Welcome to MSW’s Scuttlebutt! Here’s the news for the day.
Feature - USCGC Bering Strait WHEC-382
MSW crew-mate Carl Musselman (CARLOMAHA) shares his build of the USCGC Bering Strait WHEC-382 in this MSW Feature.
Dauntless Departs Clyde as Day Breaks
Source: BAE Systems
GLASGOW, United Kingdom --- Dauntless, the second of the Type 45 anti-air warfare destroyers for the Royal Navy, has left the Clyde for the final time today.
BAE Systems employees from the Clyde yards gathered at the quayside in the early morning to wave the ship off on her delivery voyage to her home port of Portsmouth. The occasion marked the culmination of five years of hard work for the employees, who have put their heart and soul into building the formidable warship for the Royal Navy.
Reflecting the close partnership developed with the Royal Navy during the build and subsequent sea trials of Dauntless, Commanding Officer Captain Richard Powell granted Honorary Membership of the Wardroom to two BAE Systems employees ahead of the ship’s departure. The exceptional move recognises the service that ship manager David Connelly and operations manager Joe McEwan have given to Dauntless and cements their long-term affiliation with the ship’s crew.
Angus Holt, UK Programmes Director at BAE Systems’ Surface Ships business, said: “This is a fantastic day for our workforce, both on the Clyde and in Portsmouth, who have each played a vital role in creating such a remarkable ship for the Royal Navy.
“I’m proud of the dedication that the team has shown to ensure that Dauntless is built to highest possible standards and of the achievements of David and Joe who have worked tirelessly with the ship’s crew to get us where we are today.”
Commenting on his Honorary Membership, David Connelly said: “It’s a real honour to receive this award from the ship’s Captain. Joe and I have worked on Dauntless since her first steel cut back in 2004 and have an enormous sense of pride in the ship. This delivery voyage to hand her over to the Royal Navy marks the final stage of our current roles and it’s great to know that now we’ll always be welcome back on board.”
Dauntless will set sail under the BAE Systems flag, with a combined crew of BAE Systems and Royal Navy personnel. She will enter her home port of Portsmouth on Wednesday, where she will be handed over to the Royal Navy during a formal ceremony alongside the following day.
BAE Systems signed a £309 million seven year support contract with the Ministry of Defence earlier this year in a move that will provide the high quality through life support for the Type 45 fleet that's essential to ensure that the Royal Navy can continue to deliver the high demands placed upon it around the world.
Once in service, the fleet of six Type 45 destroyers will provide the backbone of the UK's naval air defences for the next 30 years and beyond. The Type 45s will be capable of carrying out a wide range of operations, including anti-piracy and anti-smuggling activities, disaster-relief work and surveillance operations as well as high intensity warfighting.
Each destroyer will be able to engage a large number of targets simultaneously, and defend aircraft carriers or groups of ships, such as an amphibious landing force, against the strongest future threats from the air. The vessels will contribute a specialist air warfare capability to worldwide maritime and joint operations until 2040.
Naval Postgraduate School Enters Era of New Discovery in Future Weapons
Source: US Navy
MONTEREY, Calif. --- Advanced research at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is perfecting directed energy and hypersonic weapons that may soon join the handful of inventions that have transformed the military's ability to deliver energy fast, accurately and at a safe distance.
When the musket was added to the infantryman's standard issue, common sense dictates the impact it had on the sword; and when cruise missiles were introduced to naval fleets, strategies and concepts of operations on how ships can support battle changed completely.
Now, directed energy and hypersonic weapons could well herald the next era in naval armaments. In 2008, the Electromagnetic Rail Gun (EMG) was officially named an Innovative Naval Prototype (INP) by the Office of Naval Research, and by 2010 the Free Electron Laser (FEL) is also to be designated an INP – testaments to the priority the Navy places on these new weapons systems.
Two Naval Postgraduate School faculty members from the Department of Physics, Professor Bill Colson and Senior Lecturer Bill Maier, are bringing these cutting edge directed energy weapons to fruition. With the help of several students and researchers, they are researching and developing advanced high-energy technologies that could revolutionize maritime warfare over the next few decades.
"These are futuristic weapons," Colson said. "But if they work as we think they will, they are going to revolutionize the way ships defend themselves -- as revolutionary as guns were to swords." Colson was referring to a concept he has been working on for several years -- utilizing a high-energy, free electron laser for shipboard defense.
"The FEL is a speed-of-light weapon," Colson explained. "We can now 'see' threats at the speed of light, thanks to advanced radar systems. Directed energy will enable us to deliver lethal power to destroy those threats also at the speed of light…There will be no effective evasive maneuvers."
In addition to the system's speed, it's accuracy is impressive. "The FEL is a 'surgical' weapon," Colson noted. "We don't just track and hit an incoming missile in flight; we hit a specific part of that missile that most readily leads to its destruction."
Free Electron Laser research has also just entered a new era at the Naval Postgraduate School. Colson, who has been researching the weapon system for more than 20 years, recently led the school's acquisition of Stanford University's FEL. With a FEL now on campus, he and his students and other researchers can now test their concepts on the actual cutting-edge technology, in addition to leading collaborations with other laboratories and industry.
Earlier this year, NPS FEL researchers successfully demonstrated the first test firing of the injector cathode of the newly acquired FEL, which Colson called "the first beam from the new Stanford FEL system achieved at NPS." Naval Postgraduate School President Daniel Oliver fired the first official test shot with Provost Leonard Ferrari and the dean of the Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences also in attendance.
Equally advanced, and equally revolutionary, is Maier's research on the Electromagnetic Rail Gun. With an EMG, projectiles sliding along a pair of fixed rails are accelerated by passing a high current down one rail, through the projectile, and back down the other rail.
Navy rail gun systems in development nominally use currents as high as six million amperes to produce 35,000 Gs of acceleration over 10 meters. In Maier's lab on the NPS campus, a current of only about 300,000 amperes produces projectile acceleration of about 500,000 Gs over a distance of less than one foot, to velocities of several times the speed of sound.
Unlike the FEL, which is primarily a defensive weapon, this futuristic, hypersonic weapon holds the potential of replacing medium-range offensive cruise missiles for some DoD applications.
"The rail gun is designed for targets within a range of approximately 200 to 300 nautical miles," Maier explained. "It might take 15 to 20 minutes for a cruise missile to reach its target at this distance, whereas a rail gun projectile might take only six minutes or so to reach the target. And, as opposed to just one cruise missile, you could launch maybe 10 rail gun projectiles in a very short time."
Rail gun projectiles also don't require any explosives -- the energy from the projectile's impact at hypersonic speeds is enough to cause sufficient damage to the target. Its projectiles will, however, require some kind of incorporated self-guidance system, given the long distances they will need to travel.
Although rail gun research is conducted at several laboratories and universities, Maier and his students are conducting what he calls "innovative research" on concepts and designs for the futuristic weapon. This summer, he and his team tested a round barrel design, which would be much cheaper to both build and maintain.
Another major benefit of both the FEL and EMG is that neither requires chemical propellants of any kind. Instead, as Maier noted, the ship's existing fuel powers their generators, making it safer for onboard Sailors who are at much greater risk if a ship carrying a high volume of explosives is hit by an incoming.
The potential cost savings for these new breakthrough weapons is also extraordinary. A medium range cruise missile can cost anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million, while a rail gun projectile would cost on the order of $10,000. Given their smaller size, ships can easily store and manage a large quantity of rail gun ammunition.
The cost savings with the Free Electron Laser are even greater. As Colson notes, since the ship's existing fuel source powers the FEL's generators, the cost of firing the laser equates to "maybe a couple of gallons of the ship's fuel."
In support of directed energy research, the Naval Postgraduate School will soon open a new laboratory dedicated to supporting the FEL program, later this year. Currently, more than a dozen students are conducting their master's thesis work on the FEL and rail gun.
Colson and Maier, who teach one of the only courses dedicated to FEL and Rail Gun technology anywhere, hope to see the fruits of their research ready for shipboard testing by 2020.
French Ship Mistral Hosts Russian Naval Aviation
Source: French Navy
"This day will mark history." These are the words uttered on November 27, 2009 by the Director General and Chief Designer of the Kamov firm, Mr Sergei Viktorovich Mikheyev, at the first landing of the Russian Ka-52 combat helicopter aboard a helicopter carrier. In this case, the ship was the French Navy’s Bâtiment de Projection et Commandement (BPC) Mistral.
Having barely sailed out of the Neva, in the heart of St. Petersburg, where the Mistral made a four-day visit, the ship made a "cross deck" landing exercise with Russian Navy helicopters. For over an hour, several deck landings were made by a Ka-27 (Helix anti submarine warfare helicopter), a Ka-29 (assault transport helicopter) and the impressive Ka-52, which also simulated a refueling on the flight deck of the Mistral.
The Ka-52 is Russia’s latest combat helicopter, and like other helicopters designed by the Kamov design bureau is fitted with coaxial main rotors. Thanks to the absence of anti-torque tail rotor, they offer stability and exceptional agility. Another originality of the Ka-52 is its ejector seats, which allow its two pilots, installed side by side, to be extracted from the aircraft after the blades are blown off in less than 6 seconds.
The Ka-52, which has not yet entered active service, thus made its first deck landings on the Mistral, whose choice is a strong symbol of the friendship between Russia and France.
Further evidence of the close Franco-Russian relationship was given by the participation of a French officer to the KA-29’s deck landings. Ensign Rémi Wasseln, helicopter flight deck officer on the Mistral, made several landings in the Mistral aboard the Ka-29. It is with ill-concealed joy that he commented on these bilateral exercises: "It's a rare moment that I experienced, and I will have fond memories of being able to fly over the Mistral in the Ka-29 while a Ka-52 was in the landing circuit. The crew of the Ka-29 was very friendly, and showed great kindness to me. I look forward to working again with the Russian navy, maybe with the Ka-52," he said.
In unison, General Nikolai Victirivitch Kuklev, acting commander of the Russian Naval Air Arm, M. Mikheev and Captain Didier Piaton, commander of the Mistral, welcomed the ease with which these exercises were smoothly conducted. Adapting protocols, acclimatizing to new operational cultures, and communicating when not speaking the same language are not easy accomplishments. These difficulties have been overcome by the common desire of the Russian naval aviation and the French navy to mark this day in history by allowing the Ka-52 Russian made its first deck landings on the French Mistral.
This Day in U.S. Naval History
1775 - Congress orders the first officers' commissions printed.
1908 - Rear Adm. William S. Cowles submits a report to Secretary of the Navy recommending the purchase of aircraft suitable for operating from Naval ships on scouting and observation missions.
1941 - The first Naval armed guard detachment (seven men under a coxswain) of World War II reports to liberty ship SS Dunboyne.
1944 - Two-day destroyer Battle of Ormoc Bay begins.
1965 - USS Enterprise (CVAN 65) and USS Bainbridge (DLGN 25) become the first nuclear-powered task unit used in combat operations with the launch of air strikes near Bien Hoa, Vietnam.
Photo of the Day
The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) and the Military Sealift Command dry cargo/ammunition ship USNS Amelia Earhart (T-AKE 2) conduct an underway replenishment in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility.
Gator
