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<p>In what is a highly controversial move, the US Navy has announced that it will procure tilt-rotor V-22 Ospreys to replace its venerable C-2A Greyhound Carrier On-board Delivery (COD) aircraft. Here's why it's such a terribly bad idea.</p> <p>The C-2 Greyhound replacement saga has gone on for many years, but it has come to head in recent months with three main proposals being put forward as solutions. One would be to rebuild or build new C-2 Greyhounds based on the Navy's updated E-2D Advanced Hawkeye Airborne Early Waring and Control (AEW&C) aircraft. The Grumman E-2 is a developmental cousin of the C-2 dating back to the 1960s. The other two proposals included procuring tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey and a novel plan by Lockheed Martin to rebuild a portion of the defunct S-3B Viking fleet into COD aircraft, bringing the COD mission finally into the jet age. You can read an in depth report on all these options in this past Foxtrot Alpha feature.</p>

Landing a V-22 Osprey helicopter-style on the sprawling flight deck of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush was a snap, says Marine Corps test pilot Capt. Dan McKinney. With Lt. Col. David Weinstein, McKinney did it a dozen times on March 20 – six landings in daylight, six at night. After their first two touchdowns, sailors perched in the carrier's superstructure to watch the helicopter-airplane hybrid Osprey's first-ever carrier qualification landings, conducted off the coast of North Carolina, started giving the pilots "a lot of thumbs-up." Marine leaders hope the Osprey's "carrier quals," scheduled to continue in May...

Terma and Lockheed Martin have jointly developed a Ballistic Missile Defense C4I system called BMD-Flex. The system is based on Terma's T-Core C4I framework, fielded in several European Army, Navy, and Air Force systems. Lockheed Martin provides modular Command and Control (C2) products for decision support and battle management as well as system-of-systems expertise to extend BMD-Flex capabilities. A classic ground-based air defense C2 system built in a modern service-oriented architecture and in an open-architecture framework has the ability to give legacy systems a second life cycle by adding specific content and enabling a growth path for enhancements needed to...

After looking for a decade to buy a dark place in the country to practice landings of its noisiest aircraft, the Navy has decided to look at renting airport space for quieter aircraft landing practice and to keep the big jets working at home. Navy Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., announced Friday that it will survey public and private airfields within 90 nautical miles of Norfolk Naval air station for interest in renting landing strip time for its turboprop planes to practice. The Navy has not abandoned its search for an outlying landing field, said Ted Brown, spokesman for...

Influential gay activist political tactics against child porn laws and raising the age of consent have been a disturbing and on-going phenomenon that the public is not aware of according to leaders of organizations fighting child porn. On July 20, Canada's House of Commons passed Bill C-2 which added amendments to the Criminal Code on matters related to child pornography. Gwen Landolt, National Vice President of REAL Women of Canada, says that the amendments were helpful but still do not provide full protection for vulnerable children. Furthermore, in a detailed article scheduled for the Sept. 26 edition of REAL Women's...

Personnel surround the C-2 Greyhound checking to see why its landing gear wouldn't deploy. The plane landed at 7:15 p.m. on its belly at Norfolk Naval Station. bill tiernan/the virginian-pilot. NORFOLK — A Navy cargo plane made an emergency belly landing at Norfolk Naval Station on Monday after circling the airfield for more than two hours because its landing gear had malfunctioned.None of the 25 people on the plane were injured in the spark-filled landing, which Navy officials called “textbook.’’ The C-2 cargo plane took off from the Norfolk Naval Station at 5:10 p.m. It was one of six...

Joint Systems Integration Command's new C2 on the Move operational prototype gives joint task force commanders mobility without losing connectivity, allowing them to stay connected as they move around the battlefield. (SUFFOLK, Va. - May 18, 2005) -- Joint Systems Integration Command's (JSIC) C2 on the Move (C2OTM) project recently rolled out its operational prototype, mounted in a HMMWV, giving joint task force (JTF) commanders the ability to stay connected as they move around the battlefield. C2OTM is one of several programs under development at JSIC which address different aspects of battle management command and control. JSIC, a U. S....