Free Republic

Hate to say “I told you so” but President Obama’s disinterest in enhancing our combat capability in favor of social egalitarianism and a warped sense of social justice is indeed having an impact on war readiness. According to the Washington Times, “A Navy F-18 fighter pilot and former Top Gun instructor is publicly warning admirals that retention is beginning to suffer from the military’s relentless social conditioning programs. Cmdr. Guy Snodgrass said sailors are becoming fed-up with the constant emphasis on social issues — an apparent reference to gays in the military, women in combat and ending sexual harassment.”

America’s gazillion-dollar Joint Strike Fighter is supposed to go virtually unseen when flying over enemy turf. But that’s not how things are working out. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—the jet that the Pentagon is counting on to be the stealthy future of its tactical aircraft—is having all sorts of shortcomings. But the most serious may be that the JSF is not, in fact, stealthy in the eyes of a growing number of Russian and Chinese radars. Nor is it particularly good at jamming enemy radar. Which means the Defense Department is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to a fighter...

A sailor playing with an air soft gun inside a Navy barracks prompted an alertA sailor playing with an air soft gun inside a Navy barracks prompted a security response and shelter-in-place order on Naval Base Point Loma, Navy officials confirmed to NBC 7 Thursday. Base Commanding Officer Scott Adams described the suspect as "a young, enlisted sailor" who lives on base. "He was actually firing shots of the air soft pistol out of the window toward a mirror in the parking lot," Adams said. A tenant of the base called security personnel and reported an armed person around 10...

Conservatives have noticed that the Pentagon is firing officers left and right, with many leaving under an embarrassing cloud. The question they ask — and I don't know that anyone has an answer — is whether these firings are the legitimate and appropriate housecleaning that a sclerotic bureaucracy needs or whether they're a purge, with Obama's New Age, gender flexible, fighting optional military getting rid of people in command positions who actually think that the military's job is to wage war in America's defense.All I know is that the latest person being investigated as a predicate to an inevitable firing...

A high-definition video of U.S. Navy fighter pilots swooping between snowy mountains and skimming the western Pacific Ocean has gained more than 135,000 hits since being posted four days ago. The VFA-27 Royal Maces, based at Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan, shot the footage from their cockpits while flying F/A18-E aircraft at various locations in the Pacific theater. Much of the footage comes from recent patrols while deployed with the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, pilot Lt. Kyle Matson said. Footage includes trips along the Australian coast and various parts of Japan. Some of the most dramatic footage shows...

GROTON, Conn. (AP) — With no sunlight to set day apart from night on a submarine, the U.S. Navy for decades has staggered sailors' working hours on schedules with little resemblance to life above the ocean's surface. Research by a Navy laboratory in Groton is now leading to changes for the undersea fleet. Military scientists concluded submarine sailors, who traditionally begin a new workday every 18 hours, show less fatigue on a 24-hour schedule, and the Navy has endorsed the findings for any skippers who want to make the switch. The first submarine to try the new schedule on a...

Capt. Gregory McWherter, executive officer of Naval Base Coronado in San Diego, was relieved of his duties by Vice Adm. William French, commander of Navy Installations Command. The move was made based on initial findings of an ongoing investigation into allegations of misconduct and an "inappropriate command climate" at the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, or Blue Angels, based at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla.

As we reported last Friday, a second US warship, the destroyer Donald Cook, crossed the Bosphorus last week and entered the Black Sea at precisely the time when NATO was arguing that its encroaching presence around Russia should not spook anyone. Apparently it spooked someone, Russin, which over the weekend decided to give the Americans a warm welcome. As AP reports, "A U.S. military official says a Russian fighter jet made multiple, close-range passes near an American warship in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes Saturday amid escalating tensions in the region."

A 6-year-old got the birthday surprise of a lifetime when he found out he would be a Navy SEAL for a day. Mason Rudder has already endured 10 surgeries for a rare genetic disorder that affects his range of motion, but that hasn’t stopped him from dreaming of becoming an elite Navy SEAL one day. Navy SEAL Jared Ogden spent a day training Mason. They went through demolition and sniper training, and during their lunch break, Mason led the SEALs on a mission.

A lethal new weapon that can fire a shell at seven times the speed of sound has been successfully tested on land. Described as ‘Star Wars technology’ by researchers, such a device has belonged solely to the world of science fiction for decades. But now it is close to a reality with sea trials on a US warship planned in two years.

(Reuters) - A family of four rescued from their sailboat after their infant daughter became seriously ill at sea returned safely to San Diego on Wednesday aboard a U.S. warship that picked them up in the Pacific over the weekend, a Navy spokeswoman said. The parents, Eric and Charlotte Kaufman, and their two daughters, 3-year-old Cora and 1-year-old Lyra, left the Navy frigate Vandegrift after the ship arrived in port around 10 a.m. local time and proceeded to their family doctor, according to Lieutenant Lenaya Rotklein of the Third Fleet. Rotklein declined to give any further information about the arrival...

UkrInform.ua reports that the deputy head of Ukraine’s Presidential Administration, Andriy Senchenko, has announced that an agreement has been reached on the return of Ukraine’s ships from Russian-held Crimea. The first ships to return will be the corvette Ternopil, the missile boat Priluki and the tanker, Fastov, all of which are currently in Sevastopol. Simultaneously, the head of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s Crimean media centre, Vladislav Seleznev, announced that an agreement had been made on the return of Ukrainian aircraft from Crimea, adding that: One plane will fly home under its own power following maintenance, several more will be transported...

The U.S. Navy believes it has finally worked out the solution to a problem that has intrigued scientists for decades: how to take seawater and use it as fuel.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy is planning sea trials for a weapon that can fire a low-cost, 23-pound (10-kg) projectile at seven times the speed of sound using electromagnetic energy, a "Star Wars" technology that will make enemies think twice, the Navy's research chief said. Rear Admiral Matthew Klunder, the chief of Naval Research, told a round table group recently the futuristic electromagnetic rail gun had already undergone extensive testing on land and would be mounted on the USNS Millinocket, a high-speed vessel, for sea trials beginning in 2016. "It's now reality and it's not science fiction. It's actually...

NORFOLK A civilian police officer has been placed on leave and the Navy is boosting security measures at bases from Virginia to Maine after last week's shooting aboard the destroyer Mahan. The guard who allowed the shooter onto Norfolk Naval Station was a federal police officer, not a sailor or a contractor, officials said Monday. Everyone entering a base in the service's mid-Atlantic region using a transportation worker credential - the kind Jeffrey Savage showed before he shot and killed a sailor - now must be checked against a federal crime database. Until last week, those checks weren't mandatory. Navy...

The Talk Shows March 30th, 2014 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Angus King, I-Maine; John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Michael Leiter, former White House adviser on counterterrorism.FACE THE NATION (CBS): NCAA President Mark Emmert; Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and the National Security Agency; Michael Morrell, former deputy CIA director and member of NSA Surveillance Review Group; Cmdr. William J. Marks, U.S. Navy 7th Fleet, which is involved in the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines jet.THIS WEEK...

The man who drove a semi-truck onto Norfolk Naval Station before killing a sailor received his transportation worker credential within the past few months, a source close to the investigation said Friday. The detail comes a day after the Navy identified Jeffrey Tyrone Savage as the man at the center of its investigation into the shooting aboard the guided missile destroyer Mahan on Monday. Savage, 35, has a long criminal record, including convictions for selling drugs and manslaughter, but family members said they believed the man who grew up in Portsmouth had finally begun to turn his life around after...

Government document puts naval engineering group in charge of Kenya pit toiletsThe Obama administration lately has demanded much from American soldiers, who now face possible reductions in the number in their ranks as well as higher payments toward their health benefits. That’s in addition to duty in Afghanistan, or worse. In the latest slap to the face of U.S. Department of Defense personnel, Obama now is asking those soldiers to oversee the digging of toilets at a girl’s school in Kenya, his “home country,” as First Lady Michelle Obama once publicly put it. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command is tasked...

Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter is speaking out against a reported proposal being considered by the Navy to ban the sale of tobacco products on all its bases and ships, calling it a “political decision.” The Military Times reported Monday that Navy officials are considering removing tobacco from all retail outlets, including exchange-operated sales venues and Morale, Welfare and Recreation program outlets. Navy commissaries do not sell tobacco products. Hunter, a Marine veteran who served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, said in a letter to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus he strongly opposes the ban, saying it...

Opening in the autumn of 1939 just as the Battle of the Atlantic begins, Lieutenant-Commander George Ericson, a British Merchant Navy and Royal Naval Reserve officer, is recalled to the Royal Navy and given command of HMS Compass Rose, a newly built Flower class corvette intended for convoy escort duties. His sub-lieutenants, Lockhart and Ferraby, are both newly commissioned and without experience at sea. The new first lieutenant, James Bennett (Stanley Baker), is an abusive martinet. Despite these initial disadvantages, the ship's company gains hard experience and becomes an effective fighting unit. At first their worst enemy is the weather...