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Vladimir Putin has reportedly fired a top admiral because of his refusal to send his sailors to fight in the war against Ukraine. Admiral Sergei Avakyants, 66, was suddenly stripped of the role of commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet last week during war games involving nuclear bombers ordered by the Kremlin. Avakyants has been seeking to protect his men from deployment - to prevent them from being cannon fodder - according to Volya and Brief Telegram. The admiral had repeatedly resisted or subverted orders to send his men to fight in Ukraine. When forced to do so he allegedly...

Two top-ranking officers on a U.S. Navy vessel were relieved of duty on Thursday due to a "loss of confidence in their ability to command," the Navy announced. Cmdr. Richard J. Zamberlan and Cmdr. Phillip Lundberg of the USS Montgomery both lost their posts in an unusual move by Navy leadership to remove both the commanding officer and executive officer. ...

Following the collisions of guided-missile destroyers USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) and USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) with merchant ships, the grounding of guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG-54) and collision between USS Lake Champlain (CG-57) and South Korean fishing vessel, the Navy has begun a 60-day review, according to a Thursday memo outlining the scope of the review.

/begin my translation Two Russian Warships Dock at Busan 2017-04-10 11:31:01 [Busan=Newsis] Ha Kyung-min = Navay Operations Command Headquarter announced on Apr. 10 that a guided missile cruiser 'Varyag'(11,000 tons) and a logistics support ship 'Pechenga'(11,000 tons,) both belonging to Russian Pacific Fleet, will arrive at Busan Operation Base in Namku, Busan. Varyag is 187m long, 20.8m wide, and has 530 crews. The ship is armed with 16 P-500 Bazalt antiship missiles, 64 S-300 long-range antiaircraft missiles, an AK-130 130mm gun, and a Ka-25(or 27) helicopter. Pechenga is 130m long, 20m wide, and has 63 crews. She can carry 7,000...

(THE UNITED WEST) Tom Trento, executive producer of the new movie “Fallen Angel – The Cover-up of the Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six” which investigates the deaths of 30 U.S. special forces units in Afghanistan (the largest single day loss of life of SEALs in U.S. History), interviews retired U.S. Navy Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, the former commander-in-chief U.S. Pacific Fleet. Lyons states the shoot-down of SEAL Team SIX was a “dereliction of duty” and further states that the Obama-Clinton restrictive rules of engagement also directly led to the deaths of 30 of our nations finest warriors. According to Don...

With the U.S. moving the majority of its naval fleet to the Pacific, commanders are eagerly looking for invitations to park the planes and ships that will be pouring into the region. Travis Tritten at Stars and Stripes reports that the Pentagon has apparently been fanning the old flame of friendship with the Philippines and will be re-opening two bases it left in 1991 — Subic Bay and Clark Air Base. The U.S. had a falling out with the island nation in the early nineties and pulled out of the bases, which were then built-up by a series of private...

Recently, Roger McDermott, a regular contributor to this publication, offered an excellent overview of the operational-strategic exercise being conducted in Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East by the Russian armed forces (EDM, July 6). McDermott correctly pointed to the role of the exercise in testing concepts associated with the “new look” reforms and called attention to the exercise’s testing the speed of deployment of brigades, their combat readiness, and capacity to engage in combined-arms combat in an air/land battle, and their logistical support to sustain combat actions. He also noted that while the scenario dealt with a wide range...

US intelligence services and other countries in the Far East are closely monitoring the grand naval drills being conducted by the Russian Navy. “The naval phase of Russia's Vostok-2010 (Orient-2010) military exercises has drawn increased attention from the intelligence services of the United States and Asia-Pacific countries,” a senior Russian Navy source was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti. On June 29, Russia launched the biggest ever post-Soviet war games in the eastern part of the country involving 20,000 troops, up to 70 combat aircraft and 30 warships, including North Fleet's nuclear powered guided missile cruiser ‘Pyotr Veliky’ (Peter-the-Great), world's...

Russia is reinstating a decommissioned nuclear power warship in response to growing concerns in Moscow about China's military. . Japan’s Tokyo Shimbun reported May 25 that a senior Russian Navy Pacific Fleet official disclosed the effort to refurbish a decommissioned nuclear missile cruiser. According to the report, Russia will redeploy the warship to its Pacific Fleet. The objective is to counter China, which is advancing with military expansion efforts, the newspaper said, noting that the Admiral Lazarev, a 26,000-ton Kirov-class battle cruiser, was being rebuilt. The cruiser is currently moored in the Russian coastal region of Strelok Bay. “In order...

Russia will hold large-scale naval exercises near North Korea next month that were planned before the current stand-off on the Korean peninsula, naval officials said on Thursday. Tensions between the two Koreas are at their highest level in years, a week after international investigators accused the North of torpedoing a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors. Moscow, which maintains ties with North Korea, has issued repeated calls for calm and restraint from both sides to prevent tension from bubbling over into armed conflict. The Kremlin says it wants more information about the accusations that a North Korea torpedo...

Troops in the Russian Far East have not been put on high alert following the brewing crisis between North and South Korea, several military officials said on Wednesday. "We have not received any orders from Moscow to put the Pacific Fleet on high alert due to the conflict between the two Koreas. The fleet is currently carrying out scheduled exercises at sea and on land," a Pacific Fleet spokesman said on Wednesday. The official said the arrival of Russia's most powerful warships in the Pacific had been planned long ago as part of the biennial Vostok strategic exercises and was...

Closing in for the kill, Russia is said to be in final talks to buy a flotilla of four French helicopter-carriers - a deal massive both in terms of the vessels' size and their price tag. "At the moment we are in pre-contract talks on the warships with three states: Spain, the Netherlands and France. We plan to sign a contract for four of these ships," said Russia's Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. Serdyukov said Russia would like at least three of the vessels to be built with the help of Russian shipbuilders, including one at a Russian shipyard. Talks to...

A mixed task force from the Russian Pacific Fleet started on Wednesday a series of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) drills in the Sea of Japan, a fleet spokesman said. "Two task forces comprising missile destroyers and diesel-powered submarines are taking part in the drills in line with a regular training program," Capt. 1st Rank Roman Martov said. The exercises involve a number of search-and-destroy missions, simulated torpedo attacks and live-fire drills with on-board artillery and air defense systems. The Admiral Tributs and Admiral Vinogradov destroyers, which carried out patrol missions in the Gulf of Aden as part of international efforts to...

<p>A Navy captain turned the Pacific into the world's strangest drag strip -- ordering two warships to stage a bizarre race that one sailor said nearly ended in tragedy, a high-ranking military official told The Post yesterday.</p> <p>"Multiple witnesses interviewed by the [inspector general] and the commanding officers of both ships all stated that the ships were racing," said Pacific Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Jeff Davis.</p>

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27, 2010 – The Navy is taking precautionary measures in response to the Tsunami warning issued in the wake of the Feb. 27 earthquake in Chile. The measures include preparing to sortie ships and moving a ship from Naval Station Pearl Harbor and one from Naval Station San Diego. USS Crommelin, USS Chafee, USS Chung Hoon and USS O'Kane, USNS Yukon and Sea Commando, a SEAL support vessel, will sortie from Naval Station Pearl Harbor. USS Port Royal is in a maintenance availability and cannot get underway, so it will be moved to deeper water inside the harbor....

HE remembers the women sunbathing naked on the deck of a passing yacht. He remembers, too, the lurking menace of a Russian intelligence-gathering trawler, watching from afar as one of the most audacious American coups of the cold war unfolded on the ocean floor, 16,500ft beneath the Pacific surface. David Sharp recalls every detail of the 1974 mission known as Project Azorian, one of the most ambitious, expensive and politically volatile clandestine operations launched by the CIA. As one of the CIA’s agents in charge of recovering a sunken Soviet submarine and its cargo of nuclear-tipped missiles, Sharp spent 63...

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the first time has revealed details about an ultra-secret Cold War-era project to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the depths of the Pacific Ocean in 1974. The high-risk salvage operation, code-named ‘Project Azorian’, had been shrouded in secrecy for decades but the spy agency broke its silence in newly-declassified documents published yesterday by an independent watchdog, the National Security Archive. The documents, drawn from a 50-page article written for an in-house CIA journal, recount the daring bid approved by then-president Richard Nixon to raise the submarine using a specially-designed ship, the Glomar Explorer....

The nuclear-powered attack submarine Los Angeles had been in the fleet for a dozen years, mostly patrolling the Pacific to keep a close watch on Russian subs, when Caleb Schrum was born. On Saturday, Schrum, now 21 and a Navy petty officer second class, gently lowered the American flag on the aft of the Los Angeles at the conclusion of a tradition-rich ceremony in San Pedro in which the submarine was decommissioned from the active fleet. The vessel that entered service in 1976 as the Navy's most innovative underwater warship is headed for retirement as its oldest submarine. Soon the...

Russia's Nerpa nuclear attack submarine, damaged in a fatal accident during tests in November last year, has successfully passed final trials, a Pacific Fleet spokesman said on Monday. On November 8, 2008, while the Nerpa was undergoing sea trials, its onboard fire suppression system activated, releasing a deadly gas into the sleeping quarters. Three crewmembers and 17 shipyard workers were killed. There were 208 people, 81 of them submariners, onboard the vessel at the time. Following repairs, which cost an estimated 1.9 billion rubles ($65 million), the submarine has been cleared for final sea trials. "A state commission has concluded...

Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon consultant on China, said recently that the U.S. strategy of "hedging" against an emerging military threat from Beijing by building up U.S. forces in the Pacific likely will continue whoever is elected president in November. Mr. Pillsbury made the comments during a panel discussion at a Jane's U.S. Defense Conference and noted that a key part of the strategy is the U.S. buildup of forces on Guam. The recent deployment of additional U.S. forces there prompted some "hysteria" from the state-run Chinese news media, he said. The hedge strategy, Mr. Pillsbury said, remains below the public...