The Navy's Turn to Fluff Trump

The U.S. Navy is reportedly planning a lavish parade of its own after a multimillion-dollar military parade earlier this year left President Donald Trump feeling flat.
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A new report in The Wall Street Journal has intel from the president’s administration that a do-over parade could be in the works—this time taking place at sea.

Trump told his aides that he was disappointed with the marching in the June event, according to the Journal, and was hoping the Navy could deliver a grander celebration.

The president is reportedly “hoping for a shimmering spectacle with seacraft,” the Journal noted.

"Shimmering spectacle"? Has he seen the rust buckets that pass for the surface Navy nowadays?

Wouldn't it be cheaper to use the West Wing slush fund to buy him some hookers on a regular basis?

What's a Little Book-Burning between Friends; USNA Ed.

Good ol' Pete the Drunken Racist has ordered about a thousand books be removed from the USNA library because they deal with issues of race, bigotry and history. A biography of Jackie Robinson and Dr. King's autobiography are on the list of books to be yanked so that the soon-to-be lily-white Christian Middies won't pollute their minds.

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Some footage from The Bridges at Toko-Ri:

It's hard to overstate how hazardous naval aviation was back in the early jet age, even without a shooting war. The carrier decks were relatively short and were built for piston-powered airplanes. It was not uncommon for air wings to lose 20% of their pilots during a cruise.

Not that it's not hazardous anyway, as the crash of Ranger-12 showed.

Gundecking: Newport News Shipbuilding Goes Full Boeing

Shipuilder Newport News Shipbuilding, Va., informed the Department of Justice of faulty welds that may have been made intentionally on non-critical components on in-service Navy submarines and aircraft carriers, USNI News has learned.

[Huntington Ingalls Industries] reported to the Navy that welds on new construction and in-service submarines and Ford-class aircraft carriers were made not following welding procedure, according to a Tuesday memo from Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Nickolas Guertin to Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

The managers involved in this probably figured that they'd not get caught or that, since they supposedly were "non-critical", that nobody would either notice or care.

But they're wrong. If they want to produce shit and get paid for it, Russian shipyards are probably hiring.

A Perilous Time to Be in the Surface Navy

Not from submarines, mind you. Subs are expensive to buy, expensive to maintain and expensive to operate, given the cost of having well-trained crews. Badly-trained crews can be deadly for the boats. That cost is why one can probably count the navies that can run subs well on two hands and not use all your fingers.

No, I am referring to a development of the Russo-Ukrainian War: The unmanned surface vehicle (USV). Oh, they were around before as experimental stuff, but the Ukrainians rammed that technology to fruition at the sort of development speed unseen since the Second World War. Like the GIs who came up with things like Rhino tank, the Ukrainians are not being constrained by a ossified bureaucracy and their development cycle (idea->design->prototype->test->manufacture) is far quicker than that of the Russians.

The Ukrainian USVs have effectively denied much of the Black Sea to the Russian navy. The Russians can't get close enough to maintain a sea blockade, so Ukrainian grain exports have been continuing. Russian warships have been pushed back to bases far from the fighting.

What makes the USVs so deadly is their construction. They have very low to no freeboard, so their radar cross-section is very low. I would not be at all surprised if the top half of them are made of fiberglass, wood or carbon fiber, all of which are not radar reflective. They are propelled by electric motors and, by normally operating at relatively slow speeds, they would not have loud propeller cavitation, like a torpedo. They are likely undetectable by passive sonar at any meaningful range and, being small, they're not going to show up well on active sonar. There may be an optic mast/antenna that is about as thick as a broomstick and would be made of carbon fiber, again, hard to see on radar.

And they can pack a hell of a punch. A few hundred pounds of explosive, detonating at very close range, will blow a hole in the hull that will sink most ships that do not have good damage control equipment and crews trained for that. Which means that one good hit will kill most merchant ships or Russian navy warships.

It would not be terribly difficult to run enough of them to deny sea access to an area that is somewhat constrained by geography, such as the Red Sea. USVs may be able to loiter for extended periods. The drones could be programmed to know when to return to a designated point for recharging.

The defenses would be the same against torpedoes: Booms and nets. Which means that the ships so protected can't go to sea. The other defense is an alert topside watch, but maintaining the sharpness to look for a broomstick moving through the water on a 24/7 basis is almost impossible. The best time to run such an attack would be at night, which means that the ships have to be well-illuminated to look for a USV at close range.

And the answer to that would be a USV that has a pop-up short-range missile, such as a barrage of RPGs or something similar. Fire those off, discombobulate the crew and then hit with a few contact-USVs.

What does this mean for surface operations? Dangerous waters would be anywhere within several hundred miles of the coastline of an adversary. And if a freighter was converted to be a mothership to launch a swarm of one-way attack drones, the danger radius could be very large.

If the Taiwanese are not going all in on USV drone technology, I would be astonished. Which also means that the PRC's window to mount a successful invasion of Taiwan may be closing for a long time.

A Retirement Benefit for Special Operators -- Dain Bramage?

A pervasive pattern of brain damage has been found in SEALs who have committed suicide.

I've been reading the article and intended to gift it to everyone, but Digby beat me to it.

It's not just blast damage from IEDs. It's brain concussions from, well, everything, including repeated rifle fire. Those blast waves are micro-blasts that the person won't feel, but they do add up. The scientists have been studying the brains of those who have died, but those findings were not disseminated to military leadership to change things.

The SEALs have been serving all of their careers in the War on Terror and, when they hit their forties, the damage adds up and becomes evident. It sounds as though a lot of them are not going to have long retirements.

What I wonder about is the effect of firing thousands of rounds through short-barrelled rifles. The rifles used are not your dad/grandpaw's M-16s with 20" barrels. Even the CAR-15s back in the day had longer barrels than the SBRs that the "special operators" use. The shorter a barrel on a rifle, the louder the report, the more blast and the more of a concussion wave for each shot. I don't know if suppressors mitigate that by a lot and whether or not they use them all the time during training.

We are going to need to build a shitload of care facilities for these guys if we don't want to see them off on their own and killing themselves (and others). We should do everything we can to ensure that "brain-damaged special operator" doesn't become as much of thing as "homeless Vietnam vets" were forty years ago.

We owe those guys no less.

A D-Day Survivor

USS LST-510, still in service as the M/V Cape Henlopen. She runs year-round between New London, CT and Orient Point, NY.

The Bridge Collapse and the Navy

Maryland's DOT apparently does better at maintaining its bridges than the Navy.

This is the wreckage of the bridge, which shows no significant rusting:

Unlike the Navy.

One of the axioms about military equipment is that if the little things are taken care of, it's a reasonable assumption that the big things are also good. It's a matter of pride and professionalism.

VLS and Other Thoughts

Here is the CNO watching a demonstration of a proposed system to reload vertical launch cells at sea:

It's probably well past time that this got done. One of the lessons of modern war has been that the expenditure of ammunition during wartime is almost always at a far higher rate than peacetime planners (or politicians) are willing to accept. Part of that is because complex stuff, which is anything above small arms ammunition, needs to be inspected and reworked to ensure reliability, and that ccosts money, but that's probably not germaine to this post.

In a hot war, those VLS ships are going to be blowing missiles out of the tubes at a rather high rate and, once those rounds are fired, what is left is a rather large ship with less combat ability than a Gearing-class destroyer. That those in WESTPAC would have to withdraw far to the east in order to rearm is crazy.

Incidentally, the need to lift really heavy shit to carriers is why the Navy is stuck with the CV-22 for COD: C-2s can't haul replacement engines for F-35s. But I digress.

The ship that brings out the canisters for reloading should hold them in a vertical position, with the missles connected to a fire-control system. That ship could datalink to a DDG/CG and, in an emergency, the missle ship could command their launch. That probably would be an emergency because the chances are that a resupply ship would not be able to keep up with a warship if speed is called for.

By the way, the Navy's standards sure have slipped if they are demonstrating stuff with running rust to the CNO. It's not a new problem.

Your Sunday Morning Turboprop Noise

COD launch:

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

The Grumman TBM "Avenger":

Grumman first built them, that airplane was the "TBF". "TBM" signifies that it was the first torpedo bomber built by General Motors. Legend is that Grumman delivered a TBF to GM that was held together with sheet-metal screws to facilitate studying the airplane. (The Navy wanted Grumman to build F6F Hellcats, which were designed to be Zero-killers.)

The TBF was designed to replace the TBD "Devastator". Avengers could be found in military serive into the 1960s and in commercial service as water-bombers into the 2010s.

Stand By for Lots of Firings

In a bizarre accident, the U.S. Navy suffered an expensive loss over the weekend that saw one of the most technologically advanced fighter jets in the world, an F/A-18 Super Hornet, blown off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman. The accident, which took place on July 8 as the ship was sailing the Mediterranean, injured one sailor. An investigation is underway.

Truman, along with the embarked Carrier Air Wing 1, was conducting a replenishment-at-sea in the Mediterranean. During unexpectedly heavy winds, the F/A-18 Super Hornet was blown overboard and into the water. The mission “was safely terminated through established procedures,” according to a Navy press release.

I'd expect that the CO and XO of the carrier will be fired over this, along with the CAG and the CO of the Hornet squadron, unless the investigation shows that the the jet was properly secured to the deck. CDR Accuweather, or whoever is the senior weatherguru on board, may also be gonzo. For the unit commanders, that's the price that gets paid for wearing the command-at-sea pin on the right side of their uniforms.

Two Views of the Moskva Sinking

One view: The Ukrainians exploited a known weakness in Moskva's combat systems suite.

Another view: The ship may have indeed caught fire and sank because massive corruption during overhaul and maintenance without any help from the Ukrainians. This information may be from Russian sources, so it could be suspect.

The truth may be a melange of both views: The Ukrainians did hit the ship and that corruption in the Russian navy ensured that the ship was unprepared to defend itself and cobat the damage.

I once served under a commanding officer who insisted that the last line of defense against a missile was damage control. To say that he harped on being ready in all aspects of damage control would be an understatement.

The other question is whether Putin is using Russia's abysmal performance in the war to remove senior officers. The Russian way has been to arrest (and presumably shoot) senior officers pour encourager les autres. On the other hand, such a system almost guarantees paralysis, as all but the most minor decisions tend to be passed up the chair of command.

One Problem Solved, Turkey II Ed.

The US Navy has said it has retrieved a stealth fighter jet from the depths of the South China Sea where it sank after a "mishap" in January.
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The F-35C Lightning II was retrieved on Wednesday from a depth of 12,400 feet (3,780 metres) using a remotely operated vehicle that fastened rigging and lift lines to the aircraft. A hook was lowered from a diving support ship's crane to the sea floor, which was attached to the rigging. The jet was then lifted to the surface and hoisted aboard the vessel.

That's pretty impressive; yanking a wreck off he sea floor from over two miles deep.

Catching Up on Things (Including Bozo Rudy)

Hubble is OOC:

On June 13, the Hubble Space Telescope's payload computer stopped working, bringing the great instrument's operations to a halt. Several attempts have been made to restart – so far without success – and astronomers are bracing themselves for the possibility this is the end for the telescope that changed our view of the universe.

If they can't get Hubble to go back on line, it's not as though we have the capability to fly up there and fix it.
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The Disgraced Asshole of Orange wanted to use the Feds to stop comedians from making fun of him.

“It’s truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side,’” Trump tweeted, long before he was banned from Twitter for inspiring a violent mob. “Like an advertisement without consequences. Same with Late Night Shows. Should Federal Election Commission and/or FCC look into this?”

It was, on its face, a ridiculous question and threat, as SNL is obviously satire, and therefore a form of protected speech in America that pissed-off commanders-in-chief have no authority to directly subvert. However, then-President Trump went further than simply tweeting his displeasure with the late-night comedians and SNL writers’ room. The internal discussions that followed, between the former leader of the free world and some of his political and legal advisers, once again underscored just how much Trump wanted to use the full weight and power of the U.S. government to punish his personal enemies.

According to two people familiar with the matter, Trump asked advisers and lawyers in early 2019 about what the Federal Communications Commission, the court system, and—most confusingly to some Trump lieutenants—the Department of Justice could do to probe or mitigate SNL, Jimmy Kimmel, and other late-night comedy mischief-makers.

Autocrats, and wannabee autocrats, are notoriously thin-skinned. They know that their weapon of fear doesn't work very well if people are laughing at them. That applied, in spaces, to The Mangolorian.
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Republicans are still pushing Jim Crow 2.0 voting laws and the party members in the Senate are going to do everything possible to ensure that those people have a harder time voting.

Every objective study of the 2020 election has found it to be a free and fair election, including, most recently, in Michigan:

State Senate Republicans who investigated Michigan’s 2020 presidential election for months concluded there was no widespread or systemic fraud and urged the state attorney general to consider probing people who have made baseless allegations about the results in Antrim County to raise money or publicity “for their own ends.”

None of that will tamp down the Big Lie of the Scrfer of Hamberders or those who are too afraid to do anything other than parrot his lies (which includes every Republican senator). They know that they can't win in a battle of ideas, that a majority of Americans doen't buy their schtick. So their sole road to power is to tilt the playing field, to keep as many of those who won't vote for them from voting.

It really is a modern version of Jim Crow.
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Speaking of the purveyors of The Big Lie:

An appeals court suspended Rudy Giuliani from practicing law in New York because he made false statements while trying to get courts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the presidential race.

An attorney disciplinary committee said in its motion to suspend Giuliani’s license that there was “uncontroverted evidence” that Giuliani had made false statements to the courts, the public and lawmakers as he pushed theories that the election was stolen through fraud.

You can read the 33-page motion to suspend Rudy's law license here.

There are four appellate courts in New York State, called "Departments". Each Department administers the discipline for the attorneys who practice within that Department.

Lying to judges is one of those things that can get arttorneys in real trouble. (Snacking on the client's own money is a big no-no.) Attorney discipline is sort of a universally-reciprocal thing, in that if an attorney is admitted in more than one state, or to Federal courts, being suspended or disbarred in one state is effective in all of them.

I don't think Rudy's likely to be standing on the side of the road with a cardboard sign anytime soon. But Rudy now is feeling the full force of working for Individual-1: He got stiffed on his fees and his reputation is in tatters. Melania's Future Ex-Husband throws people to the side like used Kleenexes, and that's what's happening to Rudy.
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Welcome to the 1970s:

The U.S. Navy has swapped more than 1,600 parts among its new Virginia-class submarines since 2013 to ease maintenance bottlenecks as components that are supposed to last 33 years wear out decades sooner.

Parts are being shuttled regularly among the nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines so that vessels in the $166 billion class built by General Dynamics Corp. and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. can return to operations, according to data from the Naval Sea Systems Command and the Congressional Budget Office.

This isn't quite as bad in the 1970s, when the primary task of shipboard security watches was to stop the theft of parts and equipment by the sailors of other ships.[1] But the under-funding of spare parts and maintenance is a perennial problem. Building ships, tanks and airplanes is sexy. Congresscritters like that, because it's splashy and the jobs created can be pointed at. But buying repair parts isn't as sexy, so it gets underfunded.
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[1] I'm not saying that I once told a lieutenant from another ship that if he didn't get off my quarterdeck, that I was going to shoot him. But I'm not saying that I didn't say that, either.

The Tug Fees Must Have Been Mounting Up

Just more than a decade after they entered naval service to great fanfare as the future face of the U.S. Navy, the first two littoral combat ships will be mothballed later this year, according to the Navy’s inactivation schedule for 2021.

The first LCS, Freedom, will head into inactive reserve status Sept. 30, less than 13 years after the ship was commissioned.

The second LCS, Independence, a separate class variant, will receive its shadow box on July 31 after just 11½ years of service.

The LCS concept has been sketchy right from the jump. It was pretty clear to a casual observer that all of those touted "mission modules" would never be built, or, if they were, they would not be built in the numbers required.

There were quite a few things that might have worked out for the LCS. But they take a shitload of contractor maintenance that, on most ships, was done by a ship's crew. The manning plan for the ships ensured that the sailors on board would treat the ships like rented mules. One could sum up the problems with the LCS by noting that it was one of the dumb ideas of Rumsfeld's DoD, right up there with the gutting of surface officer initial training that led, in part, to at least two collisions at sea.

And it didn't take a rocket scientist to foresee the problems that arose with the LCS program.

Shit I Haven’t Seen in a Very Long Time, Nasal Radiator Ed.

An E-2C (or D):

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

French Rafale fighters on the USS G.H.W. Bush:

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

The Blues, flying F-18s:

That Was Foreseeable; BHR Ed.

The Navy decided to scrap the amphibious assault ship that burned for nearly five days earlier this year, concluding after months of investigations that trying to rebuild and restore the ship would take too much money and too much industrial base capacity.

The July 12 fire aboard USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) began in the lower vehicle storage area but ravaged the island, the mast and the flight deck as it burned its way through the inside of the big-deck amphib. The ship remained watertight throughout the ordeal and hasn’t been moved from its spot on the pier at Naval Base San Diego, but between the fire itself and the days-long firefighting effort, about 60-percnet of the ship was ruined and would have had to be rebuilt or replaced, Rear Adm. Eric Ver Hage, the commander of Navy Regional Maintenance Center and the director of surface ship maintenance and modernization, told reporters [yesterday] in a phone call.

Three main options were considered: rebuild and restore the ship to its original function of moving Marines and their gear around for amphibious warfare; rebuild the ship to a new configuration for a new mission, such as a submarine or surface ship tender or a hospital ship; or decommission and scrap the ship.

Ver Hage said restoring Bonhomme Richard to its original form would have cost between $2.5 billion and $3.2 billion and taken five to seven years. That work would have taken place in the Gulf Coast, he said.

Rebuilding the ship for a new purpose would have cost “in excess of a billion dollars” and also taken about five to seven years. Though cheaper than rebuilding to the original configuration, Ver Hage said it would be cheaper to just design and build a new tender or hospital ship from scratch.

Decommissioning the ship – and the inactivation, harvesting of parts, towing and scrapping the hull – will cost about $30 million and take just nine to 12 months.

I sort of call bullshit on the options. The destroyer tenders have been gone for a very long time (it was a stupid move to scrap them). The two sub tenders (USS Emory S. Land and USS Frank Cable) are both over forty years old. Other than Trump trying to gin up support in Alabama last summer by proposing to shower the state with shipbuilding contracts, I know of no serious proposal to replace the USNS Mercy and the USNS Comfort, let alone build a new fleet of tenders.

But that the Navy was not going to scrap the BHR was likely never seriously in doubt.