Trump's Navy

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Lockheed Martin Corp. will deliver its eight remaining Littoral Combat Ships an average of 11 months late, more than twice the five-month delay for rival shipbuilder Austal Ltd., the U.S. Navy estimates.

The contractors build different versions of the ship that’s been criticized for rising costs, equipment breakdowns and potential vulnerability in combat. Now, Austal’s timelier performance may give the Australian company an advantage in the winner-take-all competition for a guided-missile frigate intended as a more robust successor.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-u-s-navy-says

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CAMP PENDELTON — A war game exercise that deploys a battalion-size air, sea and ground assault is playing out across Marine Corps bases in Southern California this week.
The exercise, which includes more than 20,000 Marines from the 1st Marine Division and more than 600 Marine aviators and their crews, is taking place at San Clemente Island, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Camp Pendleton and at the Marine Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms.
It combines the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s “Winter Fury” exercise with the 1st Marine Division’s “Steel Knight” training. Both are held annually to prepare Marines for worldwide threats and to sharpen their skills for upcoming deployments. But the combined exercise is the first in more than a decade, military officials say.

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http://www.ocregister.com/2017/12/13...ifornia-bases/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/th...cid=spartandhp

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The grieving parents are questioning the official accounts they've received from the Navy. They say the 72-page report released by the Navy last month puts too much blame on the ship's crew while glossing over problems with training, manpower and maintenance that have plagued the Japan-based 7th fleet for years. And they're angry at what they view as a lack of will in Washington to pay for the demands placed on the military.

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ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy’s new class of 20 guided-missile frigates could cost an estimated $950 million per hull, the Naval Sea Systems Command FFG(X) program manager said on Tuesday. That total is more than double the current cost per hull of both variants of the Littoral Combat Ship.
Speaking at the Surface Navy Association 2018 symposium, NAVSEA’s Regan Campbell said the new class of small surface combatant would set a so-called threshold requirement for a net average cost of $950 million for the 2nd through 20th hulls in the FFG(X) next-generation frigate program following a down select to a final shipbuilder in 2020. First-in-class for the new frigate is expected to cost more than the $950 million average.
That number is almost twice the about $460 million per-hull cost of the existing Lockheed Martin Freedom-class (LCS-1) and Austal USA Independence-class (LCS-2) Littoral Combat Ships currently under construction.

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https://news.usni.org/2018/01/09/nav...ouble-lcs-cost

and with tongue-in-cheek,
Littoral Combat Ship Actually Figurative Combat Ship

USN Office of Naval Intelligence determined that the Argentine submarine San Juan suffered from an internal explosion back on November 15th 2017 and that the death of the 44 crewmembers was instantaneous.

Image of report posted on link below.

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/ne...0111-0025.html

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Originally Posted by AdamG

https://news.usni.org/2018/01/09/nav...ouble-lcs-cost

and with tongue-in-cheek,
Littoral Combat Ship Actually Figurative Combat Ship

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Wow. So much for the FFG(X) band-aid. And I doubt any heads roll over this ongoing disaster, as the taxpayer continues to get gouged. We're a long way from pour encourager les autres...

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WASHINGTON (CNN) —
The US Navy announced Tuesday that the former commanding officers of the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain -- the ships involved in two deadly 2017 collisions that killed 17 sailors -- will face criminal charges including dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide.

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http://www.wcvb.com/article/ex-navy-...286826?src=app

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The USNS Herschel “Woody” Williams is neither fast nor heavily armed. And while she may look like a commercial cargo ship, the Navy's new vessel is also one of the most useful ships in the entire U.S. military.
Called an “expeditionary mobile base,” the Woody Williams can do just about any job, whether that means supporting a fleet of minesweepers or potentially hosting F-35B Joint Strike Fighters. The Williams was recently christened by builder General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO) and is set to join the fleet soon.

One major maritime blog called the USNS Woody Williams “unsexy,” and to be honest it’s not a unfair statement. Call it the cargo pants of boats. The 785-foot long, 164 foot-wide, 90,000-ton ship is based on the civilian Alaska-class oil tanker, also built by NASSCO, and despite the gray paint job it still looks like it. This is where the similarity with an oil tanker ends, however.

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http://www.popularmechanics.com/mili...-us-navy-ship/

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BEIJING: Beijing said on Saturday (Jan 20) it had dispatched a warship to drive away a US missile destroyer which had "violated" its sovereignty by sailing close to a shoal in the disputed South China Sea.
The USS Hopper sailed within 12 nautical miles of Huangyan Island on the night of Jan 17 without alerting Beijing, the foreign ministry said, referring to the shoal by its Chinese name.

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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news...eignty-9879894

I'm belly laughing the Chinese who think that the SCS is their sovereign territory. That is like me claiming Key West is my sovereign territory, regardless of what the law says. Maybe I should go there and try to chase away the Coast Guard boats. It is about time we make some those military bases in the South China Sea simply disappear.

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A brand-new U.S. Navy warship has not moved from Montreal since Christmas Eve and will spend the winter stuck in Canada due to cold and ice.
The USS Little Rock – unveiled in a ceremony on Dec. 16 in Buffalo, New York and attended by nearly 9,000 people – has not moved far since due to adverse weather conditions that kept the warship trapped at bay in Canada, the Toronto Star reported.
The warship known as a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) cost $440 million to build and stretches 387 feet in length and weighs 15 tons more than the Statue of Liberty. It is capable of traveling more than 46 miles per hour.

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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/22...d-and-ice.html

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Originally Posted by Bill Moore

I'm belly laughing the Chinese who think that the SCS is their sovereign territory. That is like me claiming Key West is my sovereign territory, regardless of what the law says. Maybe I should go there and try to chase away the Coast Guard boats. It is about time we make some those military bases in the South China Sea simply disappear.

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I'd like to be pithy with a quote about living in *Interesting Times*, but that's culturally inappropriate.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/...ing-times.html

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HONG KONG/BEIJING, Jan 23 (Reuters) - While the Pentagon plays down patrols close to Chinese-controlled reefs and islands in the South China Sea, Beijing is sounding the alarm about them, seeking to justify what experts say will be an even greater presence in the disputed region.
Chinese officials publicized the latest U.S. "freedom of navigation patrol", protesting the deployment last week of the destroyer USS Hopper to within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal, an atoll west of the Philippines which Beijing disputes with Manila.
It was the second time in recent months that confirmation of a patrol came from Beijing, not Washington, which had previously announced or leaked details.
Bonnie Glaser, a security expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, said while the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had a policy of keeping the patrols regular but low key, China was willing to publicly exploit them to further their military ends.
"It is difficult to conclude otherwise," she said. "Even as it pushes ahead with these (patrols), I don't think the Trump administration has really come to terms with what it will tolerate from China in the South China Sea, and what it simply won't accept, and Beijing seems to grasp this."

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http://news.trust.org/item/20180123063045-8mhe8

For those in the cheap seats or just tuning in, don't miss our (currently 39 page) mega-thread on the Spratly Islands drama.
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=13460

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The US Navy’s second Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyer, the future USS Michael Monsoor (DDG 1001), has successfully concluded its acceptance trials.

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http://www.naval-technology.com/news...ptance-trials/

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The U.S. Navy accepted delivery of a revolutionary uncrewed surface ship, one capable of traveling long distances and conducting missions all without a human on board. The Sea Hunter Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel—or ACTUV for short—could someday lead to fleets of unmanned warships plying the world’s oceans, doing everything from hunting submarines to acting as spy ships.

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https://www.popularmechanics.com/mil...uv-sea-hunter/

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SAN DIEGO — The U.S. Navy on Saturday commissioned its newest warship, the USS Omaha, a futuristic, $440 million vessel named for the Nebraska hometown of billionaire Warren Buffett, who was on hand for the ceremony.
The Omaha, a 418-foot-long littoral combat ship, was commissioned at its new home port in San Diego.

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https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-...ewest-warship/

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WASHINGTON—The U.S. Navy is investigating at least a dozen U.S. sailors based in Japan, some serving aboard the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, for suspicion of buying, selling, and using LSD, ecstasy and other drugs, U.S. Navy officials said Friday.
The Navy also is probing whether U.S. sailors were using the internet to buy or sell drugs or were distributing them to local Japanese residents.
The Navy first learned about allegations of widespread drug sales on Feb. 6, when it received a tip about a petty officer third class using drugs, the officials said. He was subsequently detained and released, they said.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-nav...pan-1518210550

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In 2017, the Navy saw two deadly ship collisions at sea. First, the destroyer Fitzgerald collided with a container ship near Japan in June, and then again two months later the destroyer John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker near Singapore.
Both incidents were, per comprehensive Navy investigations, due to human error. The findings quieted speculation that a network-based attack could have disabled onboard navigation or other critical systems — but the report didn’t end discussion of the possibilities of such scenarios.
As a result, top Department of Defense leadership ordered new training and safety procedures throughout the Navy; meanwhile, internally, Navy officials called for the service’s key IT and cyber elements to routinely be part of incident investigations in the future.

Navy leaders say the decision to include cyber elements in the incident investigation is a sign of the service’s greater emphasis on stitching together operational domains.
The goal is to better equip naval forces to take on emerging threats and a changing threat landscape, regardless of location or specific mission.

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https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks...e-information/

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Feb. 6 (UPI) -- BAE Systems announced Tuesday that it was selected by the U.S. Navy to provide equipment and support services for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic.
The contract will support the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic's Joint Warfare Support Division to "field, adapt, and optimize a variety of mission critical surveillance and sensor systems."

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https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/201...7411517947621/

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The U.S. Navy has sent a missile destroyer to Europe’s Black Sea to join another warship, the USS Ross, in a move that risks irking Russia once again. Moscow has persistently objected to Western military activities in the waters, on whose shore sits Crimea—the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

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:rolleyes:

http://www.newsweek.com/us-navy-send...s-anger-814785

Lasers-n-railguns, oh my.

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DAHLGREN, Va. – The Navy dedicated and named its electromagnetic railgun lines in honor of two public servants who envisioned, nurtured, and laid the foundation for the U.S. Navy’s Electromagnetic Railgun Program at a ceremony held in their honor, Feb. 22.

Posters and plaques commemorating the naming of the railgun lines for Adm. James Hogg (ret.) and Dr. Hans Mark were unveiled at the event and will be on permanent display to honor their efficacy and vision as the Navy continues working to push this revolutionary warfighting capability forward.

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http://www.navsea.navy.mil/Media/New...s-at-ceremony/

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The Navy proposed spending $299 million in Fiscal Year 2019 on laser systems to protect ships against current and anticipated future threats, as part of a rapid prototyping, experimentation and demonstration initiative.
For nearly a decade, the Navy has considered laser technology a more cost-efficient and effective tool to protect ships from emerging threats such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and small patrol craft that could swarm a surface ship, according to a Congressional Research Service report, Navy Lasers, Railgun, and Hypervelocity Projectile: Background and Issues for Congress.
The Navy wants to move development of lasers a step closer to deployment, according to budget documents released by the Navy earlier this month.

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https://news.usni.org/2018/02/26/las...ns_usnavy_330m

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DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - A U.S. aircraft carrier arrived in Vietnam on Monday for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War, dramatically underscoring the growing strategic ties between the former foes at a time when China’s regional influence is rising. The imposing grey silhouette of the USS Carl Vinson could be seen from the cliff tops just outside the central Vietnamese city of Danang, where the 103,000-tonne carrier and two other U.S. ships begin a five-day visit.

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https://in.reuters.com/article/usa-v...-idINKBN1GH0SF

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The F-35B Lightning II landed aboard the amphibious assault ship Wasp on March 5, the first time the aircraft has deployed aboard a U.S. Navy ship in the Indo-Pacific.
Assigned to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Okinawa, Japan, the F-35B will aid the Expeditionary Strike Group in a routine patrol to strengthen regional alliances and provide rapid-response capabilities.

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https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-...-on-navy-ship/

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WASHINGTON — As the production rate of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 joint strike fighter goes up, the company is wrestling with quality escapes involving the jet’s low observability features, which now amount to about half of all defects on the aircraft, the company’s vice president of the program revealed Monday.
Last week, Vice Adm. Mat Winter, the head of the government’s F-35 Joint Program Office, slammed Lockheed for what he sees as its too-slow progress on eliminating so-called “quality escapes”— errors made by Lockheed’s workforce that could include drilling holes that are too big or installing a dinged part.
While those errors are minor, the rework done to bring the plane up to requirements is driving up the amount of money and time spent producing an airplane, Winter said.

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https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018...m-head-states/

The U.S. Navy's Newest Nuclear Sub Uses an Xbox Controller for Key Operations
http://time.com/5205721/uss-colorado...x-controllers/