US has a fleet of 15 military oil tankers, and only aircraft carriers and some submarines are equipped with nuclear propulsion.

All other vessels must frequently abandon their mission for a few hours to navigate in parallel with the tanker, a delicate operation, especially in bad weather.

The ultimate goal is to eventually get away from the dependence on oil altogether, which would also mean the navy is no longer hostage to potential shortages of oil or fluctuations in its cost.

The predicted cost of jet fuel using these technologies is in the range of $3-$6 per gallon, and with sufficient funding and partnerships, this approach could be commercially viable within the next seven to ten years.