US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Today at 10:06 AM
drone1_website.png

LOL haven't heard of this thing yet
Stratolaunch Aircraft Makes First Rollout To Begin Fueling Tests
5/31/2017
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
but noticed an interesting photo-gallery at a major Czech server; starts with

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

and you may click for next (I think these pictures can't be linked directly here; the first picture should look like this:
SVnQa.jpg

OK this one isn't exactly a picture :)
 
hope you won't mind me reposting (my second repost today :)
Carrier Ford Delivers To Navy After 15 Months of Delays
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The Navy accepted delivery of the first-in-class aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) on May 31, following the completion of acceptance trials on May 26, the Navy announced today.

The carrier had been scheduled for a March 2016 commissioning originally, but technological problems with the advanced arresting gear and other first-in-class issues slowed delivery by a year and a half.

“Congratulations to everyone who has helped bring CVN 78 to this historic milestone,” Rear Adm. Brian Antonio, program executive officer for aircraft carriers, said in a Navy news release.
“Over the last several years, thousands of people have had a hand in delivering Ford to the Navy — designing, building and testing the Navy’s newest, most capable, most advanced warship. Without a doubt, we would not be here without the hard work and dedication of those from the program office, our engineering teams and those who performed and oversaw construction of this incredible warship. It is because of them that Ford performed so well during acceptance trials, as noted by the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey.”

Ford is the first carrier to deliver since 2009 and the first new-design carrier since 1975.

The carrier includes five major technological upgrades compared to the Nimitz-class carriers, including the Advanced Arresting Gear and the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System. A larger flight deck allows more aircraft, more fuel storage and more weapons storage. And its new propulsion system generates three times the electricity as previous carriers, which will allow the ship to bring in new technologies as they are developed going forward.

“Ford will be commissioned into the fleet this summer, formally placing the ship into active service. Following this, there will be a ‘shakedown’ period where the ship will conduct several at-sea events to provide longer underway periods for the ship’s crew to operate and train on ship’s systems. In addition, planned deferred work will be performed, and any deficiencies identified during trials will be addressed during in-port periods,” according to the Navy news release.
“Ford is expected to be operational in 2020 following achievement of initial operational capability.”
 
now I read
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

More money for maintenance would allow Navy ships to stay in service longer,
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
said today, and accelerate the fleet’s
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
by “10 to 15 years with a relatively small investment.”

The Navy’s current
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
assumes most warships will wear out after 30 to 35 years. Since each old ship retired cancels out one new ship built, and shipyards can only build new ships so fast, the fleet doesn’t grow to 355 ships until about 2045. But you can get to 355 ships by 2030 instead,
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
said today, if you just make your
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
last longer.

“I’ve told the
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
you could easily get five years out of everything that’s got a steel hull, and that you can probably get more,” Moore told reporters after his talk at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. “If it’s a ship and it’s floating today, we’re taking a look at what it would take to extend the service life.”

In effect, Moore is erasing the traditional tradeoff that says maintenance money contributes to the readiness of today’s fleet but shipbuilding buys the fleet of tomorrow. That tradeoff is
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
, which
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
— disappointing all those who’d counted on
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
of a larger fleet — while adding $9.7 billion to operations and maintenance. If Moore’s math works out, however, maintenance money is not just about readiness here and now: It can also help bolster the fleet over the long term.

What will it take? Two things, neither simple but neither exorbitantly expensive, either. The first step is a detailed study of every ship in the fleet, each of which has its own unique history of wear, repair, and mishaps, to figure out how many years you could get out of each for how much money. Second, Moore said, to implement the study’s recommendations, you’d need new investment in both Navy yards and private-sector shipyards, upgrading facilities and training a historic influx of new workers.

Moore made clear this plan is not a panacea. Three types of vessel may be maxed out as is:

  • The biggest shortfall in the Navy’s force structure is
    Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
    . Subs simply can’t last longer than the 35 years they already do, both because their nuclear reactors run out of fuel and because their hulls experience intense, fluctuating pressures as they dive and surface.
  • Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
    , the flattop icons of American power, already last for 50 years. That staggering service life requires one major mid-life overhaul, including refueling the reactors, and a level of meticulous maintenance not enjoyed by the rest of the surface fleet. Indeed, the Navy’s success in keeping carriers in service for so long is one of Moore’s inspirations for trying the same with the rest of the fleet.
  • Finally, aluminum hulls don’t hold up as well as steel, and there’s less data on their long-term performance. So it’s not clear whether the Navy can get more life out of Austal’s
    Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
    -class
    Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
    , though Moore emphasized that “I don’t want to presuppose a decision.”
Another complication is that both the all-aluminum Independence and the steel-hulled Freedom-class LCS were designed to last only 25 years, rather than the 35 of a larger vessel. In the future, Moore said emphatically, “we should not design a ship with a planned service life of 25 years. It doesn’t make sense.”

Even setting aside subs and carriers, however, still leaves you with the vast majority of the Navy, Moore said: “CGs (cruisers), DDGs (destroyers), all your
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
, LCS (at least the steel ones — ed.), and actually some of the… Combat Logistics Force ships as well,” he said.

It’s worth noting that Congress and the Navy have wrangled repeatedly over
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
(CGs). Now Moore is saying the
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
could gain at least an additional five years of life, which will please the Hill.

Then there’s the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers (DDGs), the most numerous single class in the fleet:
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
, seven more under construction, and more purchases planned. The Navy had already planned to
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
, but the rest of the class would retire at 35. Why Moore didn’t give exact numbers, he’s talking about extending the entire class to at least the 40-year mark, a 14 percent increase in service life. In terms of long-term fleet size, that’s the equivalent of buying seven or eight new ships.

So what’s the trade-off, on the margin, between investing $1 in
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
and investing it in
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
? Moore and his staff didn’t provide sufficiently detailed data to do that math. That’s what the Navy will have to study in the coming months, hopefully in time to inform their
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
. Watch this space.
source:
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

mentions yet another issue of LCSs
"Another complication is that both the all-aluminum Independence and the steel-hulled Freedom-class LCS were designed to last only 25 years, rather than the 35 of a larger vessel. In the future, Moore said emphatically, “we should not design a ship with a planned service life of 25 years. It doesn’t make sense.”
(no, I didn't know)
that projects it's just ... unbelievable, unbelievable
 
Yesterday at 9:07 PM
now I read
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


source:
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

...
related:
The Navy Wants Amphibs, Destroyers That Last Up to 50 Years
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

To build its fleet of 355 ships by the end of the next decade, the
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
is going to have to get five to 10 extra years of service life out of the surface ships it already has, the head of Naval Sea Systems Command said Thursday.

Speaking to an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Vice Adm. Thomas Moore said he also wants to start building ships that, properly maintained, are meant to last much longer — up to the half-century lifespan of modern aircraft carriers.

“We used to get rid of ships at the 25-year point … we didn’t do maintenance on them,” Moore said of the Charles F. Adams-class destroyers that were phased out in the 1990s. “The reality of it is, we really got rid of a lot of those ships because, from a combat systems standpoint, they had become obsolete.”

The open architecture, SPY radar system, and vertical launch capability in today’s
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
means the ships are equipped to remain relevant to the fight much longer, he said. With adequate maintenance, these surface ships can last longer than any the Navy has previously built, he added.

“People say to me, ‘Well, we’ve never had surface ships go past 35 to 40 years,” Moore said. “And I point out … we routinely take aircraft carriers to 50 years. And the reason we do that is because we consistently do all the maintenance you have to do on an aircraft carrier to get to 50 years. We know how to do this, and I think what we’re going to do is take a very serious look at taking the service life of the existing fleet and extending it out five to 10 years.”

If the Navy maintains its existing service life model, Moore said, it has a shot at reaching its 355-ship fleet by 2045. But if it extends the life of its surface ships, it can get there 10 to 15 years faster, he said. And for new ships still being built, capacity for longer life should be built in.

“We should not design a ship with a planned service life of 25 to 40 years,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense. We ought to go a planned service life of 40-plus years for all our ships and build in the SWAP — space, weight and power — so we can adapt them going forward.”

The Navy has contracted for or is now building 11 more Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and two more
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
destroyers, with two additional
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
amphibious assault ships under construction or in planning.

The planned future surface combatant, which is intended to replace
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
cruisers, will also be “critical” for the Navy, Moore said.

He reiterated Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson’s statement that it is crucial the Navy reach its target fleet size as fast as possible in order to respond to changing and expanding threats around the world.

“There has to be a sense of urgency in some of the stuff we’re getting after today,” Moore said. “Pace today is exponential.”
 
now I read US Navy Sends Congress $5.3B Wishlist of Planes, Ships and More
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The 48-item ‘unfunded priorities list’ arrived a week after the service’s $172 billion budget request for 2018.

The U.S. Navy is asking Congress to consider providing an extra $5.3 billion for planes, ships, missiles, and dozens of smaller projects that did not make it into the 2018 budget request sent to lawmakers last week.

Notable items on
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
of the “unfunded priorities list” include 10 F/A-18 Super Hornets ($739 million), six P-8 Poseidon subhunting planes ($1 billion), four F-35C Joint Strike Fighters ($540 million), five
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
hovercraft ($312 million), and four
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
($392 million), according to a copy of the list obtained by Defense One. Those four items account for about $2.7 billion, half of the total request.

Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, sent the 48-item list to Congress on Wednesday.

“The FY 2018 unfunded priorities list predominantly accelerates the recovery of readiness and wholeness of today’s fleet,” Richardson wrote. “As well, it proposes some critical enablers and advanced capabilities.”

Also included on the wish list is “submarine and surface ship modernization to improve and sustain lethality and survivability in the face of an improving threat.” One example: $84 million to increase the lethality of four Littoral Combat Ships with upgraded electronic warfare systems, decoys, gunfire control and radars.

The list went to Congress eight days after the Navy sent over its
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
2018 budget request.

That larger request
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
14 Super Hornets, seven P-8s, four F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, three Ship-to-Shore Connectors and six Ospreys. The Super Hornet and Poseidon are both made by Boeing. Boeing and Bell Helicopter jointly make the V-22. Lockheed Martin and others make the F-35 and the Ship-to-Shore Connector is made by Textron.
 
Top