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SASEBO NAVAL BASE, Japan – The USS Bonhomme Richard will likely miss its next underway deployment after a botched $3 million resurfacing of the amphibious assault ship’s flight deck. The ship had undergone the resurfacing less than a month ago. “A recent application of non-skid coating on the flight deck of the USS Bonhomme Richard was not up to Navy safety standards and is being reapplied,” Cmdr. William Marks, spokesman for 7th Fleet, said in an email to Stars and Stripes. “This will cause an increase in port time and decrease in underway days for Bonhomme Richard.” An “accidental gouging”...

VANCOUVER — A Canadian navy ship with more than 300 people on board is adrift in the Pacific Ocean in heavy seas after a fire in the engine room. HMCS Protecteur was returning to its home port of Esquimalt, British Columbia when the blaze broke out Thursday night. Several crew members aboard the 44-year-old supply ship suffered minor injuries from the fire. Sailors put out the flames, the Department of National Defence said Friday morning. HMCS Protecteur is currently 630 kilometres northeast of Pearl Harbor and has limited power.

MANILA – As weather condition seems to be fine near Tubbataha Reef, salvaging operation for the ill-fated USS Guardian that ran aground last month along the portion of the UNESCO World Heritage continues as the team already starting to prepare for level 2 section lifting. Commodore Enrico Efren Evangelista, Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) Palawan district commander and chief of Task Force Tubbataha said that the operations currently on going for the clearing of equipments below weather deck as well as the removal of sonar winch at the bow while the team is already done with lifting of the funnel section....

SASEBO NAVAL BASE, Japan — The Navy minesweeper that got stuck on a reef off the coast of the Philippines will have to be dismantled and removed in sections, a process that is expected to take over a month, Navy officials said Wednesday. The salvage plan is still under review by the Philippine Coast Guard, but it likely means the end for the 23-year-old USS Guardian. “Our naval architecture and salvage experts have reviewed all possible alternatives, and our only supportable option is to dismantle the damaged ship and remove it in sections,” Pacific Fleet spokesman Lt. Anthony Falvo wrote...

SASEBO NAVAL BASE, Japan — The Navy minesweeper USS Guardian — stuck on a protected reef off the coast of the Philippines for a week — will most likely stay there up to two more weeks, Navy officials said Thursday. Rear Adm. Tom Carney, Joint Group Unit Guardian commander, said two contracted heavy-lift ships from Singapore are scheduled to arrive next Wednesday or Thursday at the site near Palawan Island to begin removing the stranded ship. The work ultimately depends on conditions at sea and efforts to stabilize the vessel and lighten its load. During a news conference with Philippine...

PORTLAND, Maine — A civilian employee of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard arrested in connection with the May 23 blaze that caused $400 million in damage to the submarine USS Miami made his initial court appearance in U.S. District Court on Monday afternoon. Casey J. Fury, 24, a Portsmouth resident and Portsmouth High School Class of 2006 graduate, was a civilian employee working aboard the submarine as a painter and sandblaster, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Maine. He was arrested Friday at the shipyard on two counts of arson “within special maritime and territorial jurisdiction,” said...

Representatives from Costa Crociere and the Italo-American consortium Titan-Micoperi today presented the details of their much anticipated plan to remove the wreck of Costa Concordia from the Island of Giglio using cranes and caissons to float the vessel.As we learned weeks ago, Titan Salvage and Micoperi were selected to remove the stricken Costa Concordia from Giglio Island after beating out several leading salvage companies vying for the historic contract.  Titan Salvage, part of the Crowley Group, is an American-owned specialist marine salvage and wreck removal company and is a world leader in its field. Micoperi is a wellknown Italian marine...

The QWERTY keyboard was invented in 1874 and yet it is still used today, largely unchanged. What’s more, the keyboard doesn’t come close to the speed and effectiveness of a simple technology used on ships over a centry ago… morse code. Today, April 1st, Google is introducing a new input method designed by the great-great grandson of Samuel F. B. Morse: Gmail Tap for Android and iOS. Gmail Tap takes the keyboard from 26 keys to just two. Every letter of the alphabet is represented by a simple pattern of dots and dashes, and once you know them you can...

This video was taken from the bridge the Costa Concordia in the moments after hitting rocks on the Island of Giglio. The video offers the first glimpse of the officers, Captain and other crew members from the bridge following the initial grounding. We’ve been seeing snippets of this video over this past week but this seems to be full version (and with English subtitles). Analysis to follow…

Upon departure from the port of a Giglio, an island off the northwestern coast of Italy, the cruise ship Costa Concordia struck a reef, tearing a 50 meter-long gash in her hull. Reports indicate the ship’s captain, Commander Paolillo, attempted to steer the ship toward shallower waters to enable an easier lifeboat evacuation. A reported 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew were onboard when she grounded. UPDATE: The captain of the cruise ship COSTA CONCORDIA has been arrested by Italian police as an investigation into Friday night’s grounding is launched. Officials said Saturday that captain of appears to have taken the...

AP Can't excerpt see link.

WASHINGTON — Could the USS George Washington be sunk by budget cuts? A report in Defense News on Thursday, citing anonymous sources, said naval officials are considering decommissioning the nuclear aircraft carrier decades before the end of its scheduled lifespan. That’s the second time this week the 25-year-old behemoth has been mentioned as a potential fiscal casualty. In budget analysis released Tuesday, officials from the Center for New American Security, a Washington, D.C. think tank with close ties to President Barack Obama, listed the early decommissioning of the ship as a way to save up to $7 billion over the...

It is the most common adverb of the Obama years: “unexpectedly.” ● “Sales of U.S. previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped in July,” reported Bloomberg. ● “Manufacturing in the Philadelphia region unexpectedly contracted in August by the most in more than two years as orders plunged and factories shed workers,”reported Bloomberg Businessweek. ● “Consumer spending unexpectedly fell in June,” reported Reuters. ● “Dismal economic data on Thursday pointed to an unexpectedly abrupt slowdown in manufacturing and a pickup in inflation,” reported the New York Times’ business page.This is just in the past week; hundreds of articles each month note that some...

A comparative look at Japan’s topography.

Skipper Westbook is having an interesting day. Via Tim Colton's blog, The future USS Spruance, (DDG 111), recently returned from sea trials, sustained extensive damage yesterday when the engine controls failed during a test and poured fuel into a hot engine. Not an easy business. Seems like everyone is OK though. Good new is - you can't buy training like this! I think we could have a caption contest on this. Mmmm. OK, this is the image that the CHENG saw as he looked up from his crackberry while heading to the ship. The CHENG said, ...... Hat tip Byron.UPDATE:...

ABOARD THE GUNSTON HALL In the middle of a busy day training off the Virginia coast, about two dozen sailors stop what they're doing, change into their dress whites and gather in the well deck - a cavernous space at the rear of their ship that opens to the sea and the sunlit sky. Five small metal containers sit on a table, holding the ashes of four men and a woman. The sailors know nothing about them except their name and rank. They've gathered in response to a simple command: "All hands, bury the dead." Osama bin Laden is perhaps...

The notorious Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s flagship, the Steve Irwin, ran the gauntlet of Somali pirates recently as the ship and crew transited the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. In an effort to fool the pirates the Steve Irwin used a camouflage paint job with a large “77” placed on the bow, even fooling a U.S. military Blackhawk helicopter that mistook the vessel for a Dutch warship. Sea Shepherd was hoping that the pirates would make the same mistake, but three skiffs supposedly approached Steve Irwin and tailed the vessel for a few miles. The pirates appeared to...

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington say the gentle rocking that signaled the beginning of the earthquake felt so familiar, they barely took note. As it intensified over the next few minutes, they knew something extraordinary was happening. “It actually felt like we were under way and answering bells,” said Chief Petty Officer Bill Mason, of Damascus, Pa. Mason checked the water line in the harbor shortly after the major quake — the water had dropped 6 feet, he said. The George Washington is 1,092 feet long and includes 60,000 tons of structural...

When I was selected as one of the two human players to be pitted against IBM's "Watson" supercomputer in a special man-vs.-machine Jeopardy! exhibition match, I felt honored, even heroic. I envisioned myself as the Great Carbon-Based Hope against a new generation of thinking machines—which, if Hollywood is to be believed, will inevitably run amok, build unstoppable robot shells, and destroy us all. But at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Lab, an Eero Saarinen-designed fortress in the snowy wilds of New York's Westchester County, where the shows taped last month, I wasn't the hero at all. I was the villain....

WASHINGTON - The Navy says a second officer has been transferred from his job pending investigation into the showing of lewd videos on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. Rear Adm. Dennis Moynihan, a Navy spokesman, said Thursday that Rear Adm. Lawrence Rice has been transferred out of his job at Joint Forces Command. His retirement planned for Feb. 1 is being delayed.