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Via USNI News:

THE PENTAGON — Littoral Combat Ship USS Montgomery (LCS-8) suffered at least one engineering casualty during a transit in the Gulf of Mexico and is heading to Florida for repairs, two defense officials told USNI News on Friday.

Sometime on Thursday, the Independence-class ship was bound for the Panama Canal when Montgomery suffered the engineering failure. Now the ship is headed to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba under its own power but under propulsion restrictions before returning to Naval Station Mayport, Fla. for repairs, the officials confirmed to USNI News.

Both variants sure seem to be having a string of bad luck.  On the other hand, sooner or later, they’ll make good targets for the annual SINKEX during RIMPAC.

Even the most amateur historian is aware of the strategic consequences chronic fuel shortages caused the Germans and Japanese during World War II. But at the operational level, early in the war, the US also face enormous challenges supplying fuel to the fleet in the South Pacific.

The US, of course, had its own robust domestic production of oil, as well as access to large supplies in Venezuala, Aruba, and in the Middle East. The challenge was getting the fuel where it needed to be. The US had to transport crude oil to refineries, and then refined product to England and later the Mediterranean and Europe, and of course, across vast swaths of the Pacific. And to do that, it needed tankers.

Most people are familiar with the stupendous production run of the 10,000 ton Liberty ship. Less well known is the large numbers of tankers built for the war effort.

The iron rule of mass production is to fix an existing design, and build it. That means you are stuck building a design that isn’t the latest and most innovative. But it also means the production learning curve can be quickly mastered.

Prior to the war, the Maritime Commission subsidized the production of several private tankers, with the provision that their design include militarily useful features which otherwise would not have been included for economic reasons. Two such ships, Mobilfuel and Mobilube, were built for the Sconoy-Vacuum Oil Company at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in 1938-1939.

These 9,900 Gross Rated Tonnage tankers would form the basis for what became known as the T-2 tankers. About 500 T-2s would be build by a host of shipyards during the war. T-2s would come in a variety of configurations, mostly differing in their propulsion plants.  The length of the T-2s might vary somewhat, depending on which yard built them, and what plant they used. The most common variant was the T-2-SE-A1. Four hundred eighty one T-2-SE-A1s would be built. Because of shortages of reduction gearing for steam ships, the A1’s used a steam plant to drive a turboelectric powerplant, with a 7,200 horsepower output, giving the ships a top speed of about 15 knots.

Existing yards didn’t have enough slipways to build the required numbers, so early in 1942, Marinships was formed, and began building a new shipyard in Sausilito. Even as the yard was still under construction, Marinships began building Liberty ships. But soon, Liberty ship production elsewhere was clearly sufficient, and Marinships was tasked to switch to tanker production.

It’s important to note that tankers had three major role. First, tankers were used to transport crude oil from the production fields to refineries. Second, tankers were used to transport refined product overseas. And finally, some tankers were used as oilers, that is, they were used to refuel the fleet at sea. The primary difference between tankers and oilers was that tankers were generally civilian ships with merchant marine crews, whereas oilers were commissioned ships of the US Navy, with Navy crews. They also had the appropriate rigging for underway refueling. Generally, those ships intended as oilers were built with a more powerful 10,000 horsepower plant, giving them a slightly higher top speed of 16 knots.

Marinships, and several other yards, also changed a lot of the way ships were built. We tend to think of shipbuilding as happening on the slipway. But in truth, the major part of ship fabrication takes place in the nearby shops, where plates, piping, wiring and other subassemblies are made. At Marinships (and other yards) rather than just cutting the plating in the shops, and then welding on the ways, major assemblies were built ashore, and then lifted into place on the ways. This approach allowed for specialization. That is, if your job was assembling the deckhouse, that was something you would quickly learn to do, over and over, rapidly. This greatly speeded up construction time. The average production time for a T-2 tanker was only 70 days from laying the keel to sea trials. Marinships actually produced one tanker in only 33 days.

The T-2s also suffered from the stress fractures that plagued the Liberty ships, with several suffering failures.

All of this is a rather lengthy introduction to a fairly interesting, if long, film Marinships put out at the end of the war. Mind you, with the end of the war, there was no more need for a massive shipbuilding program, and Marinships was shut down.

Well, I didn’t realize the AGM-145C had an anti-ship capability.  Good to know.

So, of course, the British commemorate it with a Mk IV in Trafalgar Square.

The Mark IV tank, on which the replica is modelled, was first used in warfare in the Battle of the Somme on 15 September 1916.

With 57,000 casualties on the first day it is regarded as the bloodiest day in British military history.

The tank will be in position in the square until 11:00 BST.

And here’s 10 minutes of tanks from the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team, North Carolina Army National Guard.

Sometimes, you know early on you’re fighting a losing battle, and the only thing to do is go down swinging.

If you pay attention, you might spot a friend of the blog.

3/8 Cav, a Combined Arms Battalion, part of the 1st Cavalry Division, put together a short video that apparently documented some of their doing during a rotation at the National Training Center, Ft. Irwin, CA.

Think back to the good old days of dial up AOL. And now look at just how much bandwidth your home or office internet has. Can you imagine trying to stream Netflix over dial up? I mean, it took a minute to download a medium sized .jpg image.

That same explosion in bandwidth has also occurred for military datalinks, which, in effect, are a form of wireless internet, just over really long distances. It stands to reason that the increase in capability there has also opened new possibilities and capabilities.

Yesterday came news of a demonstration of the Navy Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air architecture.  For the first time, NIFC-CA held a live-fire demonstration. An F-35B, operating over White Sands Missile Range, cued and targeted a drone for interception by a land based Aegis launcher. The SM-6 Standard Missile was successfully used to destroy the target.

Fire control quality data linking has been entering the fleet recently, with the adoption of Cooperative Engagement Capability, provided by the advanced E-2D Hawkeye. But NIFC-CA takes that to a whole new level, in which every platform becomes a node in the fire control network.

We hear a lot in the news about how big and bad the Russian S-300 and S-400 SAMs are. But what you don’t often hear is just how big and bad the SM-6 is.  The biggest current shortcoming in the SM-6 is that it has a range that outstrips the SPY-1 radar of the Aegis system. NIFC-CA now means that it can be fired to its fullest range (which, there’s a lot of speculation as to the real maximum range, but I’ve heard anything from 150 to 300 nautical miles).

The other thing about NIFC-CA is its jam resistance.  Most datalinks are fairly jam resistant, through the usual protocols of frequency hopping and other well known electronic counter-countermeasures. The other thing about NIFC-CA is that the wide number and widely dispersed nature of having virtually every platform serving as a sensor node is that you can’t jam every sensor. Indeed, attempting to jam them simply means you have plenty of sensors that can then triangulate your jammer’s location.

This article and this article make it seem that the big news is the offboard targeting. Which, that is kinda big news. But the real news is that we’re just beginning to see how such a networked system can be exploited to provide a clearer picture of the enemy, and enable the fleet to destroy an air threat.

The Northrup T-38 Talon has been the Air Force’s advanced trainer since 1961. Of the 1100 built, some 500 remain in service. It’s fair to say it’s been a highly successful design.

Time moves on, however, and the requirements for training new fighter pilots call for changes in training aircraft. Supersonic speed is desirable. But more importantly, the training of fighter pilots is less about the stick and rudder, and more about the mastery of the family of systems and avionics that form the heart of a modern combat aircraft. Accordingly, the Air Force wants an advanced trainer that has a cockpit that is as close to what the student pilot will fly in service.

The T-X program has solicited proposals from industry to field a modern aircraft and a family of ground based training systems to replace the T-38.  Northrup Grumman has teamed with Scaled Composites, Boeing has teamed with Saab, and Lockheed Martin has teamed with Korean Aerospace Industries to produce an offering. 

To date, I’ve only seen a picture of the Northrup Grumman/Scaled Composites entry.

But yesterday, both Boeing and LMT released short videos of their aircraft.  Both are single engine aircraft powered by a single F404 afterburning turbofan.

The Boeing offering is an all new design.

Lockheed, on the other hand, is offering a tailored version of the Korean T-50 Golden Eagle, an advanced trainer that LMT helped develop for Korea, and is in service there and in a few other countries.

Long time readers know I’m a huge Boeing fan, and generally loathe LMT. In this case, however, I’m leaning toward the T-50A , as it is already in service overseas, and is a well proven design. And I think it looks better. Which, as we all know, is very important.

he USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is on its delivery voyage1 from General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, to Baltimore, where it will be commissioned into the Navy’s inventory on October 15th. After that, the Zumwalt will make the long voyage to its new homeport in San Diego.

via www.thedrive.com

Definitely click through to see the pictures. And yes, the p-ways are huge!