Posted on 05/11/2003 6:24:45 AM PDT by VaBthang4
CVN 21 said to offer biggest changes in decades, seeking a ‘leap ahead’ in technology
by Harold Kennedy
The U.S. Navy is moving ahead with plans for its much-debated, next-generation aircraft carrier, now called CVN 21. The service has requested $1.5 billion in its fiscal year 2004 budget for research, development and engineering and advanced procurement for the ship.
CVN 21 is scheduled to begin construction in 2007 and to be delivered in 2014, according to Rear Adm. Dennis M. Dwyer, the Navy’s program executive officer for aircraft carriers.
The budget for the entire project “now stands at $11.7 billion,” Dwyer told a press briefing in Washington, D.C.
Of that amount, he said, $5 billion is “a one-time, non-recurring cost” of the design for the entire class of ships. “The actual construction cost of the first ship of the class is $6.7 billion in fiscal ‘07 dollars,” he said. Some estimates had put the cost as high as $10 billion, which Dwyer dismissed as “a good myth we’d like to debunk.”
CVN 21 will reflect the first major changes in carrier design since work began on the USS Nimitz, almost half a century ago, Dwyer told reporters. The Nimitz, CVN 68, was deployed in 1975, but work on her began much earlier, he said.
“Actually, the early design for the Nimitz was done in the late 1950s,” Dwyer said. “If you take the time period between Nimitiz and CVN-21, it’s the same time period between [the USS] Langley—the first carrier—and Nimitz.” The Langley, CV 1, was commissioned in 1922.
“You can see the challenge,” Dwyer said. “If anybody’s got to go design a new carrier, I’m glad I’m the one.”
The redesign is necessary, the admiral explained, for two major reasons. “One of them is sheer weight,” he said. “We need to get newer, lighter systems that reduce the weight that’s on the ships.” The other factor is the need for increased electrical power, he said.
A lighter, more powerful ship will save “a tremendous amount of money in total ownership costs over the life of the ship,” Dwyer said. “You can make up that R&D expense pretty quickly.”
The Navy originally had planned to introduce design enhancements gradually to its class of carriers, building first a CVNX 1 and later an improved CVNX 2.
But Defense Department officials decided that planned improvements for CVNX 1 were not dramatic enough to justify the expense. Instead, they chose to meet the president’s stated goal to “skip a generation” of technology. They combined the CVNX 1 and 2 steps “into a single, transformational ship design that accommodates continuous evolution through the life of the class,” Hansford T. Johnson, acting Navy secretary, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The result, CVN 21, is providing an opportunity to reexamine “the way that we build and design ships and to set the baseline for the rest of the family of ships” that are in the works, including the littoral combat ship, DD(X) destroyer and Virginia-class submarine, Dwyer said. Plans for CVN 21 include dozens of new technologies.
A redesigned nuclear reactor, for example, supplies 25 percent more power for propulsion, with half the maintenance costs and half of the sailors to operate it.
More Electrical Power
“You can use the steam from the nuclear reactor to do other things,” Dwyer said. “One of the other things is to make electricity. This will provide CVN 21 with three times the electrical power that’s currently on the Nimitz.”
An electromagnetic aircraft launching system will replace the steam-powered system used on current ships. Steam requires a lot of maintenance, especially in a corrosive, maritime environment, Dwyer said. “If we made everything electric, we could save a lot of ownership costs and take the workload off the sailors.”
Two contractors, Northrop Grumman Corporation, of Los Angeles, and General Atomics, of San Diego, are building full-scale models of the system, called EMALS, and “sometime in the summer, we’re going to have a shoot-off—or a fly-off”—Dwyer said.
The Naval Air Systems Command, headquartered at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, is working on an advanced arresting gear, using an improved system of trapping aircraft as they land, Dwyer said. The new system “is an electrical, hydraulic combination,” he explained. It is designed to handle emerging platforms, such as the F/A-18E/F and the Joint Strike Fighter, which are heavier and able to return to the ship with more unexpended munitions than their predecessors.
CVN 21 will employ an integrated warfare system, Dwyer explained. Diverse electronic systems, such as sensors, command and control, and self defense, will be combined into a single, open-architecture, scalable weapons system, based on commercial, off-the-shelf technologies.
“We’d like everything to plug and play,” said Dwyer. “Right now, the way we build aircraft carriers is to buy all the electronic equipment up front, then take seven years to build a ship and deliver it with obsolete electronics. It’s kind of crazy now that you think about it.
“We don’t want to do that any more,” he said. “What we’d like to do is put the electronic equipment in separately from the actual shipbuilding process.”
Navy officials originally had planned to install the integrated warfare system in CVN 77, but it was cut for budgetary reasons. They still intend to add it to the ship during the post-construction phase, Dwyer said.
The Navy is working with the prime contractor, Northrop Grumman’s Newport News subsidary, in Newport News, Va., to design and install a so-called smart deck, equipped with flexible fiber-optic cable, which is easier to move and repair than hard copper wiring.
The island—the tower on the flight deck, where ship operations are controlled—is being redesigned. Command and decision centers are being moved from the island, to the smart deck, down lower in the ship. The ship’s bridge and the flight-operations center will remain in the island.
The island also is being moved to make better use of the flight deck, Dwyer said. “The people who actually handle aircraft said, ‘The island’s in the wrong place. It makes the aircraft all jam up. Why don’t you move it?’”
As a result, he explained, the island is being shifted 80 to 100 feet aft. Elevators, avionics and electronic support systems also are being moved. The whole idea, he said, is to create a racetrack-like pattern on the flight deck, with “pit stop” parking, so that aircraft could move more efficiently.
These changes will enable CVN 21 to raise its number of sorties—operational flights by individual aircraft—from about 140 to 160 a day, with the ability to sure up to 220 a day, if necessary.
To enhance survivability, the fuel tanks and magazines, where the bombs, missiles and other munitions are stored, are getting more armor, and the hull is being reinforced for greater protection against mines and torpedoes.
“The carrier is the most survivable ship the Navy has right now,” Dwyer said. “CVN 21 will be the most survivable carrier.”
Smaller Crew
These changes will enable the size of the ship’s crew—which does not include some 2,500 personnel in the air wing—to be reduced from about 3,000 to 2,500 and possibly as low as 2,100, Dwyer said.
“That comes from two principal areas,” Dwyer explained. In the reactor department, simplifications are being made, he said, and in the air department, “where we have all those sailors lugging bombs around. They won’t be needed any more.”
CVN 21 will have to accommodate unmanned combat air vehicles, Dwyer said. “We’ve got to step up to UCAVs. Not an unmanned airborne vehicle, but an unmanned combat vehicle, which looks like a jet plane, a little shorter, with bombs on it. How are we going to do this? Take off and land an unmanned jet fighter? That’s a big step.”
The decision to go ahead with CVN 21 was well received among the 18,000 workers employed at Newport News’ 550-acre shipyard on the James River. “It’s critically important to us,” said Matt Mulherin, vice president for Newport News’ CVN 21 program. “Half of our business is carrier construction.”
Combining CVN 1 and 2, however, “certainly accelerated our timeline,” Mulherin told National Defense. “I have a lot more gray hairs than I did before.”
Newport News is the nation’s only designer, builder and refueler of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Currently, it is building the last two of the Nimitz-class of carriers.
The USS Ronald Reagan, CVN 76, is nearly complete. It was scheduled to be commissioned in May, but that event has been postponed until mid-summer, according to Newport News spokesperson Jerri Dicksecki.
Reasons cited for the slippage: Ship-construction delays slowed equipment installation, hundreds of circuit breakers had quality-control problems, and unusually wet winter weather hampered the ability to do major jobs, such as applying non-skid paint to the flight deck.
Despite this delay, plans still call for the ship to be deployed in 2005, Dicksecki said.
The Reagan incorporates dozens of new technologies into its design, Dicksecki noted. These include a bulbous bow, which provides more buoyancy to the forward end of the ship and additional lift to the flight deck. An integrated control and advanced network, or ICAN, will link controls for machinery, navigation, voice communications and other systems. Air conditioning, medical facilities and quarters for female crew members will be upgraded.
The next carrier, CVN 77, is about 23 percent finished, Dwyer said. In December, CVN 77 was named for former President George H.W. Bush, who won the Distinguished Flying Cross as a naval aviator during World War II.
The USS George H.W. Bush is scheduled to join the fleet in 2008, replacing the 42-year-old, non-nuclear-powered USS Kitty hawk, CV 63. The Bush is viewed as a transition carrier, serving as a bridge between the Nimitz class and CVN 21. She will feature:
nMajor changes in aircraft fuel storage and distribution systems.
nA “flexible island” design that will accommodate phased array radars, when they are ready for installation.
nA commercial, off-the-shelf oxygen and nitrogen generation system.
nA new, COTS-based flight-deck crane.
nA vacuum collection, holding and transfer system for shipboard sewage and waste water.
Currently, the Navy has 12 aircraft carriers in service. They are the largest warships in the world. The Nimitz is 1,092 feet long—almost as long as the Empire State Building is tall—and it soars 20 stories above the waterline.
Carriers, home to almost 6,000 men and women, are like small cities. They offer such urban amenities as daily newspapers, radio and television stations, libraries, convenience markets, barber shops, beauty parlors, laundries and even post offices with their own zip codes.
The firepower of just one carrier is equal to that of an entire air force of some countries. The Nimitz, for example, hosts 85 combat aircraft. Its armament also includes Sea Sparrow missiles and the 20 mm Phalanx close-in weapons system.
Also, carriers rarely travel alone. Each is usually accompanied by a heavily armed battle group of two cruisers, four destroyers, two attack submarines, eight helicopters and a fast combat support ship, assigned in large part to protect the flattop.
In recent years, some officials—such as retired Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, now director of the Defense Department’s office of force transformation—have argued that the Navy should shift its emphasis away from carriers and other large ships toward smaller vessels designed to operate close to shore.
Carrier advocates responded that the flattops have proven their ability several times recently to move quickly across oceans, at speeds in excess of 30 knots, to assert U.S. military power into conflicts such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and now Iraq. Five carriers and their battle groups participating in the war against Iraq.
Unlike Air Force aircraft and Army ground forces, carriers and their air wings need no land bases in places such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Dwyer said. In fact, he noted, a carrier can substitute for an Army installation. In the early days of the Afghanistan campaign, the navy stripped the Kitty Hawk of its air wing and made it a base for special operations troops.
Well, your's and those of the million of other Amercians who owned firearms. A very large fraction of households in those days. One Japanese Navy and latter JASDF officer is quoted as saying they, or at least their Naval officers who had often studied in the US, weren't so foolish as to try to invade a country where almost every house had a gun, or three, and someone who knew how to use it. A country were every little burg had a shooting range, or at least periodic shooting contests. A country, many of whose people would quite likely ignore any official surrender order.
Should be operational in four years.
Add to that .22 the millions of experienced deer hunters' rifles, and you have a very good idea why invasion never entered the plans of Germany or Japan
I think there already was a WW2 era Submarine named after him. I'm too lazy to google right now, so I'll leave that up to you.
There was an SSBN named James K. Polk that was decommissioned in 1999. Since there is not an active ship by that name now, it is available for another ship.
How effective is a Seawolf against a Killer Rabbit?
Or a "head".
The USS Bill Clinton will be a suction dredge.
No, he was killed on Guadalcanal. I don't remember the exact details of the action he was involved in, but I'm sure he died there and was awarded the medal posthumously.
I once had a book which listed all the WWII MOH recipients and gave a short description of what they did to recieve it. I wish now I had kept it.
How would they get a bent sub to sail straight?????
Both Paige and Basilone are listed.:
SGT JOHN BASILONE
For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action against enemy Japanese forces, above and beyond the call of duty, while serving with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division in the Lunga Area. Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on 24 and 25 October 1942. While the enemy was hammering at the Marines' defensive positions, Sgt. Basilone, in charge of 2 sections of heavy machineguns, fought valiantly to check the savage and determined assault. In a fierce frontal attack with the Japanese blasting his guns with grenades and mortar fire, one of Sgt. Basilone's sections, with its guncrews, was put out of action, leaving only 2 men able to carry on. Moving an extra gun into position, he placed it in action, then, under continual fire, repaired another and personally manned it, gallantly holding his line until replacements arrived. A little later, with ammunition critically low and the supply lines cut off, Sgt. Basilone, at great risk of his life and in the face of continued enemy attack, battled his way through hostile lines with urgently needed shells for his gunners, thereby contributing in large measure to the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment. His great personal valor and courageous initiative were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.
PLATOON SERGEANT MITCHELL PAIGE
For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division, in combat against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands Area on October 26, 1942. When t he enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, Platoon Sergeant Paige, commanding a machine-gun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he manned his gun, and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire against the advancing hordes until reinforcements finally arrived. Then, forming a new line, he dauntlessly and aggressively led a bayonet charge, driving the enemy back and preventing a break through in our lines. His great personal valor and unyielding devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
Basilone was in the 1st Batallion, 7th Marines, Paige in the 2nd.
It's usual, when that much s*** hits the fan, for more than one individual to demonstrate heroism. I'd be amazed if there weren't others who were as deserving of recognition who received none.
Here's a link to the USMC history and museum website---
http://hqinet001.hqmc.usmc.mil/HD/Historical/MOH/World_War_II_1941-1945/Basilone_J.htm
Not only did Manila John have the Medal of Honor but he also got a Navy Cross.
Newspapers and radio told millions of another D-Day loss - Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone. Already a Marine Corps legend as the first Leatherneck to be awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II, "Manila John" was leading his machine gun platoon through the fury of Red Beach II when a mortar cut him down.
In 1942, on a black October night in the steaming jungles of Guadalcanal, Basilone had single-handedly wiped out a company of Japanese trying to overrun his position on the Tenaru River. With a Colt .45 pistol and two machine guns - one cradled in his arms after the other was knocked out - he stopped a screaming banzai attack and held out until dawn, when reinforcements came up. Nearly a hundred sprawled enemy dead were around his cut-off outpost.
Basilone was dark complexioned and handsome, had big ears like Clark Cable, and a wide grin. His Italian parents beamed with pride on a very special afternoon in 1943 when 30,000 well-wishers honored him at a gala celebration on the 2,000-acre estate of tobacco heiress Doris Duke near Raritan, New Jersey, his hometown.
"Manila John" blushed when photographers snapped his picture while being kissed by a Hollywood starlet, smiled broadly when an oil portrait was unveiled in the tiny brick town hall, and was shyly grateful for the $5,000 war bond neighbors gave him. He turned down the bars of a second lieutenant. "I'm a plain soldier," he said, "and I want to stay one."
From earliest memory, Basilone had wanted to be a professional fighting man. He had done a hitch in the Army before joining the Marines in 1940, and had served in the Philippines - hence his nickname.
To millions, Basilone was a hero, one of the first of the war, and could have remained stateside training troops and selling was bonds. Instead, he said farewell to his new wife, also a Marine, and joined the Fifth Division. Staying behind, he told buddies, would be "like being a museum piece." And it wouldn't seem right, he said "if the Marines made a landing on the Manila waterfront and 'Manila John' wasn't among them."
Now, with the invasion ninety minutes old, the intrepid sergeant had one thought. "C'mon, you guys! Let's get these guns off the beach!" he yelled at the gunners just behind, backs hunkered low and straining under the heavy loads of weapons and ammunition amid the blistering fire. The wasplike whir of an incoming mortar sounded its eerie warning; then a shattering blast.
Basilone lunged forward in midstride, arms flung outward over his head. He and four comrades died in that instant. On his outstretched left arm was a tattoo: "Death before Dishonor!" 'Manila John" wouldn't see Dewey Boulevard again, but he had won the Navy Cross, The Marine Corps' second highest decoration for valor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.