Aircraft Carriers III

Air Force Brat said:

why and how is the Kennedy 70 ft longer than the Ford?? Hummm??

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Jura said:

Aug 19, 2016
now
Navy Setting Up V-22 Osprey COD Training Detachment
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The Navy will begin taking steps to replace 27 C-2A Greyhound aircraft with 38

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this year and is considering whether to locate the Fleet Replacement Squadron that will train all Navy Osprey pilots in Virginia or California, according to a

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.

The Navy currently operates the C-2A as a carrier onboard delivery (COD) aircraft for its fleet of nuclear aircraft carriers on both the East and West coasts, with detachments operating overseas as well to provide delivery support to aircraft carriers – bringing personnel, visitors, mail, spare parts and more from the shore to underway carriers. The Navy

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, which would be modeled after the Marine Corps version but would include a larger fuel tank for greater range, additional communications gear and a public address system in the rear section of the plane for passengers.

The draft environmental assessment (EA), released by U.S. Fleet Forces Command, includes many previously unannounced details of the transition from the C-2A to V-22.

The Navy will conduct V-22 operations out of Naval Station Norfolk, Va. and Naval Air Station North Island, Calif., same as it currently operates the C-2A. The service is still deciding where to locate the Fleet Replacement Squadron. The Navy previously operated a C-2A FRS on each coast but in 1994 consolidated, with Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 120 in Norfolk serving as the sole C-2A training location since then.

The Navy will replace its 27 C-2As with 38 V-22s – an increase required “because the current inventory of C-2A aircraft is not sufficient to meet the mission requirements,” the draft EA reads. The transition to the new aircraft will begin in 2020 and should end by 2026, according to the assessment, with the full fielding of the new V-22s coming in 2028. How that transition plays out in Norfolk and in San Diego will depend on which location is chosen to host the FRS.

Under the first alternative, locating the training school at Halsey Field at NAS North Island in San Diego, the transition would wrap up in 2028. NAS North Island would go from 10 aircraft serving as CODs to 23, and 341 new personnel would come in to support the V-22 operations and training. In Norfolk, under this scenario, total aircraft would decrease from 17 to 15 and the workforce would drop by 126 personnel, due to the loss of the training squadron.

Under the second alternative, locating the FRS at Chambers Field at Naval Station Norfolk, the last C-2A would leave North Island as early as 2024 and Norfolk by 2026, though the full transition and introduction of new V-22s would not be completed until 2028 still. With the FRS in Norfolk, total aircraft there would increase from 17 to 20, and total aircraft at North Island would increase from 10 to 18. Personnel at Norfolk would increase by 54, and North Island would see a 161-person increase.

Regardless of where the Navy locates the FRS, North Island is set for a big increase in COD operations, reflecting the Navy’s emphasis on West Coast deployments to the Pacific and the move to homeport six carriers on the West Coast or forward-deployed in the Pacific compared to just four on the East Coast. Norfolk will see more operational COD aircraft and personnel in either scenario but could see a decrease in total aircraft and personnel levels if the FRS was moved from Virginia to California.

Under either scenario, the Navy-variant V-22’s initial operational capability is scheduled for September 2020, so facilities and support will have to be set up in at least one location by October of that year. Full operational capability for the CMV-22B is set for 2024. Facilities upgrades are set to begin this year, according to the assessment.

In support of reaching IOC and FOC ahead of the training squadron being established, Navy V-22 pilots and aircrew will train at the Marine Corps’ MV-22 training squadron, VMMT-204 at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina. Navy V-22 maintainers will also attend school at MCAS New River.

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• whether to approve, reject, or modify the Navy’s FY2018 procurement requests
  for the CVN-78 program;
• the impact of using a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the Department of
  Defense (DOD) for the first few months of FY2018 on the execution of FY2018
  funding for the CVN-78 program;
• whether to provide advance procurement (AP) funding in FY2018 for the
  purchase of materials for CVN-81, so as to accelerate the procurement of the ship
  to a year earlier than FY2023 and/or initiate a combined purchase of materials for
  CVN-80 and CVN-81 or a block buy contract for the two ships;
• cost growth in the CVN-78 program, Navy efforts to stem that growth, and Navy
  efforts to manage costs so as to stay within the program’s cost caps;
• CVN-78 program issues that were raised in a December 2016 report from the
  Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Director of Operational Test and Evaluation
  (DOT&E)
• whether the Navy should shift at some point from procuring large-deck, nuclear-powered carriers like the CVN-78 class to procuring smaller aircraft carriers.

Jura said:

I've been following here the story of Ospreys going into carriers; the last part was probably
Jan 3, 2017

and the most recent is
Navy Transition from C-2A to CMV-22B Will Span 2020 to 2026; Location of Training Squadron Undecided

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The U.S. Navy has revealed new details about its schedule to replace

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carrier on-board delivery (COD) aircraft with the CMV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor, what bases will host the new aircraft, and their missions. Though serious questions remain about just how well

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is suited to the task, the service says it hopes new aircraft will be fully operational in 2024 and the transition will be complete by 2028.

At present, the Navy is hoping the

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will be operational by 2020 – a year earlier than it

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– and that the type will reach full operational capability four years later, ahead of the C-2A’s official retirement in 2026. The full fleet of 38 Ospreys is slated to take over for the 27 Greyhounds, which will reach the end of

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by 2026, no later than 2028. The service-specific version of the tilt-rotor will have additional fuel and communications gear compared to the

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and

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, as well as a public address system in the main cabin. Bell-Boeing concept art for the aircraft does show a very distinct “towel rack” radio antenna along the rear fuselage.

“The increased number of [CMV-22B] aircraft … is needed because the current inventory of C-2A aircraft is not sufficient to meet the mission requirements,” the service explained in

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it released earlier in January 2018, which USNI News was

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. “Facilities and support must be in place and operational at the first main operating base by October 2020 to support the first detachment’s unit level training, which would lead up to deployment.”

This document is focused primarily on the service’s ongoing decision process about where to situate the one planned Fleet Replacement Squadron, or FRS, which will be responsible for training the CMV-22B crews. Since 1994, Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron One Two Zero (VAW-120) has conducted both E-2 Hawkeye and C-2A Greyhound training at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.

VAW-120 has five Greyhounds, in addition to another 12 C-2As at Norfolk that are part of the operational Logistics Support Squadron Four Zero (VRC-40). Logistics Support Squadron Three Zero operates the remaining 10 aircraft from Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, California, with three of these permanently deployed in Japan to support operations in and around East Asia.

In the environmental assessment the Navy said it did consider consolidating all of its CMV-22B operations at a single base for logistical and cost-saving reasons. However, it determined that this simply would not work given the service’s

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.

“Carrier on-board delivery requirements persist on each coast in support of rapid response to international events in Atlantic, Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and Pacific theaters,” the review explained. “Single siting of Navy V-22 squadrons would diminish rapid response capabilities in a particular theater.”

From locations on each coast, the C-2As provide carrier on-board deliver, or COD, support to the Navy’s supercarriers. The aircraft shuttle personnel, spare parts, mail, and other supplies to and from the ships and bases ashore. It’s an absolutely vital, but often thankless mission, which retired naval aviator and Greyhound pilot James Wallace was kind enough to share

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about with The War Zone’s own Tyler Rogoway in November 2017.

From Wallace’s description, a replacement for the C-2A, a quirky design Grumman derived from the Hawkeye early warning radar plane in the 1960s, could be a boon to the COD community, as would having a training squadron dedicated to the mission. The Navy’s decision on where to situate the FRS will be an important part of keeping its present plans to replace the Greyhound on track.

The first option the environmental assessment outlines is to put the CMV-22B school house at North Island. This would add an additional 13 aircraft to the site, along with more than 340 additional personnel, not to mention the added air traffic the training mission would bring. Norfolk, not surprisingly, would see a net loss of aircraft and sailors under this plan.

The second possibility would be to situate the unit in Norfolk where VAW-120 is already conducting the COD training. Under this proposed course of action, both the base in Virginia and North Island would see increases in both airframes and personnel.

Both alternatives would involve significant construction to either expand or otherwise modify the existing facilities to accommodate the new aircraft. An annotated map of North Island notes the Navy would need to demolish more than a dozen buildings if it decided to establish the FRS on the base.

Perhaps more importantly, both sites would need significant repaving and heat treating on aprons and taxiways to handle the hot jet exhaust from the tilt-rotors, which blasts nearly straight down during engine starts and stops and as they maneuver to and from the runway. This will be an issue for the ships the CMV-22B will operate from, too. The cost of the construction at North Island will cost an estimated more than $130 million, while the work at Norfolk would have a price tag of less than $45 million.

But whatever option the Navy chooses, it expects the FRS to take approximately a decade to establish, which will mark the end of the transition to the CMV-22B from the C-2A. In the meantime, the Marines will be responsible for training the Osprey pilots and crews.

The Navy trainees will join the Marine’s own MV-22B training unit, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Training Squadron Two Zero Four (VMMT-204), situated at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina. The Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training, also at New River, will serve as the initial pipeline for the service’s CMV-22B maintainers.

Beyond just transitioning aircraft, the review also reiterated the Navy’s understanding that the shift from the C-2 to the CMV-22B will have a broader impact on the COD mission

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. The service contends that the tilt-rotor Osprey will be more flexible than the fixed-wing Greyhound and operate from more varied locations ashore.

“Unlike the C-2A, the Navy V-22 would not be tied to runways ashore,” the assessment said. “Because the Navy V-22 can be refueled in the air, it can span vast ocean distances on deployment and achieve its carrier on-board delivery mission despite a paucity of land bases.”

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The CMV-22B will be able to land on carriers or other ships in the associated strike group and deliver cargo or passengers at night, as well, something the Navy does not do with the C-2A. Since it won't require the use of a catapult for take offs or arresting gear to land, it will be able to perform its mission even if those systems are not operating, either because the rest of the air wing is not conducting active operations or for some other reason. It will also take less personnel to launch and recover the Ospreys in general.

“It takes about six folks to launch and recover an Osprey," Navy Vice Admiral Mike Shoemaker, the service's top aviation officer noted in 2016. "It would take about 40 or so to man up the ship to bring in the [C-2A] COD."

On top of that, the Osprey will be able to aid in the vertical replenishment mission, as well as act as a shuttle between carriers and other surface combatants. At present, the MH-60R and -S helicopters within the carrier air wings perform these missions, as do other helicopters assigned to other ships. The CMV-22B could eliminate the need for the "hub and spoke" arrangement of distributing cargo and passengers from the COD aircraft to other ships in the strike group.

The Ospreys have their own sling-load capability which gives it more overall lift capacity than the Greyhound, 10,000 versus 8,500 pounds, and offers additional options for maneuvering large or awkward loads. At least in theory, the tilt-rotors might give the carrier even more flexibility to support non-combat missions, such as non-combatant evacuation operations or disaster relief efforts, as well.

“The Navy V-22 will be able to handle greater cargo weight capacity than the C-2A, fly at comparable speeds and land vertically on carriers and smaller naval surface combatant vessels,” according to the assessment. “These enhanced capabilities will ensure effective and efficient fleet logistics support in any theater.”

These assertions leave out some critical points, though. The claim that the Ospreys will have “greater cargo weight capacity” than the Greyhounds deftly avoids the criticism that the tilt-rotors might not be able to accommodate the same large and oddly-shaped loads internally, especially enclosed replacement engines for other aircraft. Former C-2 pilot Wallace brought this up specifically when talking about the CMV-22B as a replacement,

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:

I know for their peculiar reasons the Navy

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to do the COD’s job now. I don’t see it. Engines were our primary hauling job and it simply can’t do it, the Osprey doesn't have enough cargo volume in the cabin. We had H-53s in our squadron as an experiment to do our job and it couldn’t do it either.

This is not a minor issue. Bringing replacement parts, and complete engines in particular, is a critical wartime COD mission since the Navy expects its Hornets, Super Hornets, and forthcoming F-35C Joint Strike Fighters will rack up flight hours during any high-intensity conflict. Though carriers have on-board facilities to perform much of the required maintenance on the carrier air wing's aircraft, getting fresh engines is critical to sustained operations and drastically speeds up the process of getting the jets back flying missions.

This has been an issue for Marine Corps, as well, since the service has similar needs with regards to the F-35B Joint Strike Fighters on board the Navy's amphibious assault ships. In 2015, the Marines did

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to use an MV-22B to carry modules of the jet's F135 engine on a special skid. The B-model's lift fan, which it uses to land and take off vertically, has to travel separately via sling-load. The Marines and the Navy

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to make loading easier and engine maker Pratt & Whitney delivered the first production version of the system

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.

But while the arrangement may be workable, it also exposes the engine to its surrounding environment without a protective shroud, and especially to corrosive sea air and salt water spray, during loading and unloading. The palletized load also requires ground crews to remove certain components in order for it to fit inside the Osprey, which maintainers would have to install again before putting the complete engine into an aircraft. The present shipping methods keep entire engines safely inside a container.

There are concerns about just maneuvering the Ospreys around a carrier's crowded flight deck, too. In 2016, the Marines provided four MV-22Bs for a proof of concept test aboard the USS Carl Vinson. What

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was that the turn-around time for the tilt-rotors might be longer and might hog flight deck space and impede other simultaneous launch and recover operations and other activities.

The main issue is that the Osprey's engines are inoperable when its main wing and rotor blades are folded, meaning it can't taxi to a parking spot in its most compact configuration. As such, the concept the service employed during the experiment was to load and unload right in one of two designated landing areas, one of which is right at the rear of the flight deck and would prevent any other aircraft from landing. At present, when the Greyhounds touch down on a carrier, crews fold the wings and move off to the side to load and unload, clearing the landing area.

The CMV-22B is also not pressurized, limiting its operating altitude, especially with passengers riding in the back. The Osprey can already carry three fewer individuals in its main cabin compared to the Greyhounds.

More importantly, this means bad weather is more likely to limit the tilt-rotor's ability to conduct its long-range resupply mission. The C-2A with its pressurized cabin can simply fly above many storms and other severe weather patterns. This means crews do not have to fly circuitous routes around them, or risk going through them, in order to get to and from the carriers. The Greyhounds also simply fly faster than the Ospreys, which further extends the overall transit times for the tilt-rotors.

In 2015, Navy planned to purchase 10 more V-22 types in total, as well, for a total of 48. It remains to be seen just how well the fleet of less than 40 CMV-22Bs, only a portion of which will be in operational units, will be able to tackle the world-wide COD mission. Of course, this will already be a substantial increase in total airframes assigned to the mission over the existing fleet of C-2As.

In addition, any budgetary considerations that limited the size of the fleet may not be the same hurdle it once was, though, seeing as President Donald Trump and his administration have promised to significantly increase defense spending. As such, it is also possible that the Navy may find it easier to add additional CMV-22Bs to meet the additional demands.

The Navy is fully committed to the replacement plan now, regardless, and has a firm idea of when it expects to make the shift, for better or worse.

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More than 6,000 Sailors assigned to Carl Vinson Strike Group ships and units departed the U.S. West Coast, Jan. 4-5, for a regularly scheduled deployment to the Western Pacific, Carrier Strike Group One said in a Jan. 5 release.

The deployment marks the second time the Strike Group will operate throughout the Indo-Pacific region under U.S. Third Fleet’s command and control. The strike group became the first in recent history to demonstrate the command and control construct called Third Fleet Forward when units completed a six-month deployment last year.

Ships deploying from U.S. Third Fleet to the Western Pacific traditionally shifted to U.S. Seventh Fleet after crossing the international dateline. The Third Fleet Forward construct expands Third Fleet’s control of ships and aircraft across the Western Pacific and beyond the international dateline to India, enabling Third and Seventh Fleets to operate together across a broad spectrum of maritime missions in region.

“I look forward to the strike group further demonstrating Third Fleet’s evolving operational role across the Indo-Pacific region,” said Rear Adm. John Fuller, the strike group commander. “We are trained and ready to execute our mission.”

The strike group includes aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2, guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain, and guided-missile destroyers USS Wayne E. Meyer and USS Michael Murphy from Destroyer Squadron 1.

Michael Murphy is based in Hawaii and will later join the strike group as it transits toward the Western Pacific.

In November, ships and units completed a three-week sustainment training exercise off the coast of Southern California. The strike group demonstrated readiness for executing missions across all warfare areas after successfully conducting a series of at-sea drills, missile shoots, and strike operations using a variety of naval platforms and weapons.

CVQ 2 includes more than 70 aircraft from the “Black Knights” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 4, the “Blue Hawks” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron, the “Bounty Hunters” of Strike Fighter Squadrons (VFA) 2, the “Blue Blasters” of VFA-34, the “Kestrels” of VFA-137, the “Golden Dragons” of VFA-192, the “Black Eagles” of Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 113, the “Gauntlets” of Electronic Attack Squadron 136, and the “Providers” of Fleet Logistic Support Squadron 30 Detachment 2.

The Carl Vinson Strike Group provides U.S. leaders capable and ready options for maintaining regional maritime security, stability and freedom of the seas in accordance with international law and customs.

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Jura said:

the 7th Fleet again
US Navy Greyhound airlifter crashes in Philippine Sea

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asif iqbal said:

In all honesty like it’s said before, C2 Greyhound primary task and 80% mission are heavy engine hauling

If CMV-22B cannot fit a F-35 engine into its cabin there is no scope for it

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In a 9 month deployments compete engine replacement is pre-request

And actually CMV-22B cannot handle a complete engine inside it’s cargo hold

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I do not know why CMV-22B is being picked over C2, this is purely a political decision not a practical one

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If CMV-20B cannot do the primary job it’s useless keep C2 and use CMV for secondary role that’s my opinion

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