A Navy guided missile destroyer was damaged after a missile exploded shortly after launch during an exercise off the U.S. Atlantic coast on Saturday, Navy officials have confirmed to USNI News.“On July 18 at approximately 9 a.m. (EDT) a Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) test missile exploded after suffering a malfunction as it was fired from the guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG-68) during a planned missile exercise off the coast of Virginia,” read a statement from Naval Sea Systems Command provided to USNI News.There were no reported injuries and though the ship suffered a small fire on its port side “from missile debris” the destroyer was able to return to Naval Station Norfolk, Va. unassisted, NAVSEA said.“It is too early to determine what, if any, effect this will have on the ship’s schedule,” read the statement.The missile, believed to be an older Raytheon Standard Missile 2 Block IIIA, exploded shortly after takeoff and showered the ship with debris sparking the fire on the ship’s port side, according to pictures of the incident obtained by USNI News. The photographs show ignited debris shower the ship and the surrounding ocean. The explosion appears to have occurred slightly lower than the mast of The Sullivans.The warhead on the missile was unarmed, NAVSEA told USNI News.Naval Sea Systems Command’s program executive office Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS) is now investigating the cause of the malfunctioning missile, NAVSEA officials told USNI News.According to pictures of the explosion obtained by USNI News, a fire broke out on the port side of The Sullivans shortly after the missile launched.The Sullivans was performing a missile exercise along with the guided missile destroyer USS Carney (DDG-64) which was not damaged during the incident, USNI News understands.The SM-2 Block IIIA, first fielded in 1991, was developed to not only handle traditional air threats like fighters but was modified to interdict sea skimming targets like cruise missiles.While the Navy didn’t comment on why the missile failed, the photos point to a problem with the rocket engines that drove the SM-2.Largely for safety reasons, the Navy almost exclusively uses solid rocket fuel for its missiles and incidents involving failures of the engines are largely non-existent.Several experts contacted by USNI News could not recall a similar incident with any other SM-2 missiles but all recalled a solid rocket failure from more than four decades ago.In 1969, the solid rocket motor of a MK-32 Zuni rocket was overheated and misfired from a F-4 Phantom onboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) that sparked a fire on the flight deck resulting in the death of 27 personnel.The following is the complete July 22, 2015 statement from the Naval Sea Systems Command on the July 18 incident.On July 18 at approximately 9 a.m. (EDT) a Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) test missile exploded after suffering a malfunction as it was fired from the guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG 68) during a planned missile exercise off the coast of Virginia. There were no injuries and only minor damage to the port side of the ship resulting from missile debris. The ship returned to Naval Station Norfolk for assessment. An investigation into the malfunction has been ordered and is being conducted by the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems, which is part of Naval Sea Systems Command. It is too early to determine what, if any, effect this will have on the ship’s schedule.
O tenente-general Jon Davis, vice-comandante da aviação dos Marines, disse em entrevista que durante o recente teste de prontidão operacional dos F-35B dos Marines, quatro JSF lutaram contra nove aviões adversários (provavelmente F-5 agressores).“Os bandidos se deram mal”, disse Davis. Ele forneceu poucos detalhes, dizendo que eles eram classificados, mas enfatizou que os F-35s enfrentaram uma ameaça que “nós nunca colocamos diante de um F-16 ou um Harrier.” O F-35B, disse ele, fez um “grande trabalho”.Sobre a recente notícia de que o F-35A não se saiu tão bem em duelo contra um F-16, Davis disse: “eu amo o F-16. Foi um grande avião. Ainda é muito bom, mas eu não gostaria de estar em um numa luta contra um F-35. ”Em uma mensagem clara aos defensores do A-10, Davis disse que o F-35B executou extremamente bem as missões de apoio aéreo aproximado, empregando munições Joint Direct Attack (JDAMs) e guiadas por laster GBU-12s. A aeronave precisa de um canhão, ele admitiu, para algumas missões. A arma está passando por seus primeiros testes montados em uma aeronave, mas não vai ser implantada no avião até 2017, quando o software Bloco 3F será instalado. Mas Davis foi inequívoco em seu entusiasmo com a aeronave. “Nenhum avião do mundo chegará perto desse jato em apoio aéreo aproximado”, disse ele a repórteres.Davis disse que fez a sua recomendação sobre a capacidade operacional inicial (IOC) do F-35B ao comandante general Joseph Dunford: “Ele tem toda a papelada e agora está analisando isso.”O vice-comandante da aviação dos Marines disse que os primeiros modelos do F-35B estão mantendo uma taxa de prontidão de missão de 60 a 65%, algo que ele espera aumentar substancialmente com a chegada de aviões mais novos à linha. Ele observou que um esquadrão de treinamento com aviões mais recentes tem obtido taxas de 70-75% de disponibilidade.O objetivo geral é de 80% no final do programa.Os fuzileiros navais pretendem comprar 353 caças F-35B e Davis disse que não tem ouvido absolutamente nada que possa convencê-lo a reduzir esse número. Parece bastante certo que Davis recomendou a Dunford que o IOC seja aprovado, mas, como ele mesmo disse, isso é decisão do comandante.
Em 28 de julho de 2015 foi divulgado o relatório do Serviço de Pesquisa do Congresso dos EUA, “China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress” – Modernização Naval da China: Implicações para as capacidades da Marinha dos Estados Unidos – antecedentes e questões para o Congresso. Leia o arquivo rolando a tela abaixo ou baixe o arquivo PDF no botão download.
U.S. Marine tanks, artillery, and light-armored reconnaissance vehicles have arrived in Bulgaria to support NATO allies and international partner countries. The heavy equipment, assigned to the Combined Arms Company, Black Sea Rotational Force, arrived in Novo Selo Training Area, Bulgaria, Aug. 25, 2015. The tanks, artillery, and light armored reconnaissance vehicles were loaded on trains and moved across Europe demonstrating our allies’ and international partners’ ability to move heavy equipment across the region to support operations during a crisis. The equipment will allow the Marines to participate in mechanized regional multinational exercises in Eastern Europe. Photo by Cpl. Justin UpdegraffRead more at: http://defence-blog.com/army/u-s-marine ... garia.html
A foto impressionante mostra o novo avião de patrulha marítima P-8A Poseidon lançando três mísseis antinavio Harpoon ao mesmo tempo.A Marinha dos EUA planeja comprar um total de 114 aviões P-8 a um custo de US$32,8 bilhões, o que dá US$ 288 milhões por unidade. O avião está substituindo os velhos quadrimotores P-3 Orion e já foi adquirido também pela Índia e pela Austrália.
The US Navy awarded a nearly $1.5 billion contract Aug. 27 to Boeing Defense, Space & Security for the procurement of 13 Full Rate Production (FRP) Lot 2 P-8A Poseidon aircraft. Nine planes will join the US fleet and four will join the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), who has been a cooperative partner in the P-8A joint program office since 2009. The contract also provides an option to procure 20 additional FRP Lot 3 planes, 16 of which will go to the US Navy and four to the RAAF. (...) Boeing has delivered 28 planes to the Navy, the latest of which arrived to Jacksonville, Florida Aug. 18 (...)
A new US Navy (USN) oceanographic research vessel has completed acceptance trials, officials announced on 27 August.RV Neil Armstrong (AGOR 27), lead ship of a new class of auxiliary general oceanographic research vessels, passed the series of in-port and underway tests conducted by the USN's Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV).Built by Dakota Creek Industries in Anacortes, Washington, Neil Armstrong is expected to be delivered to the navy in September. The 72.5 m vessel will be operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution under a 'charter party' agreement with the US Office of Naval Research.
The four ballistic missile defense destroyers patrolling 6th Fleet will get a self-protection upgrade beginning this year, as the Navy integrates Raytheon’s Sea Rolling Airframe Missile (SeaRAM) onto its Aegis-equipped Arleigh Burke-class destroyers (DDG-51) for the first time.U.S. 6th Fleet leadership sent an urgent requirement for self-protection on the four ships, which focus all their energy on the BMD mission, Program Executive Officer for Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS) Rear Adm. Jon Hill said last week at an American Society of Naval Engineers event.“We put [the ships] out there by themselves, and they’re putting all their radar energy up in space, they’re tracking space objects now, and you have to wonder, hey, can they defend themselves?” he said. After toying with the idea of putting a second ship nearby to protect the BMD destroyer – much like a cruiser protecting an aircraft carrier – the Navy decided the SeaRAM could fill the self-protection requirement even though the system had never been paired with an Aegis ship before.“What we had to do was really develop software, make sure we had the equipment ready to roll, get the computer programs aligned,” Hill told USNI News after the event.“And the big thing you have to worry about is fratricide – so where you put that mount on the ship, it’s looking right over the vertical launching system, so what you don’t want to have happen is you’re shooting something with the SeaRAM while missiles are coming out of the VLS. So that’s the fundamental bit of integration we have to do.”Hill added there were no extra SeaRAM systems lying around, so he pulled equipment from a foreign military sales program to allow for the quickest installation possible. He said the Navy also leveraged testing done by other programs to help speed up the process of integrating SeaRAM onto a new class of ships.According to a February reprogramming request by the Pentagon comptroller, the Navy requested $15.3 million in Fiscal Year 2015 to get started on filling the urgent need, to be followed by additional funding in FY 2016. That money will help “capitaliz[e] on factory flexibility to work an extra shift,” minimizing the delay to the FMS contract.USS Porter (DDG-78) and USS Carney (DDG-64), which arrived in Spain this year, will undergo selected restricted availabilities in fiscal year 2016 and will receive the SeaRAM upgrade then. Hill said Porter should be through maintenance and back on station by about November.USS Ross (DDG-71) and USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) will have availabilities in FY 2017 and will receive SeaRAM then.Hill said the level of integration between SeaRAM and Aegis Combat System would improve as they learn more with each ship.“We’re pretty excited about it. It’s a great missile system, it’s a great radar system, it gives them an extra layer of capability they don’t have today,” he said.As currently configured, the four Rota destroyers are equipped with an older Aegis baseline that requires the ship to operate in a BMD mode or switch to the traditional aircraft and cruise missile defense role. The Navy’s new Baseline 9 ships can do both missions at the same time, but modernization reductions could limit the number of those ships in the fleet.SeaRAM is a combination of Raytheon’s Phalanx Close-In Weapon System and Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) Guided Weapon System.“An 11-missile RAM launcher assembly replaces Phalanx’s 20 mm gun. SeaRAM combines RAM’s superior accuracy, extended range and high maneuverability with the Phalanx Block 1B’s high resolution search-and-track sensor systems and reliable quick-response capability,” according to Raytheon’s website.Hill said this extra fire power is important to the surface warfare community’s new distributed lethality philosoph: if each ship, regardless of its mission, is upgunned, a potential opponent cannot overlook any ship in the fleet when calculating its next move. Hill said distributed lethality brings the emphasis back from defensive to offensive operations – which would be true of the four destroyers, who could now go after an enemy ship if needed rather than stay focused on the BMD mission solely.
A NATO vinha preparada para tudo, excepto para as areias "comunistas" de Grândola...
Costa portuguesa revelou-se um inesperado obstáculo para os marines norte-americanos em exercício da NATOOs fuzileiros portugueses a bordo dos dois hovercrafts a deslizar em direção à Praia da Raposa, carregadas de soldados e viaturas militares para um ataque anfíbio, nunca tinham andado a 80 km/hora. Mas a chegada acabou num anti-clímax: as embarcações norte-americanas não tinham velocidade suficiente para subir o declive de areia e sair da água.Dada meia-volta para uma segunda tentativa bem-sucedida de desembarque naquela zona do município comunista de Grândola, seguiu-se outro imprevisto: as primeiras viaturas blindadas a deixarem os gigantescos hovercraft da Marinha dos EUA atolaram-se na areia - e nem com vários militares a empurrar saíam do local.http://www.dn.pt/portugal/interior/areias-de-concelho-comunista-bloquearam-marines-dos-eua-4845055.html
