Posted on 07/01/2006 1:48:00 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
U.S. aircraft carrier to enter Hokkaido port with MSDF destroyer
(Kyodo) _ The U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, based in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, is to enter a Hokkaido port on Saturday accompanied by a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer, MSDF officials said Friday.
The 3,500-ton Yugiri will "strengthen friendship and goodwill" between the MSDF and the U.S. Navy by accompanying Kitty Hawk, and it will not be guarding the U.S. vessel, MSDF officials said, brushing off criticism by civic groups that the MSDF and the U.S. Navy are promoting their integration.
The groups have said integration would amount to exercising the right of collective self-defense, which is banned under the pacifist Constitution.
Yugiri, which belongs to the MSDF Ominato base in Aomori Prefecture, has left Ominato port and is to enter Otaru port in Hokkaido with Kitty Hawk after the two vessels conduct a joint exercise, according to MSDF officials.
A U.S. Navy ship equipped with the Aegis system will also enter Otaru port along with the MSDF destroyer and Kitty Hawk, they said.
Yugiri is expected to leave Otaru next Wednesday along with the two U.S. ships but the officials refused to disclose detailed schedules or information about the exercise. ADVERTISEMENT
According to officials familiar with military affairs, an aircraft carrier is exposed to "the highest risk when it enters or leaves a port" because it cannot move quickly and its aircraft cannot be used.
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States, about 10 MSDF vessels accompanied Kitty Hawk when it left Yokosuka port for the stated purpose of "investigation and research," according to the MSDF officials.
The move was criticized at that time as a de facto exercising of the right of collective self-defense.
Yes. She flunked her engineering ORI's in February, 2003, just before the Iraq War, when she failed to get boiler pressure from a cold light-off within the allotted time. Her skipper and engineering officer were relieved immediately. (Not that other people didn't deserve a reprimand as well, up and down the chain of command -- and get one.)
Sometimes it takes people getting their careers dinged pretty badly, before an old ship can get what she needs.
Elsewhere on FR, it was discussed in another thread that the John F. Kennedy is in tough shape, unable to use two of her catapults and therefore effectively reduced to flying a few Harriers and helos off her decks. She's pulling some kind of scrub duty from an East Coast port -- training duty or something -- and is in very bad physical condition.
I went there in 97 and we were warned that there would be protestors. About 500 showed up, but you couldn't see them behind the 40,000 that showed up to see and tour the ship.
Sapporo is a 45 min train ride from the port and summer there is awesome. Great weather, outdoor beer gardens, very nice.
As it has always been...a lot of blue in that AOR...
It might have been the same thread, but the JFK has had her arresting gear de-certified, too. So she is effectively a very big LHA/LHD, unable to launch or recover fixed wing aircraft.
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