Misleading Thread Title of the Year.

The article said nothing about “LCS slowly falling apart”.

It was purely about the mission modules, not about the state of the ships.

It appears we have a budding journalist among us… misleading and incorrect article titles are their “stock in trade”.

US helicopter firm makes commercial offer to Indian Navy

The offer includes servicing and spares for six obsolete Sikorsky UH-3H Sea King helicopters that came onboard the USS Trenton renamed as INS Jalashva which have received a lot of flak for their sub standard quality.

The comptroller and auditor general has strongly criticised the quality of the machines on the aircraft carrier that came through US government foreign military sales.

According to the CAG the ($39 million) machines did not come equipped with any type of weather or surface surveillance radar and the defence ministry failed to secure any “guarantee for the replacement of defective rotables due to obsolescence”.

Well, they are complaining that the USN failed to give them something that the USN never had!

NO USN Sea King has those radars!

USN Sea Kings came in 2 variants… a pure ASW (with secondary rescue) variant that did not have radar*… and a utility/cargo variant, also without radar.

US Coast Guard Sea Kings had such radar, but purely for their long-range rescue duties… and they have been retired for about 20 years.

If India wanted that outfit, they should have bought aircraft that had them!

The Royal Navy, the Italian Navy, and possibly the Japanese Navy had Sea Kings with surface-search radar, but not the USN.

* It was operated together with S-2 Tracker and later S-3 Viking fixed-wing ASW aircraft that did have surface-search/weather radars, and which would direct the Sea Kings to near a radar contact, so they could use their dipping sonar to get a detailed “fix” and gather detailed information about the contact.

QE class was designed as a CATOBAR class adapted to STOVL, its plenty big to operate Super Hornet if wanted and as Badger1968 said (a poster on this forum happy to post pictures of his USN service days) not even used as an operation profile. This is not forgetting that the RN isn’t interested in the same level of sortie generation that a US super carrier can as it can’t afford that number of aircraft.

After I posted here, I asked about that technique over on Warships1… specifically querying Wabpilot (former USN F-4 & F-14 pilot) and Nightwatch2 (former USN E-1B & E-2A/B/C pilot).

So far, Nightwatrch has replied “Not when I was on either Independence or Midway.

You’d need a clear hangar bay to do that, so about half the air wing ashore to be able to pull something like that off. I don’t think it would be practical at all.

IN THEORY – if facing a multi-regimental attack and employing Outer Air Battle concept employing everything that could fly to either fight, surveil or pass gas; that might be possible. but virtually everything would have to be flying in order to keep the hangar bay clear enough.”

However, another poster mentioned “There is graphical reference to this maneuver in the series on USS Enterprise, CV-6, in the History Channel’s Combat 360, in the segment on Guadalcanal and the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. It makes sense for an axial deck aircraft carrier to land its planes, taxi them forward to Elevator No. 1 and lower them to the hanger deck, turn them around, re-arm, re-fuel and bring them back up on Elevator No. 3 for the re-spot prior to the next launch. It does not make much sense for an angled-deck carrier. However, this evolution was described by RAdm. Paul T. Gillcrist, during his carrier quals on USS Midway in the mid-1960’s in his book, Feet Wet: Reflections of a Carrier Pilot.”

So it was used during carrier qualifications aboard Midway before 1966 (when she started her super-modernization)… but CarQuals are carried out aboard a nearly empty ship, with the aircraft staging from (and returning to) a nearby Naval Air Station… so the ship would have had a nearly empty hangar, just like Nightwatch2 mentioned.

I have questions about the CV-6 mention… I know it was common practice in the WW2 era in the USN, RN, and IJN to warm up engines in the hangar before moving the aircraft up to the flight deck when conducting a mass launch… and to strike newly-returned aircraft below for refueling/rearming… but I have always read that they brought them back up the same elevator… perhaps when most of the aircraft were airborne it might be possible, but only then.

These plane handling decisions are not as involved or critical when the planes are VSTOL, where either fore or aft lifts can serve as either feed or strike below, but remember how a CATOBAR aircraft carrier actually works?

Rear lifts feed the catapults, and the waist and forward lifts strike planes below. Planes move in a conveyor fashion from stern to bow on the flight deck, are parked everywhere, where space that does not foul the clear run can be found and the planes, that are struck below decks, are moved from bow to stern to the feed lifts behind the catapults…

I have seen that fairy tale in print many times for the last 35 years, but in the 8 years I spent in the US military, I have never met a sailor who saw it in action … save one. He was aboard USS Enterprise CVN-65 in 1973, and they tried it… they ended up getting jammed up and having to stop flight ops while they unfu#@ed the mess. They then went back to the normal “refuel & re-arm on deck, and stagger launch & recovery clusters”.

I spent 364 days at sea aboard CV-61 USS Ranger between the beginning of November 1985 and the end of December 1987, and never once did we use the hangar for anything but repairing broken aircraft and storing excess aircraft.

I have a close friend who retired from the USN in 2001, and who made 4 carrier deployment cycles aboard 4 different carriers starting in 1984… and he never saw that done either.

Standing?

X-37B launches sitting vertical, remember.

Unless you can pack everything into that 4′ diameter payload bay and still leave room for the man to be in a back-flat sitting position to deal with the blood-pooling effects from the acceleration of launch…

All I can say is the USAF better start recruiting “little people” for its space crews.

Do you know over what sort of timescale the Marines will stand down their Hornet and Harrier squadrons and stand up their F-35B squadrons? I assume the plan is to have at least one squadron up and running by 2012?

Marine Corps Times F-35B

Corps pushes ahead with F-35 basing plans

By Amy McCullough – Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jul 6, 2010 9:31:51 EDT

Amid community concerns over the future location of F-35B Joint Strike Fighter squadrons, the Marine Corps is pushing forward with its basing plans. In May and June the Marine Corps released two environmental studies and continues to hold public meetings to address concerns.

There will be 22 operational squadrons spread among Marine Corps Air Stations Beaufort, S.C., and Cherry Point, N.C., on the East Coast, and Miramar, Calif., and Yuma, Ariz., on the West Coast, said Capt. Craig Thomas, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. Seven of the 22 squadrons will have 16 aircraft, and the rest will have 10, although where they will be assigned has not yet been determined.

The East Coast also will have a pilot training center, and the West Coast will have an operational training and evaluation squadron.

The first operational squadron is planned for Yuma in 2012, although final approval to base the squadron there isn’t likely until December, Thomas said. The Corps also will begin phasing out its legacy aircraft in 2012.

…..

Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., which serves as a joint F-35 training pipeline, will get the first Marine variants this year. The first students to funnel through the school will become the Corps’ operational test and evaluation pilots in 2011, leaving Eglin for Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., where they will continue operational tests of the aircraft.

Extensive environmental impact studies for both coasts, conducted by the Navy, cover topics such as noise and safety. Thomas said basing plans can’t be completed until the public review of the studies is complete. To read the full reports and view public meeting dates, visit http://www.usmcjsfeast.com for the East Coast and http://www.usmcjsfwest.com for the West Coast.

POSSIBLE LOCATIONS

East Coast options:

•Three operational squadrons and a pilot training center at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, S.C., and eight squadrons at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C.

• The training center at Beaufort and 11 squadrons at Cherry Point.

• Eight squadrons at Beaufort and three squadrons and the training center at Cherry Point.

• Eleven squadrons at Beaufort and the training center at Cherry Point.

West Coast options:

• Six squadrons at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Calif., and five squadrons and an operational training and evaluation squadron at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz.

• Four squadrons at Miramar and seven squadrons plus the OT&E at Yuma.

• Seven squadrons and the OT&E at Miramar and four squadrons at Yuma.

• One squadron and the OT&E at Miramar and 10 squadrons at Yuma.

• Ten squadrons at Miramar and one squadron plus the OT&E at Yuma.

Which makes perfect sense.