Aircraft Carriers III

navyreco

Senior Member
US Navy Commander of CSG 8 & Harry S. Truman CSG Visit French Navy Aircraft Carrier
ZbccAFf.jpg

The French Navy (Marine Nationale) announced that on 30 January 2016, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Bret C. Batchelder, Commander of Carrier Strike Group 8 (CSG 8) and Harry S Truman Carrier Strike Group visited French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to meet his counterpart, French Navy Rear Adm. Rene-Jean Crignola, Commander Task Force (CTF) 50.

USS Harry S Truman and Charles de Gaulle aircraft carriers are currently deployed in the Arabian/Persian Gulf in support of coalition operations against Daesh in Iraq and Syria.
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Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
How many Nimitz class have we ever seen in a single shot ? 3? More ?
The most I have ever seen are five nuclear carriers in port at one time, as shown below in Norfolk:

Five-NuclearCarriers-01.jpg

Five-NuclearCarriers-02.jpg

Note: Four of these were Nimitz, one was the USS Enterprise at the time.

The most US Super carrier I have seen sailing together conducting operations is four. This during Desert Storm...but three were conventionally powered back then.

Four-superCarriers-01.jpg

As far as Nimitz carriers at sea, the most I have seen are two...on numerous occasions:

Two-Nimitz-01.jpg

...but sometimes accompanied by up to two allied carriers.

Here's a NEAT photo of three nuclear carriers at sea together at once...in this case the fourth is actually HMS Ocean and not technically a carrier.

Four-Carriers-01.jpg
 

Bernard

Junior Member
Independent U.S. Rebalance to the Pacific Report Calls for Study of Second Carrier Based in 7th Fleet
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February 3, 2016 7:22 PM • Updated: February 3, 2016 11:29 PM
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USS Antietam (CG-54), right, steams alongside USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76). US Navy Photo

WASHINGTON, D.C. – An independent review on the U.S. rebalance to the Pacific concluded the U.S. should study forward deploying a second carrier to the Western Pacific, one of the authors said before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. The study from the Center of Strategic and International Studies echoes call to station a second U.S. Navy carrier from SASC chair Sen. John McCain and a second independent review of Navy force from late last year to study forward deploying a second nuclear carrier to U.S. 7th Fleet.

The CSIS report came short of recommending the move but indicated crunching the numbers on what it would take warranted further study.

“We didn’t come out with a hard recommendation on this because there are operational questions, cost and infrastructure questions,” Michael Green with CSIS said in response to a question from Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii).

The most likely location for a second carrier would be alongside the existing U.S. forward deployed carrier berth in Yokosuka, Japan but while there is space for the carrier questions linger where to put the accompanying airwing.

“If you deploy this new carrier in Yokosuka you have to find a place for the airwing. [Marine Corps Air Base] Iwakuni, could be expanded but that’s a political lift for the Japanese government in terms of host nation support,” Green said.

When the CSIS report was released last month, the notion of deploying a second carrier to the Western Pacific received press attention in Japan “and there was not a lot of push back. A number of the senior officials and military officers in Japan were quite intrigued because of the signal it sends and the firepower it brings,” Green said.
“It addresses a concern our allies have – the 7th Fleet’s one carrier is out of [U.S. Pacific Command] a lot. They watch that. They would have constant coverage – what in their view in an increasingly difficult region.”

That difficulty is resident primarily in China’s People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) expansion and increased presence in the South China Sea and the East China Sea with a government in Beijing that is comfortable with taking more risks militarily, Green said.

“We’re probably going to be living with this [friction] for five our ten years because its built into the PLA’s operational concepts, force structure, their doctrine. The Foreign Ministry and others in the China system are not going to knock them off of that trajectory. In my view: it’s if the Chinese economy slows down or not.”

PLAAF-PLA-NAVY-APC-IFV-General-Secretary-of-the-CPC-Central-Committee-the-CPC-Central-Military-Commission-President-Xi-Jinping-inspected-CHINESE-Navy-Haikou-destroyer-TYPE-052CDE-4.jpg

Chinese president Xi Jinxing onboard PLAN destroyer Haikou. News.cn Photo

The CSIS report also outlined the inconsistent presentation of the goals of the U.S. Pacific rebalance by Washington and how tightening up the message could send a clearer signal to China and U.S. allies.

“The kind of networking cooperation that incentivizes China to play within the rules, the kind of capacity building for the Philippines and for smaller micro states, so they can handle earthquakes and tsunamis in a way where they’re not vulnerable strategically and where we have a trade agreement, that’s what we should be thinking about,” Green said.
“If we do think in those terms it will add some discipline to how the administration and others articulate our strategy… We’re not looking to contain China, we’re looking for a rules base order and here’s how it might look with our relationship with our allies and other partners. ”

Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Thomas Conant, former deputy commander of Pacific Command and an advisor on the report, said the United States needs to send “a clear and concise message [on] what rebalance means.”

China has become more assertive for a number of reasons, Green said. That includes President Xi Jinping not coming from that part of the Communist Party that holds Deng Xiaoping’s more accommodating view of Beijing’s role in the world. It also arises from the mistaken conclusion Chinese leaders drew from the 2008-2009 financial crisis impact on the United States that “America’s best days are over” as a great power.

To nations such as the Philippines and Vietnam who see an expansionist China, “they want more of us,” but “they don’t want bases,” Green said. He suggested a model might come from the rotational movement of U.S. forces or even patrol vessels from Japan in and out of those countries, similar to that in Australia.

“An elective security arrangement like NATO, almost no one wants that… that would produce a China we don’t want, Green said.
“We’re not looking to contain China, we’re looking for a rules base order and here’s how it might look with our relationship with our allies and other partners.”

Even with China’s economy slowing from 9 percent growth to between 3 to 4 percent annually, Green warned against making the same mistake China made with the United States eight years ago. He said the results could be “a more humble China” or a “more nationalistic and grumpy” nation in five years.

As for the slowdown affecting the Chinese military modernization drive, especially in its maritime forces, Conant added, “I don’t see it slowing down.”

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Feb 2, 2016
... what a turn ...
US Navy’s Unmanned Jet Could Be a Tanker

source:
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updating:
Unmanned CBARS Tanker Air Segment Draft RFP Expected Later This Year
Naval Air Systems Command is set to release a new draft request for proposal for its unmanned aerial refueling tanker to industry later this year, USNI News has learned.

Built from the work of its Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program, the draft RfP for the air segment
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will come out ahead of the a final RfP in FY 2017 and a contract award in FY 2018, according to several sources familiar with the program.

NAVAIR will oversee the continuing development of the control system and connectivity efforts of the RAQ-25 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program — the original Navy designation for UCLASS that will carry over to CBARS, Rear Adm. William Lescher, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget said in a Tuesday afternoon briefing at the Pentagon.

The Navy expects to field CBARS in the 2020s.

Spokeswoman Jamie Cosgrove confirmed to USNI News NAVAIR will be the “lead systems integrator” for the connectivity and control system and referred questions on the air segment to the Office of Secretary of Defense. A spokesman for OSD did not immediately return a Thursday request for comment from USNI News.

During Lecher’s presentation on Tuesday the service outlined the shift in the program from in primary mission of the aircraft from a lightly armed, information, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) unmanned aerial vehicle that would orbit around the carrier strike group into primarily an aerial refueling tanker.

“I would cite as the main difference was penetrating strike, non-permissive ISR. So it was a much more aggressive increment of capability just to get that platform at the same time as that was going to be the platform to develop the learning of how to operate unmanned off-the-carrier big deck,” he said.
“The real value of this restructure is that it incrementally gets at the manned/unmanned interface and operation on the carrier deck in the air wing by the mid-20s… It’s a smart acquisition approach to incrementally burn down that risk and then, as I mentioned, we’ll continue to look at developing additional capability.”

Lescher added that CBARS would also retain a limited strike capability in addition to an ISR role for the carrier. Service officials told USNI News the three-part plan for developing RAQ-25 – divided between an the control system, the connectivity piece and the actual airframe – sets a path to use the same control systems and data links but with more sophisticated aircraft to follow after CBARS. The original UCLASS work for the control systems and the connectivity piece will remain unchanged.

The new direction for carrier UAVs was born from a Pentagon-wide strategic program review – led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work — that evaluated the entire Department of Defense ISR portfolios and stalled the release for the RfP for the then-UCLASS program. The results of the SPR led to the program restructure by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Navy for the FY 2017 budget submission.

Prior to the SPR, the Navy was set to release a RfP only to four companies – Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman – for the UCLASS air segment amidst intense congressional scrutiny over the direction of the airframe.

House Armed Services seapower and projection forces Subcommittee chair Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) and Senate Armed Services Committee chair
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(R-Ariz.) both made calls for the Navy to invest more into creating a low-observable UAV that would strike deep into contested airspace.

“Developing a new carrier-based unmanned aircraft that is primarily an ISR platform and unable to operate effectively in medium- to high –level threat environments would be operationally and strategically misguided,” McCain wrote in March.

The UCLASS program itself was an adaptation of the
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that the Navy was directed to pursue as part of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

UCAS was proposed to be a deep strike unmanned system with characteristics of a stealth aircraft that could strike deep into an adversary’s territory at ranges that could not be matched by current manned strike aircraft.

The program was shifted to UCLASS
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.

A pair of Northrop Grumman X-47B UCAS-Demonstrator aircraft – built with stealth characteristics – were used by NAVAIR
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.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Here's my :


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A lot of GREAT pictures there. Feel free to take a look.

Here's one of the Vikramaditya showing off some of the self defense weaponry thay have begub to add to her.

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...and another showing 14 Mig-29Ks on her deck at once.

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Lot's more at the link above.
 
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