Free Republic

In an explosive report we learn that ever since 2012, the United States has been spying on Israel in order to prevent the Jewish State from attacking suspected Iranian nuclear sites, according to Friday’s Wall Street Journal. The White House had sent an additional aircraft carrier to the region after learning that Israeli aircraft had flown into Iranian airspace in what U.S. officials feared was a test run for an attack on Iran’s Fordow plant. The carriers had attack aircraft on board prepared to respond to any Israeli attack on Iran.

A trio of Chinese Navy vessels that are making an around-the-world trip will be visiting Mayport, Florida on November 3rd through the 7th. This visit comes as tensions are increasing between U.S. and China over the South China Sea, with the Navy ready to sail within China’s man-made islands claim on disputed territorial waters. The three ships involved with the visit include the Type 052C Luyang II class guided-missile destroyer named Jinan. The 052C Luyang II class is roughly analogous to an Australian Hobart Class destroyer, not necessarily in raw capability but in general configuration. The Hobart Class is roughly...

It was announced yesterday that Saudi Arabia wants to purchase four extremely up-gunned Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS). The deal will be worth $11.25 billion including weapons and support. This will also be the first export sale for the troubled LCS program, and these Saudi ships will be far more capable than any version of the LCS the Navy plans on procuring. This fact may present an incredible opportunity for the Navy to get the version of the Littoral Combat Ship they really need, and possibly at an awesome price. Saudi Arabia’s highly upgraded variants of the Freedom-class Littoral Combat...

The Navy is investigating adding an anti-ship missile to its submarine force — bringing it inline with the majority of the world naval submarines, the director of Naval Reactors said on Wednesday. In response to a question from the audience at the 2015 Naval Submarine League Symposium, Adm. Frank Caldwell said the Navy was exploring adding the capability to the fleet. “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. The U.S....

BEIJING -- China this week hosted a visit to its sole aircraft carrier by senior U.S. Navy officers amid tensions over reported plans by Washington to challenge Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea. The delegation of 27 commanders and captains boarded the Liaoning on Monday and held discussions on "exercise management, personnel training, medical protection and strategies in carrier development," the Chinese navy said on its official microblog. That was followed Tuesday morning by a visit to the navy's submarine academy, where further dialogues were held, the navy said. The visits appear to reflect the growing momentum of...

On board the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Bay of Bengal, Oct. 17: An Indian warship played "shotgun" for this US super-carrier during an air defence drill last night, about 150 nautical miles east-southeast of Chennai during the latest edition of the Malabar war games, which also include a Japanese destroyer. "The 'shotgun' role will be shared by the Indians and the Japanese in this exercise," said Captain Craig Clapperton, commanding officer of the carrier. On Sunday, an Indian fleet tanker is expected to pull alongside and feed the carrier in a hostile scenario described as "opposed replenishment at sea"....

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Whereas a high sprint speed was a driving factor in designing the Littoral Combat Ship, the follow-on frigate will instead be optimized for lethality and survivability, the Navy’s frigate program manager said Thursday. As the LCS program transitions to a multimission frigate, the 40-knot sprint speed requirement will go away to allow for more armor, more weapons, an over-the-horizon missile and full-time anti-torpedo protection, Capt. Dan Brintzinghoffer said at an American Society for Naval Engineers event. This change, he said, is a recognition of simple physics. “If we don’t change anything [in the hull design] and add...

While the requirement for a carrier-based long-range strike capability is a frequent subject of discussion around Washington, the U.S. Navy’s need for improved air superiority capabilities is often neglected. The service has not had a dedicated air-to-air combat aircraft since it retired the Grumman F-14 Tomcat in 2006. But even the Tomcat was adapted into a strike aircraft during its last years in service after the Soviet threat evaporated. Now, as new threats to the carrier emerge and adversaries start to field new fighters that can challenge the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Lockheed Martin F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, attention...

In September, the Navy decommissioned USS Simpson (FFG 56), the last Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate in service. This ended 38 years of this service from this class of 51 vessels in the United States Navy, but for those 38 years, the Navy got one heck of a ship. Displacing 4,100 tons, the Perry-class frigates were equipped with a Mk 13 missile launcher that held RIM-66B SM-1 surface-to-air missiles and RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, the Mk 75 76mm gun, a Mk 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, two banks that held three 324mm anti-submarine torpedoes, and two helicopters (either SH-2 Sea Sprites...

The USS Simpson has been decommissioned, marking the end of an era in America's naval fleet. The 30-year-old vessel was the last modern warship to sink an enemy target during battle. Built in 1984, the Simpson down Iran's Joshan gunboat in the Persian Gulf in 1988 - America's only maritime battle since the Second World War. But now, as the Department of Defense grapples for funds to complete the new zumwalt-class fleet, the Simpson's days have come to an end. It will be towed to a port in Philadelphia and possibly sold to a US ally. The ship was built...

America's most advanced nuclear submarine was slicing through the water off Hawaii last month, 400 feet under the surface, when a sonar operator suddenly detected an ominous noise on his headphones. It was a faint thump … thump … thump — the distinctive sound of a spinning, seven-bladed propeller on a Chinese attack submarine called a Shang by the Pentagon and its allies. A neon green stripe on his sonar screen indicated that the Shang was only a few thousand yards off the U.S. sub's bow. "Sonar contact!" he yelled to 15 officers and crew in the dimly lighted control...

In 1995 and 1996, Taiwanese politicians signaled greater support for declaring their island country officially independent of China. Beijing’s response was swift, forceful … and ultimately an embarrassment to China. The Chinese army fired several missiles toward small, Taiwanese-held islands. That’s when the United States intervened in a big way, sending two entire aircraft carrier battle groups into the waters around Taiwan — and even sailing one carrier through the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese military was powerless against this show of force. Beijing couldn’t even reliably track the American warships, and had no forces of its own capable of threatening...

The widows of two pilots killed when a wave swept their helicopter off a U.S. Navy destroyer filed a lawsuit in San Diego on Monday, alleging the Navy and others knew of design flaws in certain Navy ships and their helicopter landing platforms. The federal lawsuit, filed on behalf of Theresa Jones, Christina Gibson and their children, asks a court to declare the ships in question unreasonably dangerous and order that they be changed to prevent future accidents. On Sept. 22, 2013, Lt. Cmdr. Landon Jones and Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan Gibson lost their lives when the MH-60S helicopter they...

Faced with China's growing anti-surface ship capacity, the United States should decrease its emphasis on large aircraft carriers in the Pacific and spend more on submarines, space capabilities and ways to make air bases and aircraft less vulnerable, according to a report released earlier this month by Rand Corp. In the 430-page report, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based think tank analyzed the relative military capabilities of the U.S. and China in certain scenarios based on open-source documents. The analysis makes comparisons using 10 "scorecards" covering air, maritime, space, cyber and nuclear domains. Capabilities were examined at seven-year intervals, beginning in 1996...

The Pentagon is considering whether to cancel construction of one of the next-generation destroyers being built at Bath Iron Works, a move that would imperil jobs at Maine’s fifth-largest private employer. Several reports said the Defense Department is trying to decide whether to complete construction of the USS Lyndon B. Johnson, the last of three Zumwalt-class destroyers, even though the vessel already is more than 40 percent complete. It’s a topic “to be reviewed in the next few weeks” by teams formed by the Pentagon’s independent cost-assessment office, according to a report by Bloomberg News that cited an Aug. 25...

In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration was looking to fund high visibility defense programs. Reagan had been elected on a platform of rebuilding the armed services after the “hollowing out” of the early 1970s. One example was the reactivation of four World War II-era Iowa-class battleships, which started in 1982. Each of the four ships, Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin was refurbished, their sixteen and five-inch guns brought back online. Each battleship was also equipped with sixteen Harpoon anti-ship missiles, thirtytwo Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and four Phalanx close-in weapon systems (CIWS) for defense. The four battlewagons...

An enemy surface ship, almost surely part of a U.S. carrier strike group, comes under Chinese attack in a newly released military propaganda film. (“Battle to Capture an Island: a Full View of Chinese Military Strength,” Tencent and Visions Media, September 3, 2015) Alongside the military spectacle that passed through Tiananmen Square in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Chinese media conglomerate Tecent also released a new computer-generated video, “Battle to Capture an Island: a Full View of Chinese Military Strength.” Available via the social media platform QQ, the five-minute video appears to...

Type 022 Fast Attack Missile Craft Houbei Class of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) test fires C-803 antiship missile. PLAN Photo via Global Military Review “Improved maritime strike capability has given Chinese warships a much greater chance of competing against their U.S. counterparts” and improved naval air defenses allow its warships “the ability to operate at increasingly great distances from shore”—major advances in large part speeded by arms, vessels and technology sales from Russia since the end of the Cold War. Those were two observations contained in a new report from the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Center...

Contacted by Navy Recognition, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said "we learned over the weekend that LRASM's official designation will be AGM-158C". AGM-158C is the designation for the air-launched LRASM missile only. There is no surface-launch LRASM program of record yet. The Department of the Navy, Naval Air Warfare Center, gave the official designation. CGI: An AGM-158C LRASM is launched from an F/A-18E Super Hornet We reported last week that the U.S. Navy began initial integration testing of its Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) onto the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet at Patuxent River’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 facility. Based on...

The US Navy has begun integrating Lockheed Martin’s new Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) with its Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and airworthiness flights are due to start next month. The service says its test and evaluation team at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland conducted the first load and fit checks with the weapon this week using a “mass simulator vehicle” – all in preparation for first phase of airworthiness certification. LRASM has already been integrated with the US Air Force’s Boeing B-1B bomber, and now pictures released by the navy show the weight-representative payload attached to a Super Hornet’s...