Free Republic

Not all F/A-18 pilots have heard of Leslie Shook, but every Hornet pilot knows her voice. The Boeing employee is the voice of the "oral alert," a series of pre-recorded commands that help a pilot avoid his or her imminent demise. Shook is now retiring from the company, which put together a nice tribute video to her. The F/A-18 can sense when corrective action is needed—right away—and the plane promptly warns the pilot what needs to be done. Bitchin' Betty will bark commands like "Pull up! Pull up!" until the pilot complies. There are numerous Bitchin' Betties across various airplanes,...

There is no doubt that Russia’s Kirov class super-sized nuclear cruisers are charismatic fighting machines. Bristling with sensors and weaponry, and seemingly alien in design when compared to anything in the west, they are intimidating. But the truth is that they are also very dated and only one has remained in service for decades. That’s all about to change. Only one of the four Kirov class ships ever built has remained in active duty since its commissioning in the mid-1990s, that ship being the Pyotr Veliky, the flagship of the Northern Fleet. As part of the increasingly belligerent recent Kremlin...

The former frigate USS Reuben James (FFG-57) was sunk in January during a test of the Navy’s new anti-surface warfare (ASuW) variant of the Raytheon Standard Missile 6 (SM-6), company officials told USNI News on Monday. The adaptation of the SM-6 was fired from guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones (DDG-32) and hit James during the Jan. 18 test at the U.S. Pacific Missile Range Facility off the coast of Hawaii, a Raytheon spokeswoman told USNI News. “The test was a demonstration of the U.S. Navy’s concept of ‘distributed lethality,’ employing ships in dispersed formations to increase the offensive...

The current controversy over Australia’s Future Submarine Program, its schedule and the associated life-of-type of the current Collins class has resulted in much hyperbole as to the difficulties associated with keeping elderly boats in operation. A quick survey of the state of affairs in the major submarine operators overseas may provide some context to concerns that the Collins class will have to run for well over thirty years of service. In the United States, four Los Angeles class nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs) are scheduled for decommissioning in 2017 after thirty-six years’ service, while the hull life of the Ohio...

From chasing down and firing on commercial shipping vessels, to conducting live missile firings in close proximity to U.S. aircraft carriers, to actually seizing and holding U.S. naval boats, Iran's military has been behaving pretty badly since its government signed its nuclear arms deal last year. To date, the U.S. hasn't elected to take any reprisals for these actions -- but Saudi Arabia, for one, isn't prepared to sit idle. Kit up! Last year, as you may recall, Saudi Arabia announced the formation of an Islamic military alliance in the Persian Gulf region. Ostensibly, the purpose of that alliance is...

The Navy will soon deploy a new air-launched, precision-guided weapon able to use a two-way data-link to identify and destroy moving targets at sea, a technology, giving fighters such as the F/A-18 Super Hornet a vastly increased attack envelope against a wider range of threats. Called the AMG-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, or JSOW, the Raytheon-built attack bomb uses GPS technology, inertial measurement unit guidance technology and an imaging infrared seeker in the final phase of flight to find and attack enemy targets. While historically used as a land-attack weapon launched from air-platforms such as fighter jets, new technology allows the...

A newly revealed configuration of sensors set for next-generation destroyer Zumwalt (DDG-1000) could make the ship less stealthy than originally intended, several naval experts told USNI News on Wednesday. According to a new artist’s concept of the configuration from the service, the three ships in the Zumwalt-class will position sensors originally designed to be embedded in the ships’ composite deckhouses on a mast positioned on the front of the deck house, with several more sensors on either side of the deck house. The change will sacrifice some of the benefits of the composite deckhouse design, conceived to make the ship...

Pentagon budget battles inevitably bring out the long knives. But in the age of sequestration absolute lunacy has taken over. Left-leaning and libertarian think tanks as well as pundits of various stripes have declared open season on our Navy's fleet of aircraft carriers and the carrier strike group (CSG) concept, calling them outdated and obsolete in light of current threats. Some politicians agree with them. These pols see the high cost of building and operating carriers as a pot of gold to be raided to pay for everything else they can think of, and they can think of a lot...

In the next decade, U.S. ships and submarines capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles will likely be fitted with a variant specifically designed to hit enemy ships up to 1,000 miles away, according to a report published in the U.S. Naval Institute News. Vice Adm. Joseph Mulloy, deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources told USNI News Wednesday that surface ships would receive the upgraded missiles first, followed by submarines. The move follows the Navy’s upcoming $434 million budget request that would modify a portion of the current stock of Tomahawks with the ability to strike...

Secretive U.S. Navy Submarine Went on a Dangerous Mission Clues suggest spying in 'extremely hazardous' waters On Jan. 20, 2013, the Seawolf-class attack submarine USS Jimmy Carter left her home port in Bangor, Washington. Less than two months later, the submarine appeared at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for repairs. It was all quite mysterious. During her time at sea, we don’t know where Jimmy Carter was or what her crew of nearly 150 were precisely doing. The Seawolf class is one of the most secretive weapons in America’s arsenal, and information about the Navy’s “Silent Service” is difficult to discover...

The United States and India have held talks about conducting joint naval patrols that a U.S. defence official said could include the disputed South China Sea, a move that would likely anger Beijing, which claims most of the waterway. Washington wants its regional allies and other Asian nations to take a more united stance against China over the South China Sea, where tensions have spiked in the wake of Beijing's construction of seven man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago. India and the United States have ramped up military ties in recent years, holding naval exercises in the Indian Ocean that...

In an apparent move to show how serious the Pentagon is about countering conventional threats such as Russia and China, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter announced Wednesday that the U.S. Navy would get a new ship-killing missile. The SM-6 is a vertically launched system fired from the deck of destroyers and cruisers. The missile was designed and fielded to intercept ballistic missiles in flight while they are passing through the upper atmosphere, but now, with Carter’s announcement, the SM-6 will be upgraded to defeat enemy ships. “It makes the SM-6 basically a twofer,” said Carter to an audience of...

The Navy’s imperative to provide “uninterrupted strategic deterrence” with its ballistic missile submarines requires it meets two goals: development of the new boats must stay on schedule, and the old boats must make it to the end of their expected service lives. The latter isn’t easy – the Navy is counting on the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) to stick around for 42 years each, something that’s never been done. The longest-serving American submarine, the boomer USS Kamehameha (SSBN-642), retired in 2002 after 36 and a half years of service. USS Ohio (SSGN-726) has been around for just over 34...

The missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur sailed within 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) of Triton Island in the Paracel chain "to challenge excessive maritime claims of parties that claim the Paracel Islands," without notifying the three claimants beforehand, Defense Department spokesman Mark Wright said Saturday in Washington.. China, Taiwan and Vietnam have overlapping claims in the Paracels and require prior notice from ships transiting what they consider their territorial waters. The latest operation was particularly aimed at China, which has increased tensions with the U.S. and its Southeast Asian neighbors by embarking on massive construction of man-made islands and airstrips...

"An act of God" was responsible for U.S. Navy sailors entering Iranian waters, leading to their arrest at gunpoint, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday told Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members who detained the Americans. "Your job was excellent, interesting and timely and, in fact, we must consider this incident as an act of God, who brought Americans into our waters so they would be arrested through your timely action and in that manner with their hands held above their heads," Khamenei told the group in a face-to-face meeting, according to a report on the supreme leader's...

Navy jet takes off from U.S.S. Ronald Reagan. (U.S. Navy photo) (CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration’s deal to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuel for Navy jets comes at a cost of up to nine times higher than regular fuel, a spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said, coming at a time when the U.S. military is already facing deep budget cuts. Inhofe, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has supported biofuel projects in the past, but has problems with a program the U.S. Department of Agriculture...

White House Spokesperson Josh Earnest News Briefing Video

Huntington Ingalls Industries is in discussions with defense officials about potentially putting missile defense radars and laser weapons on San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks, a company executive said Jan. 13. “You can put a lot of additional weight on the ship and you can put … some modern technologies like ballistic missile defense radars that are very heavy,” Brian Cuccias, corporate vice president at HII and president of Ingalls Shipbuilding, told reporters on the sidelines of a Surface Navy Association symposium in Arlington, Virginia. “We think it’s a great idea.” The vessels, which are manufactured by the company, have design...

Washington (CNN)Ten American sailors are in Iranian custody after two small U.S. naval craft apparently briefly entered Iranian territorial waters, a U.S. senior defense official said Tuesday. The official, however, expects the situation to be resolved quickly. A senior administration official said there is nothing to indicate this was anything hostile on the part of any entity in Iran, adding that the U.S. has received high-level assurances that the sailors will be released promptly. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told CNN's Jake Tapper that President Barack Obama will be in touch with members of Congress about the incident. "Certainly,...

The Navy released a video Saturday showing an Iranian military ship firing a rocket last month near U.S. and French military vessels and commercial ships in the Persian Gulf. The Dec. 26 incident appears to be the latest in a series by Iran that are raising concerns about the rogue nation, as the United States and other world powers prepare to lift crippling economic sanctions in exchange for Tehran curtailing its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. The most recent incident occurred in the Strait of Hormuz, which is the only nautical passage for oil-laden ships going to and from the...