Tag: Navy

UK: Money Well Spent

I have gone on and on about the amount of cash the US is wasting on useless crap…..like a gas station in Afghanistan……and especially the F-35 which has not worked as promise…..if anything it is at best a “flying brick”….

It appears that the US is not the only country that wastes the taxpayer’s money….the UK navy has a new destroyer, a 21st century destroyer, to lead their navy into the wars of the future…..slight problem has been found…..

Crew members in the British Royal Navy keep coming up against a pesky, possibly dangerous Achilles’ heel as their $1.4 billion warships cruise through the Persian Gulf: warm waters. Water temps there can hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and that’s causing the ships to lose power, CNN reports. During a Defense Committee meeting Tuesday, MPs interrogated company execs about the Type 45 destroyers—said to be the country’s most advanced warships ever and expected to last at least two more decades—and their assessments were less than encouraging. A director from ship designer Rolls-Royce—which claims it was never informed the 8,000-ton ships would sail for long periods in such warm waters, per the Mirror—says that equipment is struggling to perform in “far more arduous conditions [than] were initially required,” resulting in “total electrical failure.”

The Sun explains what causes the ships to turn into “sitting ducks”: There are two turbines on each ship that redistribute exhaust heat back to the engine, but in too-warm waters the turbines slow down; a “domino effect” leads to engine shutdown and, eventually, a complete power outage. Reaction in Parliament was mainly astonishment. “I’m just absolutely stunned,” one MP said. “It’s a [$1.4 billion] asset that you’re putting into perhaps a war zone, and we don’t know if these people … will go in there and come back out alive because there might be a problem with the power system on the ship.” Britain’s Defense Ministry takes issue with these malfunction claims. “The Type 45 was designed for world-wide operations, from sub-Arctic to extreme tropical environments, and continues to operate effectively in the Gulf and the South Atlantic all year round,” a rep tells CNN.

Money well spent!

See idiocracy spans the pond….only the best for the troops, huh?

USS Liberty Incident | In Saner Thought

Today is 8 June 2015….it is the 48th anniversary of the Israeli brutal attack on an American Naval vessel, the USS Liberty in 1967…..I will do what I can to see that this incident and the murders of American sailors is NOT forgotten!

This is a piece I wrote in 2009 but my research went back to the days before Katrina and unfortunately after the storm the man that I had interviewed had died so I could not get any more info from him……

Today I am dedicating the entire day to that attack and the deaths of American sailors at the hands of Israeli aggressors…….these people need to be remembered and why they died…..we should never accept this type of action…..ALL Americans need to know of this attack!

I will NEVER forget or forgive!

Please help get these Americans story out to the rest of the population…..the country needs to know and needs to remember……..

 

USS Liberty Incident | In Saner Thought.

What Were They Thinking?

First let me state…I am in full support of women serving in all capacities in the military…even in combat….for they are capable of doing any task a man can and sometimes they even do it better…….

But then there are some cases when the military just does not get it.  I do not question women’s capabilities…..I do question the thinking of our so-called leaders…..

They, military leaders, just do not use commonsense in a rush to do the most political things…..one such situation is the serving on submarines and there ignorance is showing…..

A big scandal for the Navy’s submarine integration program: Some of the first women ever to serve on American subs were secretly recorded showering on the USS Wyoming, reports the Navy Times. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is investigating a 24-year-old male officer who is accused of recording the women over the period of about a year on the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine and distributing the videos, officials say. A retired supply officer in touch with one of the victims says a report was first filed on the videos after one of them was received by an officer on another submarine.

The Wyoming was one of the first submarines to have female crew members when they started being assigned to subs in 2011. The retired officer says that on her first day on a sub acting as mentor to younger female submariners, a young sailor asked her, “Where are the females?” She says she “looked at him and said, ‘All right, let’s get one thing straight: They’re not females, they’re junior officers on this boat, they’re division officers, and you will address them as Ensign So-and-So, and you can tell everybody else on the boat.” At least 43 women have served on submarines since the ban was lifted, and the Navy plans to integrate fast-attack submarines for the first time in January, starting with the USS Virginia and USS Minnesota, reports the Washington Post.

I am sorry but…what did they expect?  Self-control?  Young men will be young men and by that I mean….HORNY!

I mean NO disrespect to our women in uniform….just that human nature will be just that…human nature.  This may not be the best time to integrate women into the submariner service…sad part is that the men see them as women first and officers last……sad to say until men can think with the big head….maybe women should be excluded from submarine duty……

Again I mean NO disrespect and will probably get some heat for stating my mind…..the term military intelligence (an oxymoron) does not apply in this situation.

There is a time and a place for everything…….Now is NOT the time and subs are not the place.

Washington, We Have A Problem

Ukraine is going from a simmer to a rolling boil……..troops attacking troops……and now an incident in the Black Sea could be the coming of days……..

A Russian fighter jet made multiple, close-range passes near an American warship in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes Saturday amid escalating tensions in the region, a US military official said today. In the first public account of the incident, the official said the Russian Fencer flew within 1,000 yards of the USS Donald Cook, a Navy destroyer, at about 500 feet above sea level. Ship commanders considered the actions provocative and in violation of international agreements, prompting the ship to issue several radio queries and warnings. The fighter appeared to be unarmed and never was in danger of coming in contact with the ship, said the official, and the passes, which occurred in the early evening there, ended without incident.

The USS Donald Cook has been conducting routine operations in international waters east of Romania. The ship, which carries helicopters, was deployed to the Black Sea on Thursday, in the wake of the Russian military takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea region and ongoing unrest there. The official also said that a Russian Navy ship, a frigate, has been shadowing the US warship, remaining within visual distance but not close enough to be unsafe. Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov today called for the deployment of United Nations peacekeeping troops in the east of the country, where pro-Russian insurgents have occupied buildings in nearly 10 cities, and EU foreign ministers are meeting today to consider additional sanctions against Russian officials.

This oughta give the ammo needed for a further build up…….does this bring us to the brink?  yet again?

Is Venezuela Important Enough To Provoke?

A U.S. Navy jet violated Venezuelan airspace around two small Caribbean islands over the weekend in what the South American country said was a provocation coordinated with neighbouring Colombia.

Venezuela and the United States bicker over everything from energy policy to arms sales. The incursion comes amid heightened tensions over accusations that Venezuela helped a guerrilla army fighting the government in U.S. ally Colombia.

The Pentagon said a Navy aircraft on a counternarcotics mission had navigation problems that led it to stray into Venezuelan airspace on Saturday.

The U.S. ambassador in Caracas was being summoned to explain the incident, Venezuela’s foreign minister said.

“In the event a U.S. aircraft unintentionally enters into the sovereign airspace of another nation, its crew is required to take swift action to exit the airspace and report the incident to their immediate chain of command, which this aircrew apparently did,” said U.S. Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Really?

It sounds like a provocation in the making…..get Chavez to over-react and then you have a reason for any actions that may be deemed necessary…..it worked in Vietnam…it worked in Iraq……could it work now?