Bager1968Also, the U.S. Congress is not happy with the PR move of DOD’s boss Panetta removing the F-35B STOVL from the previous boss (Gate’s) “probation”.
After all, it did look like a PR move given all of the defects with the jet.
Since the F-35B is no longer any more troubled than the other 2 variants, it was either that or put the whole program on probation… and that would have made a much bigger fuss.
Bager1968There are 7 Warthog squadrons flying… 1 USAF A-10, 5 ANG A-10 squadrons, and 1 ANG OA-10 squadron.
The current plan is to “retire or reclassify five A-10 squadrons”, which would leave at least 1 & 1… and possibly more, depending on how many of the 5 are “reclassified” rather then “retired”.
Bager1968IN MiG-29K taking off Kuznetsov.
Error (509)
This account’s public links are generating too much traffic and have been temporarily disabled!
Dropbox is for low view-volume file-sharing.
Try a hosting service (photobucket, flicker, etc) designed for hot-linking of photos.
Bager1968The whole reason France built Rafale instead of staying in Eurofighter was to get a new carrier-capable aircraft.
Since the specs of Rafale included operating from Foch & Clemenceau, the question must be asked…
How would Mirage 4000 have done as a carrier-based fighter on France’s carriers?
That gives you your answer… it was either M4K or Rafale.
Bager1968Baseline 3
USS Princeton (CG 59)
USS Normandy (CG 60)
USS Cowpens (CG 63)
USS Gettysburg (CG 64)Baseline 4
USS Chosin (CG 65)
USS Hue City (CG 66)
USS Anzio (CG 68)
USS Vicksburg (CG 69)
USS Cape St George (CG 71)Odd, they all seem to be newer ships… leaving older baseline-2 ships CG 54-58 and some baseline-3 ships (cg 61-62) in service along with baseline 4 ships (cg-67, 70-73)
Interesting you left out this bit from the second article
The U.S. fleet keeps its 11 aircraft carriers as well as its 10 air wings. About a third of the fleet of 22 cruisers — seven ships — will be decommissioned early
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/01/defense-navy-avoids-most-pentagon-cuts-012612w/
http://www.airforcetimes.com/mobile/index.php?storyUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.navytimes.com%2Fnews%2F2012%2F01%2Fdefense-navy-avoids-most-pentagon-cuts-012612w%2FThat’s 2 less to be cut…
And, the specific ships may not yet be clear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticonderoga_class_cruiser
Two (CG55, CG62) of three ships mentioned don’t appear in the previous list…
WOnder if this is the real reason…
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/12/navy-cracks-plague-ticonderoga-class-cruisers-120910w/
an issue that is plaguing all 22 cruisers in service: cracks in the aluminum superstructure
The problem, according to the Naval Sea Systems Command, is the aluminum alloy used in the superstructure of the cruisers, which have steel hulls
“There have been various degrees of crack repair on every CG [guided-missile cruiser] in the past year,” said Chris Johnson, a NAVSEA spokesman in Washington. “The decking is the most prevalent cracking area due to exposure to elevated temperatures caused by solar absorption and exhaust temperatures.”
More than 3,000 cracks have been found so far across the entire Ticonderoga class,
Take another look at my post, and you’ll find this:
Most recent: Navy avoids most pentagon cuts
• The seven Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruisers to be decommissioned include six ships not yet upgraded with ballistic missile defense capabilities and one ship with BMD but “in need of costly hull repairs.” The Navy has not yet identified the individual ships.
Perhaps the other older ships to be retained have already had the hull repairs and the newer ones have not?
Bager1968LOL and in one fell swoop, Rafale secures the most export orders than the Typhoid and the Peter Griffen!! While Typhoid now ends up on the bottom of the 3 eurocanards as far as export numbers go.
But with Oman looking at buying 24 Typhoon, and the Saudis making noises about a second order for another ~70 Typhoon….
Bager1968well, first, the F-5 is a twin engine aircraft,
A lightweight (Max. takeoff weight: 24,722 lb / 11,214 kg), low-powered (2 × GE J85-21B with 3,500 lbf / 15.5 kN dry & 5,000 lbf / 22.2 kN with afterburner each, for a total of 7,000 lbf / 31 kN, 10,000 lbf / 44.4 kN with afterburner) 40-year-old twin-engined fighter.
Gripen C/D is slightly heavier (Max. takeoff weight: 31,000 lb / 14,000 kg) and has far more more engine power (1 x Volvo RM-12 with 12,100 lbf / 54 kN dry & 18,100 lbf / 80.5 kN with afterburner).
A Gripen with a F414 (RM14) would not be very much heavier, but would have about 40% more power than the C/D!
Considering that Gripen has a far more reliable engine, there is no rationale whatsoever to insist on two engines just for the sake of having two engines.
second: the replacement in less than a decade they’ll need to buy replacements for their hornets, which means they’ll probably want to use the same type to simplify and optimize maintainance and overall costs
result, buying the gripen may sound logical with inly the F-5 replacement in mind, but in longer term it means going a step down in capabilities as in their own evgaluation the gripen was behind the hornet and managed the minimum passable overall grade only thanks to its price
considering the support of gripen: I said that just about everybody was against it. some because they don’t want money spent on any fighter, others that don’t want to buy a fighter that came out dead last in evaluations
This looks like we stumbled on a scam, in what criteria is Gripen NG a step down from Hornet ?
did it come with any details ?
Or it could be that the Swiss have decided that, in the new safer (no Soviet threat) Europe, even the Hornet was “over-spec” for what Switzerland (with its total lack of international operations) actually needs… and that it can drop to Gripen (of whatever variant) without any national security risk whatsoever!
PS: Gripen has a lighter max payload than Hornet… I suspect that this is the main “step down”.
Bager1968CG … no surprise here. And a sign of things to come: 7 carriers groups with 2 Tico escorts each, one ship reserve.
The White House and DOD both are adamant that, except for the gap between the decommissioning of CVN-65 and the commissioning of CVN-78, there will NOT be a reduction of the carrier force below 11.
The only change affecting the actual carriers in the budget request is to delay CVN-79 by one year.
Personally, I believe a permanent reduction to 10 (3 deployed, 3 working up, 3 in “restricted availability” and one in RCOH) would be logical and workable.
Bager1968A 12 mile radius circle has an area of 452.4 square miles.
500 square miles is the area of a circle with a 12.6 mile radius.
Bager1968I don’t have the data, but read somewhere on other forum that the ex USMC Legacy Hornet conditions (for carrier operations), is better than ex USN.
This was true in the past, as the Marines did not operate their Hornets from carriers as frequently. However since the mid 2000s USMC Hornet squadrons have been a regular part of CVWs, so that is probably no longer the case.
The fact is that even the USMC’s Hornets are basically worn out, so much so that the Harriers the US is buying from the UK will be used to replace USMC Hornet squadrons.
Apart from the A+ to C swap with land based units, didn’t they also trade jets between USMC and USN squadrons?
The above is correct. I can’t really speak to the big picture of how many spares we may or may not have, but the inter service transfer of jets has been going on for a number of years.
All of the aircraft in both USN and USMC service belong to NAVAIR… not to either specific service. Any aircraft which is used by both services could (and often were) sent to depot repair by one and, after the work was done, sent from depot to the other service… or be transferred directly.
I was intermediate-level maintenance for two USMC A-6E squadrons from 1983-1989, and we regularly had aircraft being transferred not only between USMC squadrons (to prepare for deployments), but also between USMC and USN squadrons.
Keeping flight-hours & cat/trap cycles evened out among the entire type fleet was a normal part of NAVAIR operations for long before I was there, and remained standard procedure to current days.
Bager1968Except that supersonic aircraft are very poor at loitering surveillance, which is what Global Hawk and the U-2 are used for.
It would be totally unsuited for the role.
Bager1968USN now put more legacy Hornet on Mothballed conditions.
Because their airframes are crapped out, and they have no more carrier landing cycles left.
To re-certify them for carrier ops (which is the only reason the UK would want them) they would require a rather expensive complete repair/rebuild/overhaul of their airframes… something the USN is not willing to do, preferring to buy new Super-Hornets instead.
If RN only need 1 or 2 sq for interim Aircraft, they can choose from the mothballed stocks, refurbished them, and use them for 2-5 years. After all it’s for interim solution.
The cost and time-frame for the refurbishment would put them nearly into the delivery schedule for F-35C, but having sucked up a major portion of the F-35C purchase budget.
Bager1968Just something that has puzzled me for some while, and for which I can find no reference. Books all mention the various weapons options used on the FW-190, often two mounted just above the engine and two in the wing root, but no where do they refer to how the guns were prevented from shooting off the propeller. I assume it was a similar hydraulic system to that used in WW1 but was it totally reliable and what effect on rate of fire, if any, did it have?
Richard
To quote from that bastion of accurate information, Wiki (end sarcasm):
Another aspect of the new design was the extensive use of electrically powered equipment instead of the hydraulic systems used by most aircraft manufacturers of the time. On the first two prototypes, the main landing gear was hydraulic. Starting with the third prototype, the undercarriage was operated by push buttons controlling electric motors in the wings, and was kept in position by electric up and down-locks.[11] The armament was also loaded and fired electrically. Tank believed that service use would prove that electrically powered systems were more reliable and more rugged than hydraulics, electric lines being much less prone to damage from enemy fire.[9]
It would be easy to fit a set of contacts to disable the firing circuit when the prop would be obstructing the muzzle of that specific gun.
Reference #9 is page 12 of Focke-Wulf Fw 190: Workhorse of the Luftwaffe. by Spencer, Jay P.; Published for the National Air and Space Museum by the Smithsonian Institution Press, Mar 1, 1987; ISBN 0-87474-885-2.
Reference #11 is “Fw 190 Undercarriage.” by Stephenson, Robert and E. Brown Ryle III; HyperScale—An Online Magazine for Aircraft and Armour Modellers, 2003.
Bager1968A little newer… October 2011
Twelve ships face axe in US budget cuts
The US Navy is planning to retire nine Ticonderoga-class cruisers and three Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships (LSDs) in Fiscal Years 2013 (FY13) and 2014 as austerity measures hit the Department of Defense (DoD).
The cruisers slated for decommissioning in FY13 are USS Normandy (CG 60), USS Anzio (CG 68), USS Vicksburg (CG 69) and USS Cape St George (CG 71), with USS Princeton (CG 59), USS Cowpens (CG 63), USS Gettysburg (CG 64), USS Chosin (CG 65) and USS Hue City (CG 66) following in FY14. The nine combatants entered service between 1989 and 1993.
The amphibious platforms scheduled for decommissioning were identified as USS Whidbey Island (LSD 41), USS Fort McHenry (LSD 43) and USS Tortuga (LSD 46). The trio entered service between 1985 and 1990.
Most recent: Navy avoids most pentagon cuts
Air Force Times
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s presentation Thursday afternoon, along with an accompanying briefing document, at least filled in the blanks on a number of Navy-related force structure and procurement issues:• Procurement of the SSBN(X) Ohio-class replacement submarine will be pushed back from 2019 to 2021.
“The schedule, as it was, was an aggressive one, maybe even verging on optimistic,” Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told reporters. “From a managerial point this is a better place to be.” The choice was “not a strategic decision,” he emphasized.
• One SSN 774 Virginia-class attack submarine was shifted beyond the future years defense plan (FYDP), which extends to fiscal 2017. The service had planned to order two subs per year from 2013 through 2016.
• Future Virginia-class submarines will have “design changes to increase cruise missile capacity.” Submarine builder General Dynamics and the Navy have been developing a Virginia Payload Module fitted with four new Virginia Payload Tubes, each capable of carrying and launching six cruise missiles. The briefing did not mention when the changes would take effect, but submarine officials have been aiming at the Block 5 submarine procurement to begin in 2019.
• The current big-deck amphibious assault ship force of nine ships will be maintained, although two older LSD 41-class landing ship docks will be decommissioned early. The next assault ship to be ordered, LHA 8, will slide from 2016 to 2017.
• Two Littoral Combat Ships and eight Joint High Speed Vessels will be “reduced” from the FYDP. There is no mention of cutting the ships from the overall buy, so they may be shifted later in the shipbuilding plan. A Navy spokesman said the Navy “remains committed to the 55-ship LCS fleet.”
But a service spokesperson declined to restate the Navy’s commitment to the existing 10-ship JHSV program. “Those details will be released on Feb. 13 with the president’s budget,” said Lt. Courtney Hillson.
The budget briefing document noted that funds will be requested “to forward-station Littoral Combat Ships in Singapore and patrol craft in Bahrain.” The first LCS, Freedom — one of only two LCSs in commission — will make a cruise later this year to Singapore, but will be fitted only with a demonstration mission module, not one of the mine-warfare or anti-submarine warfare modules the Navy urgently needs the ships to carry out.
Development of those LCS mission modules is continuing, and is perhaps the reason for a reference elsewhere in the document about protecting “anti-submarine warfare and counter-mine capabilities.”
• The seven Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruisers to be decommissioned include six ships not yet upgraded with ballistic missile defense capabilities and one ship with BMD but “in need of costly hull repairs.” The Navy has not yet identified the individual ships.
• The briefing document also notes that the budget will fund “development of a new afloat-forward staging base that can be dedicated to support missions in areas where ground-based access is not available, such as counter-mine operations.” No further details were available.
• The new budget will also ask for funds to support design of a “conventional prompt-strike option from submarines.”
Bager1968US Navy will be decommissioned 3 frigates Oliver Hazard Perry class – Boone, Stephen W. Groves and John L. Hall, Amphibious transport dock -Austin class- Ponce.
IIRC one will serve as spare parts hull but the others may be transferred. Wonder who’ll be the next taker: PN or ROCN.
Um… that report is half a year old, and is well out of date.
3 frigates, amphib to leave fleet in 2012
By Jill Laster – Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jul 18, 2011 16:21:54 EDT
USS Ponce is not being decommissioned, but is to be converted for minesweeping and “commando mothership” operations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-wants-commando-mother-ship/2012/01/27/gIQA66rGWQ_story.html
Until December, the Navy had planned to retire the Ponce and decommission it in March after 41 years of service. Among other missions, it was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea last year in support of NATO’s air war over Libya.
Instead, the ship will be modified into what the military terms an Afloat Forward Staging Base. Kafka said it would be used to support mine-clearance ships, smaller patrol ships and aircraft.
The documents posted by the Military Sealift Command in December, however, specify that the mothership will be rebuilt so that it can also serve as a docking station for several small high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by Navy SEAL teams.
U.S. military officials declined to say what prompted them to give the Ponce a sudden new lease on life. But contract and bidding documents underscore the urgency of the project.
One no-bid contract for engineering work states that the military was waiving normal procurement rules because any delay presented a “national security risk.” Other contract bids are due Feb. 3. The Navy wants the conversion work to begin 10 days later on the Ponce, which is docked in Virginia Beach.
The solicitation PDF says that the ship is to arrive at the winning contractor’s facility on 13 February 2012, and that the work is to be completed “no later than 63 days” later.
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