Aircraft Carriers III

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier arrives at Mayport for first look at America

There were no trumpets on the pier to herald her arrival. The only fancy hats were ones issued by the Royal Navy. And the metal gangplank was certainly not fit for a queen.

But there she was: HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Her majesty’s ship, the first of the British fleet’s two new aircraft carriers, glided into Naval Station Mayport on Wednesday. She was dressed in gray.

The Queen Elizabeth is here for a pit stop before it heads north to conduct takeoff and landing trials with F-35B Lightning II fighters that are part of the Integrated Test Force at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland.

“It’s a logistics stop to refuel and bring on additional stores [supplies],” said Lt. Cmdr. Lindsey Waudby, the ship’s public affairs officer.

She said the British sailors will get a chance to experience everything Florida has to offer before they move on for more training.

“The weather is already very welcoming,” Waudby said before she stepped off the ship a little after 2 p.m. “It’s pretty warm. We’re not quite climatized yet, but we will be by the time we leave.”

The plan is to hit the beach, she said, and relax after a training-filled trans-Atlantic crossing.

The massive ship on the horizon got bigger and bigger as it approached the mouth of the St. Johns River, and U.S. Navy personnel rushed to receive the special vessel holding hundreds of sailors from across the pond.

As the Queen Elizabeth eased into the basin with the help of four attending tugboats, it was clearly the largest ship in sight. The USS Iwo Jima — a big-deck amphibious assault ship that’s normally the biggest Navy ship by far at Mayport — looked much smaller tied up on a separate pier.

Once the Queen Elizabeth was tied to the pier, it took another hour or so to get the gangplank in place. But before the sailors could leave on liberty, a group of high-ranking U.S. Navy officers boarded to see what the new ship was all about.

The arrival felt much different than a homecoming in which the pier is crowded with family and friends awaitingtheir loved ones. But there was a handful of people waiting to see sailors on the ship.

“This is a unique opportunity to welcome a new ship to Florida, but it makes it even cooler that I know someone on board,” said Donnalee Caraballo from Tampa.

She made the drive with her husband to see her goddaughter Aaby Aldridge, who serves on the ship and is also a member of the Royal Navy’s ski team.

Caraballo recently became a U.S. citizen but was raised in England. She rented a beach house in Jacksonville Beach for the rest of the week to show Aldridge around.

“We knew it might be in Virginia or New York and we were prepared to make the trip, but this was a much shorter drive and we are excited to show her what Florida is like,” Caraballo said.

The Queen Elizabeth didn’t come to Mayport alone. Her support ship the HMS Monmouth, a Type-23 frigate, pulled into the pier a few hours after the carrier arrived.

The ships’ three-month visit to the U.S. is an opportunity to build the military relationship between the services, and that relationship will be on full display when the crew makes the trip north.

A major from the U.S. Marine Corps will join three British test pilots to conduct the first deck landings on board the Queen Elizabeth in the waters off Maryland. The hope is to have the ship fully operational in its role in the carrier strike group by 2021.

Commodore Andrew Betton said in a statement, “The first F-35B embarked trials in a UK aircraft carrier are not only key to future operational success, but represent an iconic moment for the modern Royal Navy.”


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Jan 20, 2018
Well Jura right now, yes because the only way to control a drone is either scripted where you plan ut the mission before it happens and the drone does only the script. or Remote where basically the Cockpit and the plane are separated by a thousand miles and a satcom.
What they are talking about is AI control where the unmanned aircraft flies and operates itself. Where the Pilot is an AI who takes orders from the manned aircraft.
but (LOL!)
It’s Now Possible To Telepathically Communicate with a Drone Swarm
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DARPA’s new research in brain-computer interfaces is allowing a pilot to control multiple simulated aircraft at once.

A person with a brain chip can now pilot a swarm of drones — or even advanced fighter jets, thanks to research funded by the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

The work builds on research from
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, which allowed a paralyzed woman to steer a virtual F-35 Joint Strike Fighter with only a small, surgically-implantable microchip. On Thursday, agency officials announced that they had scaled up the technology to allow a user to steer multiple jets at once.

“As of today, signals from the brain can be used to command and control … not just one aircraft but three simultaneous types of aircraft,” said Justin Sanchez, who directs DARPA’s biological technology office, at the Agency’s 60th-anniversary event in Maryland.

More importantly, DARPA was able to improve the interaction between pilot and the simulated jet to allow the operator, a paralyzed man named Nathan, to not just send but receive signals from the craft.

“The signals from those aircraft can be delivered directly back to the brain so that the brain of that user [or pilot] can also perceive the environment,” said Sanchez. “It’s taken a number of years to try and figure this out.”

In essence, it’s the difference between having a brain joystick and having a real telepathic conversation with multiple jets or drones about what’s going on, what threats might be flying over the horizon, and what to do about them. “We’ve scaled it to three [aircraft], and have full sensory [signals] coming back. So you can have those other planes out in the environment and then be detecting something and send that signal back into the brain,” said Sanchez.

The experiment occured a “handful of months ago,” he said.

It’s another breakthrough in the rapidly advancing field of
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, or BCIs, for a variety of purposes. The military has been leading interesting research in the field since at least
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,. And in 2012, DARPA issued a $4 million grant to build a non-invasive “synthetic telepathy” interface by placing sensors close to the brain’s motor centers to pick up electrical signals — non-invasively, over the skin.

But the science has advanced rapidly in recent years, allowing for breakthroughs in brain-based
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,
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, and even
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I guess Jan 20, 2018
LOL I'm too old for this (and don't believe a ... in the AI part)
applies
 

Obi Wan Russell

Jedi Master
VIP Professional
What date will F35B make it’s touch down on the deck of QE?

Bet the Americans are having a real good look at her
Oh they are, when she arrived in Mayport she was visited by a number of senior USN officers wanting a look around. They'll only be the first of many.

First F-35B trials are scheduled somewhere between late September and early October, depending on circumstances. Could be as early as two weeks away! In the meantime, after a few days in Mayport to resupply, she'll be headed off to carry out warm/tropical weather trials in the Caribbean before heading North to Norfolk from where the F-35B trials will be carried out.
 
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