Free Republic

The National Park Service and the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) have announced a new partnership to construct the nation's first bicycle High Occupancy/Toll Express Lanes on the Mount Vernon Trail between Rosslyn and Mount Vernon.

OKINAWA, Japan—Swooping down to 500 feet over the western Pacific, Cmdr. Bill Pennington pilots his U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft toward an unidentified vessel off southern Japan. In the back of the plane, a heavily modified Boeing 737, the crew homes in on the vessel using a barrage of surveillance equipment, including radar, GPS and infrared cameras. Further down the fuselage stand rows of tube-shaped sonar buoys that the crew can catapult into the sea and that float for up to eight hours as they track objects underwater. This is a dummy run: Today’s target is a Singaporean container...

CVS Caremark is kicking the habit of selling tobacco products at its more than 7,600 drugstores nationwide as it focuses more on providing health care. The nation's second-largest drugstore chain said Wednesday that it will phase out cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco by Oct. 1, a move that will cost about $2 billion in annual revenue but won't affect its 2014 earnings forecast. CVS Caremark leaders say removing tobacco will help them grow the company's business of working with doctors, hospitals and other care providers to improve customers' health.

LAAD Defence and Security 2013: US mulls P-3 MPA sale to Vietnam By Gareth Jennings 4/12/2013 The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is expected to request from the US government the sale of Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft (MPA), a senior company official told IHS Jane's on 10 April. Speaking at the LAAD Defence and Security 2013 exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, Clay Fearnow, director maritime patrol programmes, said the Vietnamese Navy was keen to buy up to six surplus P-3s to help patrol the country's nearly 3,500 km coastline and 1,396,299 km2 Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). "The Vietnamese...

At one minute past midnight on Sept. 16, a state landmark known by millions of motorists will go dark. Employees will say their goodbyes before the doors and off-ramps are barricaded at Maryland House, the Interstate 95 travel plaza in Harford County that opened in 1963. Within weeks, wrecking crews will level the neo-Georgian brick structure to make way for a new building, the flagship of an ambitious public-private partnership valued at a half-billion dollars. The same night, the smaller Chesapeake House in Cecil County will change as new vendors replace old ones. In a year, it too will come...

USS BLUE RIDGE, At Sea (NNS) -- A P-3 Orion from Patrol Squadron (VP) 1, in conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard's District 14, assisted in the rescue of 10 Taiwanese fishermen April 21, 700 miles off the west coast of Guam. At approximately 4:30 p.m., local time, Coast Guard Sector Guam received an initial alert from an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon from the Hsin Man Chun, the 70-foot Taiwanese fishing vessel. After a request for assistance from the Coast Guard, VP-1's P-3 located 10 crew members from the fishing vessel that was reported to be on fire. VP-1...

The multimillion-dollar contract to turn Maryland's travel plazas on Interstate 95 over to an out-of-state company is being challenged by a Bethesda-based firm that says the bidding process favored the eventual winner. HMSHost has filed a protest with the Maryland Transportation Authority, saying that bid specifications to replace the Maryland House and Chesapeake House were too vague and that Areas USA, a Florida company, was the only bidder allowed to sweeten its offer. "This is like a kick in the gut and we're trying to get our breath back," said Michael Jones, the HMSHost vice president who put the bid...

Maryland has taken the first step toward replacing its two travel plazas on Interstate 95 north of Baltimore with expansive, airy welcome centers filled with amenities and operated by a company with years of experience serving travelers. The two-year, $56 million project to rebuild Maryland House and Chesapeake House as a public-private partnership with Areas USA was approved Monday by the Maryland Transportation Authority board. The deal requires the approval of the Board of Public Works next month and review by the General Assembly. The state would retain ownership and oversight of the plazas, while Areas USA would operate and...

Pakistan has now lost two of its three Orion aircraft Sabir Shah Monday, May 23, 2011 LAHORE: Of just the three P-3 series Orion anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft that Pakistan had acquired from the United States in 1996, two have now been lost. According to the website of the Pakistan Navy, one of these planes (bearing serial number 83) was lost due to an accident while carrying out routine exercises over the coastal waters of Pasni (Balochistan) on October 29, 1999. This was one of the 46 Pakistani aircraft that had crashed between 1996 and 2000, and one of...

Remember about a couple of years ago when news of drug smugglers using so called “semi-submersibles” was all the rage? Those craft can almost completely submerge themselves to evade interception. Still, the vessels don’t go all the way underwater and can be spotted from ships or aircraft and have been intercepted a number of times. Since then, the high seas cat-and-mouse game between governments and drug smugglers has become more intense now that the cartels have built actual submarines. It sounds like these vessels are capable of staying underwater long enough to warrant the use of P-3 subhunters to find...

The U.S. Navy took delivery in January of 10 newly configured P-3C Orions installed with an upgraded acoustic system — the Acoustic Receiver Technology Refresh (ARTR) — that enhances the aircraft’s ability tenfold to receive and analyze sonobuoy data, a basic P-3C mission requirement. The upgrades will help bridge the technology gap between the Orion and the service’s next generation maritime patrol and anti-sub warfare (ASW) aircraft, the P-8A Poseidon, creating a more common and efficient fleet. The Navy also is establishing common signal processing code and hardware for the two fleets. The acoustic technology upgrades are vital for the...

The first of a dozen anti-submarine aircraft are set to go into service in Taiwan next year, local media reported Sunday, as East Asian governments look to counter an increasingly assertive China. Washington agreed in 2007 to sell the refurbished P-3C Orion patrol aircraft, along with three non-operational machines for spares, and "the first ones will be delivered beginning next year," the Taipei-based China Times said. "The surveillance range of Taiwan's anti-submarine fleet will expand tenfold after the P-3Cs join the navy," it quoted an unnamed military source as saying. Taiwan's navy declined to comment on the report. The P-3C...

Singapore has shown an interest in possibly acquiring several of the US Navy's surplus P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, according to the type's former manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. "They have issued a letter of request to look at P-3s," says Mark Jarvis, Lockheed's director, design and production for P-3 programmes. Singapore's interest could be for around four or five aircraft, he believes, with these to perhaps draw on the configuration of the 12 secondhand Orions due to be delivered to Taiwan from 2012. Singapore - which currently operates five Fokker 50 maritime patrol aircraft - could potentially acquire surplus Orions as...

The first P-3 Orion aircraft modified by Airbus Military for the Brazilian Air Force was inspected today by Brazilian Minister of Defence, Nelson Jobim, during his official visit to Spain. The aircraft is the first of a fleet of nine which will undergo a complete systems modernization programme, including the installation of Airbus Military´s Fully Integrated Tactical System (FITS). As well as FITS, the aircraft will benefit from a powerful new suite of mission sensors, communications systems, and upgraded cockpit avionics. The engines are being updated and, depending on the condition of each individual aircraft, the structures are being renovated...

Can nothing kill the P-3C Orion? By Stephen Trimble on November 10, 2010 I am reporting in next week's magazine that a subset of the P-3C Orion fleet will outlive its planned retirement by the Boeing 737-based P-8A Poseidon. I'll post the link to the article here when it's available. I consider the story a testament to the P-3C's record of freakish survival skills. Adapted from the doomed, 1950s-era Lockheed L-188 Electra airliner, the Orion first survived its predecessor's untimely demise in the regional airliner market. It should have been replaced by the Lockheed P-7 in the early 1990s, but...

The Navy had been planning on phasing out all P-3s by 2019 to make way for the follow-on P-8A Poseidon, scheduled to begin joining the fleet in 2013. However, the P-3C program office announced at Lockheed’s annual P-3 international operators support conference in Marietta, GA, that the Navy intends to fly special mission P-3Cs beyond that because there is no replacement for them since EPX was cancelled earlier this year, Ray Burick, Lockheed’s vice-president for the P-3C program, told Inside the Navy on October 28. “They anticipate flying a handful of airplanes, about 40 planes, specifically special mission airplanes...well beyond...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has received from Lockheed Martin its first mid-life upgrade P-3 Orion patrol aircraft, the company announced. The upgrade replaced the patrol craft's outer wings, center wing lower surface and horizontal stabilizer with new production components. "We are excited about our partnership with Customs and Border Protection," said Ray Burick, Lockheed Martin P-3 Programs vice president, "and we are committed to providing them with modernization enhancements to sustain the P-3 for decades to come. The MLU integrates well with our 10-year site and depot P-3 Fleet Maintenance Program, now under way with CBP." Lockheed Martin said...

LAST SUNDAY, Iran hanged five Kurdish dissidents, including a 28-year-old woman, who said they had been tortured into confessing to charges of terrorism. On Monday it announced that the Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who covered last year's fraudulent presidential election for Newsweek, had been sentenced in absentia to 74 lashes and 13 years in prison. This is probably just the beginning of a brutal wave of repression aimed at preventing the opposition Green Movement from rallying as next month's anniversary of the election approaches. But on Saturday, Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva will arrive in Tehran in yet...

ARLINGTON, Va. - A lawsuit which could delay the Virginia HOT lanes project will go forward, a U.S. District Court ruled Thursday. The suit, filed by the Arlington County Board, says the high occupancy toll lanes planned for a stretch of Interstate 95/395 are intended to benefit mainly rich, white, suburban and rural residents of Stafford and Spotsylvania counties. The new toll road is planned to run between Spotsylvania County and the D.C. line. Arlington says the added traffic would come at the expense of the county's diverse urban population and constitute a violation of civil rights. "We'll find out...

South Korea's navy will deploy eight more advanced maritime patrol aircraft this year to guard against any military threats from North Korea or elsewhere, the navy said on Monday. The first of eight refurbished P-3CK aircraft from the United States will be delivered to a naval unit on Tuesday, a navy statement said. The countries' disputed Yellow Sea border has been tense since a firefight last November left a North Korean patrol boat in flames. In late January the North fired some 370 shells into the sea near the borderline. Last week it announced new naval firing zones off its...