Free Republic

Junior female sailors are not the only women to get new uniforms. Female officers and senior enlisted sailors will wear updated styles, such as new combination covers. By the fall of 2016, both enlisted men and women will receive new service dress blues, what the Navy calls “crackerjacks.” ... The “Dixie cup” style dates back to 1886 when it was first incorporated into Navy uniform regulations, according to the Navy’s historical site. “It can be squared, rolled, crushed, fitted with ‘gull wings’ or simply worn as it comes from small stores. It can be used as a flotation device or...

The USS America, a Gator Navy amphibious assault ship built specifically to accommodate Marine Corps F-35Bs, has just left port for sea trials after having to be overhauled for ten months immediately following its original introduction into the fleet due to issues over carrying the aircraft it was designed for. The USS America already had its well deck, used for launching and recovering hovercraft and beach landing ships for ambibous operations, omitted in its design to focus on aviation capabilities. In other words, it is an aircraft carrier not an amphibious assault ship. The main problem is that the ship...

As President Obama gears up for his presidential visit to Cuba this weekend – the first in 80 years – scientists are pondering the future of Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. One idea proposed is the creation of a transnational conservation area, or peace park.

Lockheed Martin plans to use proven components from existing ships when it sets out to compete for the Navy's upcoming frigate program. Doing so will make its offering more affordable, a company executive said March 15. The frigate will be a follow-on vessel to the service’s littoral combat ship, which currently exists in two variants — the Freedom-class manufactured by Lockheed and the Independence-class built by Austal USA. In a December memorandum Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter directed the Navy to reduce its combined procurement of littoral combat ships — and the more heavily-armed frigates to follow — from 52...

The Navy successfully launched the Raytheon SeaRAM Anti-Ship Missile Defense System from an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer for the first time ever on March 4, a final step in rapidly fielding a self-defense capability on the Mediterranean-based USS Porter (DDG-78) through an unconventional acquisition process. Porter last week went through structural test firings to ensure a shield would properly protect the ship from the SeaRAM blast, followed by tracking exercises to verify the accuracy of the detect-to-engage sequence. Finally, on Friday the Navy had its first-ever live fire test of a SeaRAM from a DDG, which took place on...

Not all F/A-18 pilots have heard of Leslie Shook, but every Hornet pilot knows her voice. The Boeing employee is the voice of the "oral alert," a series of pre-recorded commands that help a pilot avoid his or her imminent demise. Shook is now retiring from the company, which put together a nice tribute video to her. The F/A-18 can sense when corrective action is needed—right away—and the plane promptly warns the pilot what needs to be done. Bitchin' Betty will bark commands like "Pull up! Pull up!" until the pilot complies. There are numerous Bitchin' Betties across various airplanes,...

There is no doubt that Russia’s Kirov class super-sized nuclear cruisers are charismatic fighting machines. Bristling with sensors and weaponry, and seemingly alien in design when compared to anything in the west, they are intimidating. But the truth is that they are also very dated and only one has remained in service for decades. That’s all about to change. Only one of the four Kirov class ships ever built has remained in active duty since its commissioning in the mid-1990s, that ship being the Pyotr Veliky, the flagship of the Northern Fleet. As part of the increasingly belligerent recent Kremlin...

The former frigate USS Reuben James (FFG-57) was sunk in January during a test of the Navy’s new anti-surface warfare (ASuW) variant of the Raytheon Standard Missile 6 (SM-6), company officials told USNI News on Monday. The adaptation of the SM-6 was fired from guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones (DDG-32) and hit James during the Jan. 18 test at the U.S. Pacific Missile Range Facility off the coast of Hawaii, a Raytheon spokeswoman told USNI News. “The test was a demonstration of the U.S. Navy’s concept of ‘distributed lethality,’ employing ships in dispersed formations to increase the offensive...

The current controversy over Australia’s Future Submarine Program, its schedule and the associated life-of-type of the current Collins class has resulted in much hyperbole as to the difficulties associated with keeping elderly boats in operation. A quick survey of the state of affairs in the major submarine operators overseas may provide some context to concerns that the Collins class will have to run for well over thirty years of service. In the United States, four Los Angeles class nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs) are scheduled for decommissioning in 2017 after thirty-six years’ service, while the hull life of the Ohio...

From chasing down and firing on commercial shipping vessels, to conducting live missile firings in close proximity to U.S. aircraft carriers, to actually seizing and holding U.S. naval boats, Iran's military has been behaving pretty badly since its government signed its nuclear arms deal last year. To date, the U.S. hasn't elected to take any reprisals for these actions -- but Saudi Arabia, for one, isn't prepared to sit idle. Kit up! Last year, as you may recall, Saudi Arabia announced the formation of an Islamic military alliance in the Persian Gulf region. Ostensibly, the purpose of that alliance is...

The Navy will soon deploy a new air-launched, precision-guided weapon able to use a two-way data-link to identify and destroy moving targets at sea, a technology, giving fighters such as the F/A-18 Super Hornet a vastly increased attack envelope against a wider range of threats. Called the AMG-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, or JSOW, the Raytheon-built attack bomb uses GPS technology, inertial measurement unit guidance technology and an imaging infrared seeker in the final phase of flight to find and attack enemy targets. While historically used as a land-attack weapon launched from air-platforms such as fighter jets, new technology allows the...

A newly revealed configuration of sensors set for next-generation destroyer Zumwalt (DDG-1000) could make the ship less stealthy than originally intended, several naval experts told USNI News on Wednesday. According to a new artist’s concept of the configuration from the service, the three ships in the Zumwalt-class will position sensors originally designed to be embedded in the ships’ composite deckhouses on a mast positioned on the front of the deck house, with several more sensors on either side of the deck house. The change will sacrifice some of the benefits of the composite deckhouse design, conceived to make the ship...

Pentagon budget battles inevitably bring out the long knives. But in the age of sequestration absolute lunacy has taken over. Left-leaning and libertarian think tanks as well as pundits of various stripes have declared open season on our Navy's fleet of aircraft carriers and the carrier strike group (CSG) concept, calling them outdated and obsolete in light of current threats. Some politicians agree with them. These pols see the high cost of building and operating carriers as a pot of gold to be raided to pay for everything else they can think of, and they can think of a lot...

In the next decade, U.S. ships and submarines capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles will likely be fitted with a variant specifically designed to hit enemy ships up to 1,000 miles away, according to a report published in the U.S. Naval Institute News. Vice Adm. Joseph Mulloy, deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources told USNI News Wednesday that surface ships would receive the upgraded missiles first, followed by submarines. The move follows the Navy’s upcoming $434 million budget request that would modify a portion of the current stock of Tomahawks with the ability to strike...

Secretive U.S. Navy Submarine Went on a Dangerous Mission Clues suggest spying in 'extremely hazardous' waters On Jan. 20, 2013, the Seawolf-class attack submarine USS Jimmy Carter left her home port in Bangor, Washington. Less than two months later, the submarine appeared at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for repairs. It was all quite mysterious. During her time at sea, we don’t know where Jimmy Carter was or what her crew of nearly 150 were precisely doing. The Seawolf class is one of the most secretive weapons in America’s arsenal, and information about the Navy’s “Silent Service” is difficult to discover...

The United States and India have held talks about conducting joint naval patrols that a U.S. defence official said could include the disputed South China Sea, a move that would likely anger Beijing, which claims most of the waterway. Washington wants its regional allies and other Asian nations to take a more united stance against China over the South China Sea, where tensions have spiked in the wake of Beijing's construction of seven man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago. India and the United States have ramped up military ties in recent years, holding naval exercises in the Indian Ocean that...

In an apparent move to show how serious the Pentagon is about countering conventional threats such as Russia and China, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter announced Wednesday that the U.S. Navy would get a new ship-killing missile. The SM-6 is a vertically launched system fired from the deck of destroyers and cruisers. The missile was designed and fielded to intercept ballistic missiles in flight while they are passing through the upper atmosphere, but now, with Carter’s announcement, the SM-6 will be upgraded to defeat enemy ships. “It makes the SM-6 basically a twofer,” said Carter to an audience of...

The Navy’s imperative to provide “uninterrupted strategic deterrence” with its ballistic missile submarines requires it meets two goals: development of the new boats must stay on schedule, and the old boats must make it to the end of their expected service lives. The latter isn’t easy – the Navy is counting on the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) to stick around for 42 years each, something that’s never been done. The longest-serving American submarine, the boomer USS Kamehameha (SSBN-642), retired in 2002 after 36 and a half years of service. USS Ohio (SSGN-726) has been around for just over 34...

The missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur sailed within 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) of Triton Island in the Paracel chain "to challenge excessive maritime claims of parties that claim the Paracel Islands," without notifying the three claimants beforehand, Defense Department spokesman Mark Wright said Saturday in Washington.. China, Taiwan and Vietnam have overlapping claims in the Paracels and require prior notice from ships transiting what they consider their territorial waters. The latest operation was particularly aimed at China, which has increased tensions with the U.S. and its Southeast Asian neighbors by embarking on massive construction of man-made islands and airstrips...

"An act of God" was responsible for U.S. Navy sailors entering Iranian waters, leading to their arrest at gunpoint, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday told Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members who detained the Americans. "Your job was excellent, interesting and timely and, in fact, we must consider this incident as an act of God, who brought Americans into our waters so they would be arrested through your timely action and in that manner with their hands held above their heads," Khamenei told the group in a face-to-face meeting, according to a report on the supreme leader's...