Free Republic

Great pics of the 'Angels. Graphic heavy...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. Navy has denied Chelsea Clinton permission to campaign for her mother on a former bombing range on a small Puerto Rican island. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign wanted to use the land Wednesday as a setting to discuss the candidate's clean up plan for the region and call to give some areas to local residents. But Navy spokeswoman Lt. Lara Bollinger said no one is allowed to campaign on federal property. Chelsea Clinton is making her second campaign visit to Puerto Rico in the last three weeks. The U.S. territory has 55 delegates...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Navy admiral engaged in sexual relations in the White House in 1990 with a federal employee whom he falsely told he was a widower, according to a report released Friday by the Defense Department. In March, when the report was submitted to Pentagon officials, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem was demoted and fired from his post as director of the Navy staff. Stufflebeem told investigators he couldn't remember the name of the woman he had an affair with. He also lied when he told investigators he did not engage in sexual relations with the woman, identified as...

I have no idea how GenDynamics is doing, but this first ship looks absolutley wicked! Its tri-maran hull combined with the capabilities and look of a warship makes it something out of this world!

MAYPORT, Fla. (NNS) -- Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Gary Roughead announced today the reestablishment of U.S. 4th Fleet and assigned Rear Adm. Joseph D. Kernan, currently serving as Commander, Naval Special Warfare Command, as its first commander. U.S. 4th Fleet will be responsible for U.S. Navy ships, aircraft and submarines operating in the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) area of focus, which encompasses the Caribbean, and Central and South America and the surrounding waters. Located in Mayport, Fla., and dual-hatted with Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command (COMUSNAVSO), U.S. 4th Fleet reestablishment addresses the increased role of maritime forces...

A female midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy testified Tuesday that a fellow midshipman raped her in her dorm room after he had been drinking. Mark Calvanico is accused of rape, making a false statement to investigators, conduct unbecoming an officer and unauthorized absence.

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp won a $1.16 billion contract to modify its high-altitude unmanned Global Hawk surveillance plane into a new maritime patrol aircraft, the Navy said on Tuesday. Northrop beat out Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co to win the deal, which runs through September 2014 and covers three unmanned test planes and an option for three low-rate initial production planes. The Navy plans to buy 68 Global Hawks under the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) program over the coming years, in a deal Navy officials said would be worth at least $3.74 billion,...

Updates welcome. The story just showed up. Casus belli ?

Another source: http://cbs2chicago.com/national/iran.naval.confrontation.2.697662.html The Navy says a ship encountered a small Iranian high-speed boat in the central Persian Gulf and warned it away by firing a flare. Two other similar Iranian boats in the area did not come as close. The USS Typhoon tried unsuccessfully to establish radio contact with the Iranian boat after it came within an estimated 200 yards of the Typhoon on Thursday, outside Iranian territorial waters. A Navy official says the ship then fired the flare and continued on its way without incident. The official says there were no signs any boat was armed. It was...

WASHINGTON — A Navy officer has described for a Washington jury how she worked as a call girl while also serving as a supply officer at the Naval Academy. Lt. Cmdr. Rebecca Dickinson testified Thursday that she had sex for money while working for Deborah Palfrey's escort service, according to The Washington Post. She testified she quit in April 2006 because she didn't like the work and because she had other commitments. Palfrey has said she was unaware that the escorts were having sex for money. She says the business was an erotic fantasy service. Testimony resumes Monday.

The Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to review a federal appeals court decision limiting the Navy's use of sonar off the Southern California coast because of potential harm to dolphins and whales. In a petition filed Monday, the Justice Department argues that the decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco jeopardizes the Navy's ability to train sailors and Marines for service in wartime.

ONE Egyptian was killed and two wounded when a US military ship about to cross the Suez Canal opened fire on barges of hawkers that approached their boat today, a security source said.

Oil tankers and other merchant vessels will be assembled into convoys to sail under the protection of warships’ guns. The plans follow two serious confrontations between Iranian gunboats and British and US naval ships. Four of our frigates and destroyers are to be sent to the key Strait of Hormuz amid fears that commercial shipping will be targeted next. The narrow “chokepoint” carrying oil from the Persian Gulf is the most vulnerable area for attacks or suicide rammings. Three US ships almost opened fire there in January after being “buzzed” by Iranian boats. Advertisement The convoy plans have emerged from...

TAMPA, Fla. - A judge on Thursday ordered that a terrorism-related charge against an Egyptian student accused of transporting explosives will be handled in a separate trial from the explosives counts. Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed and another Egyptian student, Youssef Samir Megahed, were arrested last summer in South Carolina over material found in their trunk. Prosecutors say it was explosive material; the defense says it was homemade fireworks. Mohamed also is charged with a terrorism-related count stemming from a video found on a laptop computer in the car. The video, which Mohamed is accused of producing, shows how to turn...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Russian bomber aircraft approached a U.S. aircraft carrier off the Korean coast on Wednesday and was intercepted by American fighter jets -- the second such incident in less than a month, U.S. defense officials said. According to the U.S. officials, a Russian bomber came within three to five nautical miles and flew 2,000 feet (610 meters) above the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its accompanying ships. Two U.S. F/A-18 fighters were launched to intercept the Russian aircraft and escort it out of the area, according to one defense official. Russian bombers over the past year have...

<p>I thought I would once again share with the FR community some really great PICS of the US Navy, this time for 2008.</p> <p>The site uses thumbnails to link to medium-res pictures suitable for desktop background pics.</p> <p>Just click on one of the thumbnails below to take you to the site.</p>

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials say the Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March. This is the U.S. military will use a missile to destroy a satellite in space, NBC News reports. The spy satellite has lost all power and is expected to crash back on earth in early March, spreading debris and potentially hazardous fuel over several hundred miles.

VALDOSTA, Ga., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Little Caesar Enterprises, Inc. today celebrates the grand opening of the fifth store to open under the Little Caesars Veterans Program as U.S. military veteran and Little Caesars franchisee Patricia Evans opens her doors for business at 1650 F Baytree Road in Valdosta, Georgia. "The Little Caesars Veterans Program has provided me the opportunity to transition to a new career as my family and I begin the next chapter in our lives," said Evans. "I am proud to be the first woman to open a store under this program, and I'm excited to be...

August 7, 2004THE OVERVIEWBin Laden Sent Suspect to U.S., Officials Say By DOUGLAS JEHL and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM ASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - American intelligence officials now believe that Issa al-Hindi, the alleged Qaeda operative now in British custody, was dispatched to the United States in early 2001 by the mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot at the direction of Osama bin Laden to case potential targets in New York City, senior government officials said Friday. The officials said that Mr. Hindi was the same person as the figure identified in the Sept. 11 commission report as Issa al-Britani. The...

· Pentagon climbdown over 'you will explode' video · Mystery remains over where voice came from Doubts intensified last night over the nature of an alleged aggressive confrontation by Iranian patrol boats and American warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, after Pentagon officials admitted that they could not confirm that a threat to blow up the US ships had been made directly by the Iranian crews involved in the incident. Several news sources reported that senior navy officials had conceded that the voice threatening to blow up the US warships in a matter of minutes could have come from...

CAIRO, Egypt - The U.S. Navy said Friday that one of its ships fired warning shots at a small Iranian boat in the Strait of Hormuz in December during one of two serious encounters that month. The USS Whidbey Island fired the warning shots on Dec. 19 in response to a small Iranian boat that was rapidly approaching it, said a U.S. Navy official. "One small (Iranian) craft was coming toward it, and it stopped after the Whidbey Island fired warning shots," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. It was the...

CAIRO, Egypt - The top U.S. military commander in the Mideast said Friday that Iran runs the risk of triggering an unintended conflict if its boats continue to harass U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf. Adm. William J. Fallon, chief of U.S. Central Command, said a threatening radio call heard during an encounter Sunday between U.S. Navy ships and Iranian boats in the Strait of Hormuz was likely connected to Iran's provocative actions. He said the exact origin of the message was still unknown. "This kind of behavior, if it happens in the future, is the kind of event that...

The United States on Thursday lodged a formal diplomatic protest with Iran over an incident last weekend in which Iranian speedboats harassed U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf. The protest repeats U.S. complaints about Sunday's "provocative" action in the Strait of Hormuz and was sent to the Iranian Foreign Ministry via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which represents U.S. interests in Iran, the State Department said. "It reiterates the points that we have made publicly in the last few days," deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters. "We certainly don't want to see the Iranians taking any kind of provocative actions...

The list of those who are less than fully confident in the Pentagon’s video/audio mashup of aggressive maneuvers by Iranian boats near American warships in the Strait of Hormuz now includes the Pentagon itself. Unnamed Pentagon officials said on Wednesday that the threatening voice heard in the audio clip, which was released on Monday night with a disclaimer that it was recorded separately from the video images and merged with them later, is not directly traceable to the Iranian military. That undercuts one of the most menacing elements from the Pentagon’s assertion that Iranian forces threatened the Navy ships: The...

According to the report, five Iranian attack ships harassed , made threats that they were about to explode. (See video) Five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats "harassed and provoked" three U.S. Navy ships early Sunday in international waters, the U.S. military said Monday, calling the encounter a "significant" confrontation. An Iranian official, however, said it was not a serious incident, the state-run news agency IRNA reported. U.S. military officials said the incident occurred early Sunday morning in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping channel leading in and out of the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. military has video and audio recordings of Iranian high-speed boats that threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. convoy in the Persian Gulf and plans to release them, the top U.S. Navy commander in the Mideast said Tuesday. Iran's Revolutionary Guards said that its boats never threatened the U.S. vessels during the encounter early Sunday in the Hormuz Strait, insisting it only asked them to identify themselves then let them continue into the Gulf. But U.S. Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff disputed that account, saying the incident was "provocative." Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. 5th Fleet, which patrols the...

Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three US Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to blow up the American vessels, US officials said Monday. They described it as a serious provocation. US forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats turned and moved away, a Defense Department official said. "It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we've seen yet," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. White House spokesman Tony...

New Haven (AP) _ A federal judge says prosecutors may not introduce at trial a claim that a former Navy sailor plotted to attack military personnel. Hassan Abu-Jihaad is charged with disclosing the location of Navy ships to terrorism supporters. The 31-year-old Abu-Jihaad of Phoenix pleaded not guilty in April to charges he provided material support to terrorists with intent to kill U.S. citizens and disclosed classified information relating to national defense. He is accused of disclosing the location of Navy ships and the best ways to attack them. During a hearing in November, prosecutors played secretly recorded phone calls...

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has ordered the Navy to adopt stringent new safeguards intended to improve protection of whales and dolphins during its sonar training exercises off Southern California. The ruling, issued Thursday by Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, orders the Navy to limit its use of medium-range sonar to an area beyond 12 nautical miles from shore. Closer to the shore, marine mammals have exhibited frenzied and disoriented behavior during the emissions of sonar blasts as part of the Navy’s practice missions. Judge Cooper’s order also outlined...

The Navy this month completed its fourth conversion of a U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarine into an extremely powerful, conventionally armed cruise missile launcher and covert transporter of U.S. special operations force. The last converted missile sub the USS Georgia is now being readied for deployment around the world at its home port of Kings Bay, Ga., said skipper, Cmdr. Rodney E. Hutton. The conversion of the nuclear missile submarines into Tomahawk-firing submarines is one element of a new Pentagon strategy of building up forces to be ready to counter any emerging threat from China. Cmdr. Hutton said the Georgia...

FALLBROOK ---- Friends of a decorated Navy SEAL who grew up in Fallbrook and died in Iraq this week described him as a quiet, athletic young man whose dream was to join the elite Sea Air Land commandos after high school. Chief Petty Officer Mark T. Carter, 27, was killed "while conducting combat operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom," the Navy said in a press release Thursday. Navy officials declined to elaborate. As a SEAL, Carter earned a long list of honors, including two bronze stars with "V" for valor, a Joint Service Commendation Medal with "V" and various...

Navy to Honor 100th Anniversary of Great White Fleet Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead will host a ceremony to honor the 100th anniversary of President Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet deployment on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2007, at 6 p.m. The ceremony will be held aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt EST. at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. The Great White Fleet departed from Hampton Roads one hundred years ago this month. Sixteen battleships, plus auxiliary support ships and 14,000 Sailors and Marines, embarked on the 14-month journey that covered some 43,000...

TOKYO (AP) - Pirates freed a Japanese chemical tanker loaded with highly explosive benzene off the coast of Somalia Wednesday, six weeks after seizing the vessel and its crew, a U.S. Navy spokesman said. All 22 crew members were unhurt, the Navy said, and the pirates were seen heading toward the Somali coast. The Golden Nori was seized off the east coast of Somalia in late October carrying up to 40,000 tons of benzene. The U.S. Navy came to the aid of the vessel that month, with the guided missile destroyer USS Porter opening fire to destroy pirate skiffs tied...

"Last month the US officially launched its military command centre in Africa known as Africom, a sign that Washington attaches increasing strategic importance to the continent. Wicked imperialists like to pick the best spots for themselves. When the Portuguese conquered humid Mombasa in the 16th Century, they built Fort Jesus on a promontory of the old Arab town that commanded the harbour, but also enjoyed cool breezes from the Indian Ocean. Naturally, when the British arrived on the Kenyan coast at the end of the 19th Century, they located a club for their busy administrators on the same agreeable site....

Air Force Lieutenant General Henry 'Trey" Obering, Missile Defense Agency (MDA) director, announced the successful completion today of a multiple simultaneous engagement involving two ballistic missile targets. This was MDA's latest "hit to kill" intercept flight test conducted jointly with the U.S. Navy off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. For the first time, the operationally realistic test involved two unitary "non-separating" targets, meaning that the target's warheads did not separate from their booster rockets. This was the 32nd and 33rd successful "hit-to-kill" intercepts since 2001. Designated as Flight Test Standard Missile-13 (FTM-13), it marked the tenth and eleventh successful intercepts,...

Crew members from the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS James E. Williams (DDG 95) provided care and assistance for approximately 12 hours to crew members and pirates aboard the North Korean cargo vessel Dai Hong Dan, after the crew regained control of the ship from the pirates. Subsequently, the crew requested no further assistance from Williams. Dai Hong Dan’s crew regained control of their vessel Tuesday, Oct. 30, after confronting the pirates who had taken over their ship Monday, Oct. 29. The crew was able to control the steering and engineering spaces of the ship, while the pirates had seized the...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A U.S. destroyer has entered Somali territorial waters in pursuit of a Japanese-owned ship loaded with benzene that was hijacked by pirates over the weekend, military officials said Monday. The guided-missile destroyer USS Arleigh Burke entered Somali waters with the permission of the troubled transitional government in Mogadishu, U.S. officials said. In recent years, warships have stayed outside the 12-mile limit when chasing pirates. The ongoing operation was confirmed to CNN by two military officials familiar with the details. Gunmen aboard two skiffs hijacked the Panamanian-flagged Golden Mori off the Socotra archipelago, near the Horn of Africa,...

Family of Navy SEAL to Get Medal of Honor WASHINGTON — The first Medal of Honor awarded for combat in Afghanistan will be presented Monday to the family of a Navy SEAL from Long Island, N.Y, who gave his life to make a radio call for help for his team. President Bush is to present the nation's highest military honor for valor to the family of Lt. Michael Murphy of Patchogue, N.Y.

It is an impressive testament to the abiding affection and political influence of former President Ronald Reagan that the fate of a controversial treaty now before the U.S. Senate may ultimately turn on a single question: What would Reagan do?As we had the privilege of working closely with President Reagan in connection with the foreign policy, national security and domestic implications of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty or LOST), there is no question about how our 40th president felt about this accord. He so strongly opposed...

The locations of the 23 vessels are unknown. Hundreds of ships carrying tens of thousands of containers arrive every day at U.S. ports, where they are subjected to only minimal spot checks. "The ease with which a terrorist could smuggle chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons in a container, without detection, is, in a word, hair-raising," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. At best, only one out of 10 of such containers is actually checked by U.S. Customs inspectors, who have no radiation detection equipment to check an entire ship. " There is no magical shield that would let you know, ...

Did you know that China could become the world’s leading naval power by 2020? That’s the verdict of military analyst Tony Corn. This may help explain why the U.S. Navy thinks a piece of paper called the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty provides some sort of protection for American forces on the high seas. It offers no such protection, of course, but it creates the impression that Navy leaders are doing something about our increasing weakness and vulnerability. However, like so many other U.N. treaties, including the 19 anti-terrorism treaties in effect on 9/11, this one offers a false...

HONOLULU, Sept. 16, 2007 – Members of Scott Harpley’s Ringgold High School graduation class in northern Georgia probably wouldn’t recognize the driven young sailor squeezed into seat 51F on an airplane yesterday headed here to his first duty assignment. U.S. Navy Fireman Apprentice Scott Harpley, age 22, heads to his first duty assignment in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where he will serve aboard the Navy submarine USS Pasadena, Sept. 15, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by Donna Miles   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. At age 22, U.S. Navy Fireman Apprentice Harpley is much more – and in some cases,...

PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea’s greatest propaganda trophy, a captured U.S. Navy spy ship, floats along the banks of the Taedong River, beckoning visitors aboard to see how this country once humiliated the United States. It's the USS Pueblo, whose captain surrendered without firing a shot to North Korea in 1968. Now a major tourist attraction, the vessel has become a floating symbol of anti-Americanism and the Cold War era. It draws some 1,000 people a day in organized tours designed to drum up patriotism. “It was a great victory for the Korean people to capture this ship,” said...

CINCINNATI (NNS) -- The Cincinnati Reds honored the service of past, present and future Sailors before the start of their major league baseball game against the New York Mets, ending Cincinnati’s first-ever Navy Week in grand fashion Sept. 3. The pre-game festivities included a crowd-pleasing performance by Navy Band Great Lakes rock band “Horizon,” a parachute demonstration by the Navy Leap Frogs, an on-field enlistment of Delayed Entry Program Recruits (DEPers), the 25th reunion of the Reds-sponsored Navy Boot Camp Hall of Fame Company 233, an on-field presentation of a Bronze Star Medal, and finally the ceremonial first pitch thrown...

WASHINGTON: The ongoing naval wargame in the Bay of Bengal involving five nations does not "target" China but is designed to shape strategic choices by regional actors like India, a senior Pentagon official has said. "This exercise does not target China. It is designed to shape strategic choices being made by all regional actors. Malabar is a sign of responsible stakeholders interested in promoting peace and security by a visible presence," said Brigadier General John Toolan, Principal Director for South and South East Asia at the US Department of Defence. The four-day 'Malabar Exercise' started on September 4 with the...

The FReeper Canteen Presents..... The USS NAUTILUS (SSN-571) USS Nautilus is arguably the most famous submarine in the world. She was first in many respects, including being the first nuclear submarine, first submarine to navigate under the North Pole, as well as setting many endurance records for submerged operations. She also participated in many exercises that helped to rewrite Anti-Submarine Warfare doctrine. USS NAUTILUS was laid down 14 June 1952, President Harry S. Truman officiating, at the Electric Boat Co., Division of General Dynamics Corp., Groton, Connecticut; launched 21 January 1954; sponsored by Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower, wife of...

A multilateral naval drill involving India, the US and three other nations begins in the Bay of Bengal Tuesday, an event that India says is a pointer to the country's growing importance on the world stage. This is the first time a joint exercise on this scale involving 25 vessels is being conducted off India's eastern seaboard and New Delhi has repeatedly sought to allay apprehensions that the drill had military overtones. 'There is no military alignment. It's only an exercise,' Defence Minister A.K. Antony has said of Malabar-2007 that runs Sep 4-9 and involves the navies of India, the...

A federal appeals court allowed the Navy today to resume using underwater sonar blasts in anti-submarine warfare tests off the Channel Islands in Southern California, saying the nation’s military needs outweigh the safety of endangered whales. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco suspended an April 6 injunction by a federal judge in Los Angeles that ordered the Navy to halt the sonar experiments during training exercises scheduled through 2009. In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper said the underwater sound waves could harm nearly 30 species of marine mammals, including five...

In a new outburst of antiwestern sabre-rattling, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has threatened Britain with “revenge” for the Falklands war of 1982. The belligerent Latin American leftist warned last week that his recent build-up of sophisticated Russian and Iranian weapons would be used to destroy the British fleet if it attempted to return to the South Atlantic. Speaking on his weekly television show Alo Presidente (Hello, Mr President), Chavez denounced what he described as Britain’s “illegal occupation” of the Falklands and repeated his call for a regional military alliance against Britain and the United States. “If we had been...

MIAMI (AP) - Warships from Canada and more than a dozen other countries joined the U.S. navy for ongoing manoeuvres Sunday near the Panama Canal in an exercise being billed as one of the largest multinational military training events of the year. More than 30 ships began the exercises Wednesday in the waters near the canal, to practise defending the economically and strategically crucial waterway. The exercise is scheduled to continue through Friday in the Caribbean and Pacific approaches to the canal. Thousands of ships pass through the Panama Canal every year, shuttling more than 200 million tons of exports...