Current Events in the Americas

From Reuters [excerpt]

Report: Navy can’t afford proposed fleet By Andrew Scutro - Staff writer Posted : Sunday Apr 22, 2007 12:46:10 EDT An April 10 research report to Congress on assembling the modern fleet says the Navy’s latest shipbuilding plan cannot achieve its intent of a 313-ship future fleet, up from today’s 275-ship force. “The Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan does not include enough ships to fully support all the elements of the 313-ship fleet consistently over the long run,” according to the report entitled “Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress,” produced by the Congressional Research Service. The Navy has estimated that i…

Find it here. Navy Christens Littoral Combat Ship Freedom The U.S. Navy will christen Freedom, the first littoral combat ship (LCS) at 10 a.m. CDT on Saturday, Sept. 23, during a ceremony at Marinette Marine Corp. in Marinette, Wis. The future USS Freedom acknowledges the enduring foundation of our nation and honors American communities from coast to coast which bear the name Freedom. States having towns named Freedom include California, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Wyoming. The 378-foot Freedom will be the first U.S. Navy ship to carry this class designation. Birgit…

From Air Force Times Air Force scraps nuclear stealth missiles The Associated Press Posted : Wednesday Mar 7, 2007 21:22:27 EST WASHINGTON — The Air Force said Wednesday it will retire the most modern cruise missile in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, a “stealth” weapon developed in the 1980s with the ability to evade detection by Soviet radars. Known as the Advanced Cruise Missile, the weapon is carried by the B-52 bomber and was designed to attack heavily defended sites. It is the most capable among a variety of air-launched nuclear weapons built during the Cold War that remain in the U.S. inventory even as the Pentagon is reducing its overall nuclear arms stockp…

From Globe and Mail Navy's support ship replacement program scuttled The Canadian Press August 22, 2008 at 11:53 PM EDT OTTAWA — The Conservative government has quietly scuttled the navy's $2.9-billion project to replace its aging supply ships, saying bids from the shipbuilding industry were “significantly” higher than the money set aside for the program. It has also cancelled a tender call for the purchase of 12 mid-shore patrol ships for the Coast Guard. The decisions were announced in a statement issued at 8:30 Friday night by Public Works Minister Christian Paradis. “These vessels are a key priority of the Government of Canada,” Mr. Paradis said …

From AOL Defense [excerpt]

Navy christens newest attack sub By Andrew Scutro - Staff writer Posted : Monday Apr 23, 2007 15:24:07 EDT The fourth Virginia-class submarine, the $2.3 billion North Carolina, was christened Saturday in Newport News, Va., in front of a crowd of thousands. Vice Adm. Jay Donnelly, commander of the submarine force, told the pre-commissioning crew, “Never fear, your turn to deploy will come soon enough,” according to a Navy announcement. The North Carolina joins the Virginia, Texas and Hawaii as the first ships of the post-Cold War submarine class. The North Carolina is scheduled to be commissioned in 2008. The Navy expects to buy 30 Virginia-class subs. …

Los Angeles Times February 28, 2006 Troubled Aircraft Nearly Battle-Ready By Associated Press RALEIGH, N.C. — The Marine Corps plans to send the troubled Osprey aircraft into combat within a year and is activating a squadron of the tilt-rotor planes this week. "Obviously, due to operational concerns we don't want to tell exactly when they will deploy," said spokesman Master Sgt. Phil Mehringer at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina, where the squadron will be based. "But it's certainly going to happen in the near future. Definitely, within a year." The Osprey, which takes off and lands like a helicopter and flies like an airplane, has had …

From Defense Aerospace Textron's Bell Helicopter Granted Approval for Full Rate Production of V-22 Osprey Tiltrotor (Source: Bell Helicopter; issued Sept. 28, 2005) PROVIDENCE, RI & FORT WORTH, TX --- Marking a major milestone in aviation, Textron Inc. today announced that its Bell Helicopter unit has been granted approval by the United States Defense Department for Full Rate Production (FRP) of the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. Current plans include the delivery of 360 aircraft to the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), 50 for the U.S. Air Force and 48 for the U.S. Navy. The total program is worth in excess of $19 billion to Bell and Textron thr…

From DefenseNews [excerpt]

From Navy Times USS New Orleans commissioned in namesake city By Stacey Plaisance - The Associated Press Posted : Sunday Mar 11, 2007 11:44:30 EDT NEW ORLEANS — With the blaring of cannons, the Navy commissioned the amphibious transport dock New Orleans before thousands of onlookers March 10, marking the first time since at least World War II a Navy ship has been built and christened in its namesake city. “May God bless and guide this warship and all who sail on her,” the secretary of the Navy, Donald C. Winter, said before hundreds of sailors — in crisp, white uniforms — ran onto the ship to set the traditional first watch and to salute those in the celebra…

From DefenseNews Posted 03/15/07 23:12 Navy to LCS Shipbuilders: Control Costs or Else By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVAS U.S. Navy Secretary Donald Winter announced March 15 he was lifting a stop-work order on a new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), but he made it clear that once new cost figures are set to finish the ships, he expects shipbuilders to end the excessive cost growth that has threatened the LCS program. “We’ve determined we need to take a number of steps,” Winter told reporters during a Pentagon news conference. The chief elements are: • Renegotiating the construction contract for LCS 3, the second ship under construction by a Lockheed Martin team. The stop-work…

Navy Declares Initial Operational Capability for New Rolling Airframe Missile (Seapower) It would be nice to add this throughout the HCDB, but unfortunately we don't have the room.

From Bangor Daily News [excerpt]

Industry has big hopes for Fire Scout UAV By Zachary M. Peterson - Staff writer Posted : Thursday Aug 9, 2007 8:14:18 EDT The “flexibility” of the Northrop Grumman-built Fire Scout unmanned helicopter could see its mission sets expanded in the future from surface warfare, antisubmarine warfare and mine warfare to include special operations, humanitarian relief and other missions, an industry official said he hopes. The MQ-8B Fire Scout vertical-takeoff-and-landing unmanned aerial vehicle is being designed to perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ships’ three mission modules, designed for surface warfare, anti…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_speedy_warship Buddha

From Defense Aerospace Want Real Missile Defense Soon? Put KEI to Sea (Source: The Lexington Institute; issued April 23, 2007) By Daniel Goure, Ph.D. More than six years into the Bush Administration and what do we have to show for its investment of billions of dollars in missile defense? Precious little is the answer. To defend the nation we are relying on a waterlogged Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) site at Fort Greeley, Alaska with about a dozen interceptors. A few more missiles have been deployed at Vandenburg AFB in California. There are a small number of Navy cruisers equipped with the Aegis ballistic missile defense system and a number of Army PAC-3 …

From Jane's Defence Weekly DoD group seeks to give autonomy to armed drones By Stephen Trimble JDW Americas Bureau Chief Washington, DC A proposal, unveiled publicly in September but never before publicised, would give "armed autonomous systems" the authority to shoot to destroy hostile weapon systems but not suspected combatants. Accordingly, any people killed or injured in the attack would be considered the collateral damage of a successful strike on a legitimate target. "If you stop and think about what this is, it really is a new paradigm for conducting warfare," John S Canning, a chief engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center and one of the authors …

Reports: Brazil Picks Sweden's Gripen Fighter Jet (DefenseNews)

From Aviation Week JSF Juggling Engine, Cost, Schedule and Weight Issues Apr 1, 2007 By Amy Butler and Robert Wall The Joint Strike Fighter's price is expected to increase 4% due to Pentagon funding cuts. And if Congress reinstates development of a second engine for the stealthy aircraft, the cost could rise further. The increase could amount to more than $6 billion over the life of the massive, 3,000-aircraft program. But cost is only one of a flurry of issues ahead as development work moves into high gear. All three F-35 JSF versions will face key hurdles in the coming months, with program officials trying to keep the Lockheed Martin-led industrial team fr…