January 4, 201016 yr Excerpts of interest from Navy Times 2010 lookahead: What’s ahead in the new year Staff report Posted : Monday Jan 4, 2010 6:13:39 EST CARRIERS & STRIKE GROUPS • The Dwight D. Eisenhower is scheduled to deploy in January. [CV32: The Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group left Norfolk on 2 January, to be followed by the Carrier Air Wing Seven, the destroyers McFaul, Carney, and Farragut, and the cruiser Hue City. The strike group is headed to the Indian Ocean] • The Harry S. Truman will follow a couple of months later, marking its second eight-month deployment in as many years. • Enterprise, late coming out of the yard, will be back in action to prepare for its final deployment next year. • Carl Vinson will move to San Diego in the early part of the year. • Nimitz is scheduled to return to San Diego in March after an eight-month deployment. • Abraham Lincoln is a likely candidate to replace Nimitz, but Navy officials will not comment on future deployments. While Lincoln and John C. Stennis are in Bremerton, Wash., for maintenance and workups, Stennis has been out twice since 2007, including a 2009 deployment. Lincoln hasn’t gone since 2008. And don’t add the Ronald Reagan into that equation — the carrier is at Naval Air Station North Island, Calif., for maintenance following four deployments in as many years. • The George Washington is forward-deployed at Yokosuka, Japan. • The George H.W. Bush is beginning its operational life, and will spend the year completing quals and evals. • The Theodore Roosevelt entered the yard in mid-2009 for its major refueling and overhaul, which should take roughly three years. In addition, the decision as to which carrier will move to Mayport, Fla., is expected to be part of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review. OP TEMPO Carrier strike groups saw eight-month tours in 2009. Attack subs were out eight to 13 months. And with sailors being a key part of the Afghanistan push, overall op tempo doesn’t look to let up in 2010. The Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman carrier strike groups will pull eight-month tours in 2010. The extensions were caused by problems with the 48-year-old Enterprise, which was four months late in getting out of its 16-month overhaul. But whether longer deployments are the exception, or the new normal, remains to be seen. As for the ground force in Afghanistan, there are already 3,700 sailors on the ground, mostly explosive ordnance disposal, Seabees and medical personnel. Another 208 are building schools and roads. In January, another force of 1,100 Seabees will begin rotating into the war zone. SHIP NAMES Navy Secretary Ray Mabus will likely name seven ships in 2010, said his spokeswoman, Capt. Beci Brenton: • The Zumwalt-class destroyer DDG 1002. • Three littoral combat ships: LCS 5, LCS 6, LCS 7 • One Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo and ammunition ship: T-AKE 14 • One Virginia-class attack submarine: SSN 786 • One joint high-speed vessel: JHSV 4 SHIP COMMISSIONINGS • Jan. 16: Littoral combat ship Independence, Mobile, Ala. • March 6: Destroyer Dewey, Seal Beach, Calif. • June: Missile range instrumentation ship Howard O. Lorenzen, Pascagoula, Miss. • July 24: Submarine Missouri, Groton, Conn. • July: Destroyer Jason Dunham, Bath, Maine. • September: Destroyer Gravely, Pascagoula, Miss. • To be determined: Submarine New Mexico, Newport News, Va. LCS FUTURE The Navy is expected to decide in the first half of the year which of its two littoral combat ship designs will go into full production. It doesn’t get much bigger: Billions of dollars and 51 ships — a major portion of tomorrow’s planned surface fleet — are at stake. The Navy will choose either a conventional steel and aluminum ship built by a contractor group led by Lockheed Martin, or an all-aluminum trimaran built by a General Dynamics contractor group. THE FIGHTER GAP Congress added nine F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets into the annual budget last year for a total of 18, but that won’t resolve concerns about the looming shortage of tactical aircraft. The F-35 Lightning II is on its way, but Hornets are wearing out faster than planners predicted. The Navy expects the shortfall to be 200 to 300 aircraft, peaking about 2015. And now that Washington has resolved other key aviation issues — ending the Air Force’s F-22 program and the overpriced presidential helicopter program — the Navy’s fighter gap may draw more attention from lawmakers and lobbyists. THE FUTURE OF AIR Key advancements coming for naval aviation: • The X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator will have its first test flight during the first quarter of 2010. • The F-35C, which is the carrier variant of the Lightning II, will continue testing at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., with a target ready date of 2015. • The first EA-18G Growler squadron, Electronic Attack Squadron 132, known as the Scorpions, will deploy for the first time in 2010. BMD PLANNING The Navy has one year left to come up with the ships, sailors and plans to guard Europe from Middle Eastern ballistic missiles, a mission the service was given with apparently little internal notice. The Navy and the Missile Defense Agency will spend 2010 figuring out how to coordinate ships, deployments, numbers of missile interceptors and the other essential elements of providing a BMD cover for Europe by 2011, when the U.S. has committed itself to defending the continent from the sea. With an operational tempo that fleet officials say is already high, the Navy will have to apportion additional ships for the Euro-BMD mission.
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