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A US Navy aircraft carrier has been startled into scrambling armed fighters after Russian bombers raced to within 2km of the floating leviathan off the coast of Korea.

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bd popeye said:

Startled? I doubt it. CIC knew that those bomber were approaching. They more than likely had tracked them for some time.

Sometimes the media likes to play these events like a Hollywood movie.

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Brumby said:

I am glad that you are commenting because you are someone who actually has operating knowledge and experience on board carriers. Setting aside how the media wish to frame it, there are only two plausible conclusion I can draw from it. Either the USN got caught with their pants down or the facts are simply not accurate. I would assume that there is such a thing as CAP supported by at least E-2C. I cannot reconcile to the fact that F-18 had to be scrambled rather than vectored because of CAP. Something is missing and hopefully you can fill the gaps.

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The $898 million order for 15 aircraft, announced this week, rounds out the navy’s total requirement for 153 EA-18G advanced electronic attack jets – although Boeing says there are ongoing discussions and analysis with the navy about additional Growler and Super Hornet orders.
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The Navy hopes to restart its heavyweight torpedo program after a more than 15-year hiatus in production, but those plans could be hampered by a long-term continuing resolution.

Director of Undersea Warfare Rear Adm. Charles Richard left no doubt about his need for the program: “I have to go get that line started,” he said last week at the annual Naval Submarine League symposium.

Program Executive Office for Submarines Executive Director George Drakeley said at the same event that the submarine community is currently limited to the Mk 54 lightweight torpedo, the Mk 48 heavyweight torpedo and the Tomahawk missile.

“That’s really not that great, that’s not a good state of affairs,” he said.
“Now there’s a number of programs in the [research and development] area that I can’t discuss here, but we are looking at other weapons – but I say to the community we need to do a better job giving the warfighter more weapons here.”

And that limited selection of weapons is aging, he said. Discussing the Mk 48 Mod 7, the newest of the torpedoes, Drakeley said, “we refurbish these, we use them a lot, we fire them for training and then bring them back and refurb and reuse, but they’re getting old. And though when you look at the picture of it it looks like it’s kind of a modular weapon, we really have only been upgrading the forward part with the sonars and the electronics. So in the torpedo restart, we are going to be making this a truly modular design that you can pull out a section and plug in different payloads or different propulsion systems or different fuel supplies, and so as you’re developing the payloads you ought to be thinking about how you integrate with the modular Mk 48 some new capabilities and the like.”

But Richard said the ability to get that modular, plug-and-play torpedo off the ground could be hurt by the budget. The Navy is currently operating under a continuing resolution, which funds the government at last year’s levels until December. Congress appears to have reached a two-year budget deal to provide some relief from the Budget Control Act spending levels, but it is unclear if Congress will be able to pass a line-by-line spending bill by December or if the continuing resolution will be extended.

“That’s a body blow in terms of my ability to get the resources and get them into the hands of those program managers so that we can go and make torpedoes. That’s next to impossible under a continuing resolution,” Richard said.
“So I’ve got to start making torpedoes.”

“And then what I have to do is I have to come up with an entirely new array of schwackage options that I can go give the fleet,” he said, echoing Drakeley’s call for additional payloads.
“That includes both undersea, that’s with the heavyweight torpedo capabilities, as well as an expanded missile portfolio. High on my expanded portfolio list is we have to figure out how to go get back in the anti-surface ship missile business. And then behind that, large and small diameter UUVs.”

Director of Naval Reactors Adm. Frank Caldwell said at the same event last week that the Navy is

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to bring it in line with the rest of the world’s fleets.

“For this audience, I’ll tell you we are considering that and we are taking some some steps to delivering that kind of capability to our submarine force and I can’t really say anymore than that,” he said.

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bd popeye said:

Startled? I doubt it. CIC knew that those bomber were approaching. They more than likely had tracked them for some time.

Sometimes the media likes to play these events like a Hollywood movie.

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Cold War-era tactics resurface at sea, but this time, Moscow’s ultimate intentions are unknown.

In the opening dogfight of “Top Gun,” a sailor stares at a radar screen, nervously calling out the distance of fictitious MiG-28 fighter jets challenging Tom Cruise in his F-14 Tomcat. His commander watches the foreign aircraft edge closer to his carrier, and finally barks, “250 miles — get ’em outta here.”

A similar scene likely unfolded Tuesday as two Russian Tupolev Tu-142s approached the USS Ronald Reagan in international waters near the Korean peninsula. The carrier launched four armed F/A-18 Super Hornets to intercept and escort the maritime patrol aircraft, variants of the venerable Bear bomber. Still, the Russian planes pressed on, eventually passing within one mile of the U.S. carrier.

These kinds of encounters — staples of the Cold War — had dwindled since the 1990s. But with Moscow reasserting itself and China flexing new military muscles, run-ins in sky and sea are becoming more common.

“I don’t think anything wrong happened here,” Bryan McGrath, a retired naval strategist who runs the FerryBridge Group. “I think it’s just anomalous behavior, based on what we’ve seen since the demise of the Soviet Union. But I think we’re going to see this more and more and more often.”

While most such incidents are handled professionally by each military, others are not. Last year, a Russian Su-24 fighter jet

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near the U.S. destroyer Donald Cook in the Black Sea.

The last time a Russian plane came near an American carrier was in February 2008, according to Lt. Andriana Genualdi, a spokeswoman for the Navy’s Pacific Fleet. In that incident, a Tu-95 — the Tu-142’s bomber cousin — fly over the Nimitz carrier strike group south of Japan.

Decades ago, encounters between the Soviets and the U.S. Navy were common and expected.

“During the Cold War, we always knew where their aircraft and ships were and where they were operating,” said Gregory Glaros, a retired fighter pilot and surface warfare officer who is now the CEO of Synexxus, a small Virginia-based defense firm. “We always expected to see their aircraft to come and see our battlegroup…We could always follow, and we always did follow, certain protocols and rules of engagement.”

But now, Russia’s intentions – which might be power projection or to probe and challenge reaction and response times – are not clear.

“Before we know what their intentions were and it was probing, it was challenging, it was finding out where the boundaries are. Today, I think we do not know what the intentions are,” Glaros said.

Avoiding unintentional mishap or escalation while operating in close proximity has

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for U.S. officials as Russia began strike missions in Syria. And with China, a series of recent close encounters in and around the South China Sea led U.S. and Chinese naval officials to

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to hash out protocols to avoid accidental clashes.

Still, the U.S. military had better get prepared for more incidents like the one off South Korea.

“We probably have to get better at figuring out what ways to operate that make it much harder for that kind of guy to find us,” McGrath said.

That includes special tactics that, particularly when using communications equipment, that make ships more difficult to spot. “These are things we did routinely in the Cold War,” McGrath said.

And keeping the location of a massive ship is not easy either.

“A ship that size does create noise under the water and as a result of that kind of noise, they can be found,” Glaros said. “It’s hard to hide a four-propeller, 1,000-foot-long ship in the water, [but] there’s means of doing that too.”

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Naval Today said:

The US Navy will christen its newest guided-missile destroyer Rafael Peralta, Saturday, Oct. 31, during a ceremony at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine.

The future USS Rafael Peralta, designated DDG 115, honors Marine Corps Sgt. Rafael Peralta. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for actions during combat operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Peralta is credited with saving the lives of fellow Marines during the second battle of Fallujah in 2004.

Rafael Peralta is the third of 14 ships currently under contract for the DDG 51 program.

The 9,200 ton Rafael Peralta is being built by General Dynamics Bath Iron Works. The ship is 509 feet in length, has a waterline beam of 59 feet, and a navigational draft of 31 feet. Four gas turbine engines will power the ship to speeds in excess of 30 knots.

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Reuters said:

Wreckage believed to be of the cargo ship El Faro, which was lost off the Bahamas along with its 33 crew during Hurricane Joaquin, was discovered on Saturday, U.S. officials said.

El Faro disappeared on Oct. 1 en route from Jacksonville, Florida, to Puerto Rico in the worst cargo shipping disaster involving a U.S.-flagged vessel since 1983, after the captain reported a "hull breach" and said a hatch had blown open.

A search team aboard the U.S. Naval Ship Apache using sonar equipment discovered the wreckage on Saturday in the area of El Faro's last known position at a depth of 15,000 feet (4,572 meters), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said in a statement.

NTSB said officials planned to use a remotely operated submersible as early as Sunday to confirm the find. But it said the wreckage was consistent with a 790-foot (241-meter) cargo ship, and appeared to be intact in an upright position.

video camera mounted on the submersible will be used to document the wreckage and debris field and locate the ship's voyage data recorder, similar to the black box on airplanes, the statement said.

The discovery followed an earlier, failed attempt by the Apache to detect pings from El Faro's voyage data recorder by using equipment called a towed pinger locator.

Most of El Faro's crew were American.

NTSB officials said on Oct. 20 that the captain, aside from saying in a recorded satellite phone call that the El Faro was taking on water in one of the holds, had reported it had lost its main propulsion unit and engineers could not restart it.

The cargo ship's owner, New Jersey-based Tote Inc, has stated that loss of propulsion likely spelled the ship's doom.

It was not yet clear if the hull breach was directly related to the loss of propulsion.

Tote Services filed for protection in federal court in Florida on Friday, citing U.S. maritime law and saying the ship was "seaworthy and properly manned" and that the company bears no responsibility for its loss.

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