HG S2 (Intel Bot)

This reeks of a poorly thought out PR stunt. Navy officials in the Pentagon and Fleet Forces Command are studying the possibility that the Navy’s first littoral combat ship, Freedom, could make a short deployment earlier than planned, on the orders of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, the Navy confirmed Friday. Roughead ordered the studies after Freedom finished the second half of its acceptance trials May 22, Navy spokesman Lt. Clay Doss said. “The CNO is interested in employing the unique capabilities of this new class of warship as soon as practical, taking into consideration the milestones associated with a first-of-class warship,†Doss told Navy Times. Under its initial schedule, the ship was not to deploy until 2012. First it must complete batteries of tests at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., then experiment with its multi-use mission modules at Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City, Fla., and then sail to its homeport at Naval Base San Diego. But the Navy needs LCS now, Doss said. “As we have said before, LCS is needed now to close urgent war-fighting gaps that our Navy faces today.â€[/font] Experience says that if you go to soon you are taking a huge risk for minimal reward. Good luck to the crew. They deserve a ship ready to go, not one that is half-baked. There is nothing in the pirate world that cannot be done without LCS. If so, then the Fleet is in worse shape than we are telling the public. If not, then, well, I'll let you figure it out. View the full article

Anytime I read about anti-ship missiles for the US Navy, I get interested. Lets face it, nobody should be surprised when a new idea for the 25 year old Harpoon gets canceled, the Boeing missile is a great weapon against a previous generation of ships defense systems, but it is not the way ahead in the future. Bill Sweetman is reporting Raytheon is going to introduce another previous generation anti-ship missile upgrade and sell it as the future. Hmm... At the U.S. Navy League exhibition in Washington this month, Raytheon Missile Systems will unveil an upgrade to the BGM/UGM-109E Tomahawk Block IV land-attack cruise missile that will make it a multirole weapon capable of hitting moving ships. The package has four elements: An active electronically scanned array, millimeter-wave seeker provides target acquisition and homing; a passive electronic surveillance system is for long-range acquisition and identification; the 1,000-lb. blast-fragmentation warhead is replaced by a shaped charge; and the two-way data link gets more bandwidth. The missile is designed to kill or disable large, hardened warships in difficult environments such as littoral waters, over a greater range than Boeing’s Harpoon/Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM), the U.S. Navy’s standard antiship missile. The Raytheon warhead is twice as large as SLAM’s, and the 900-naut.-mi. range is six times greater. This is not an antipirate weapon, and it is not hard to guess which navy is the most likely target. Sounds great, but I'm not impressed. While I like the idea of a 1000lb warhead on a ship launched anti-ship missile, lets think about this. The Tomahawk is outstanding against undefended targets, but is it really a weapon that can penetrate the defensive network of an enemy combatant force? Neither the Harpoon nor the Tomahawk have any terminal speed or maneuverability, so what exactly makes these missiles a viable option or long term solution to the anti-ship missile gap? The lack of anti-ship missiles on the surface fleet, and honestly an effective anti-ship missile for our sub fleet as well, is a major warfighting gap that continues to be proven in analysis. How much longer will this be ignored? Will this even be a consideration in the QDR? It is bad enough the Navy spends half a billion dollars to build a ship, the LCS, that relies almost completely on a single helicopter for over the horizon firepower. It is even worse when one considers how much our large warships rely on aircraft to attack other ships with a weapon other than guns. An AEGIS ship is limited only by quantity in defeating the air force of most nations, but the best weapon these ships bring to the fight against other naval vessels is either a helicopter, or a 5" gun? Oh that's right, the SM-2 can handle it. Nothing like a relatively tiny warhead to stop a warship. How many SM-2s would it take to sink a 5000 ton warship? I'm betting the answer is more than 10 direct hits. Bill Sweetman's article covers a number of anti-ship missile options that will be on display, but I have to say it is pretty sad in my opinion that US contractors have not evolved their anti-ship missile options beyond the Tomahawk or Harpoon. Is a VLS launched 200nm range anti-ship missile with effective terminal capabilities really too much to ask for in the 21st century? I'm not looking for a ramjet missile, but it would be nice if we were talking about a missile that was designed after the Carter administration. View the full article

Download DA_FORM_IMT_WF1 [Thanks to Matthew S. for the form.] View the full article

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Can't think of a better name for this lovely. The Pentagon said Thursday that it intends to spend $400 million to develop a giant dirigible that will float 65,000 feet above the Earth for 10 years, providing unblinking and intricate radar surveillance of the vehicles, planes and even people below. "It is absolutely revolutionary," Werner J.A. Dahm, chief scientist for the Air Force, said of the proposed unmanned airship -- describing it as a cross between a satellite and a spy plane. Actually, evolutionary - but I won't quibble. View the full article