US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

no_name said:

Worker Set Nuke Sub Ablaze To Get Off Work

July 24, 2012

A 24-year-old civilian worker was arrested and charged July 23 with setting the fire on a U.S. nuclear submarine at Maine’s Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in May that caused an estimated $400 million in damage.

Casey James Fury started the blaze on the USS Miami “to get out of work,” a Navy investigator said.

Fury, a painter and sandblaster, was charged in federal court in Portland, Maine, with arson for the May 23 blaze. The Miami was in the shipyard in Kittery, Maine, for repairs and retrofitting.

Authorities also charged Fury, of Portsmouth, N.H., with setting a second, smaller fire at the shipyard in June, in the dry dock cradle on which the Miami rests.

If convicted on either charge Fury could face life in prison.

Charges came after an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. They state that Fury admitted, following a lie-detector test, to using a cigarette lighter to ignite a vacuum cleaner and a pile of rags in a stateroom about the Miami.

“The reason he set the fire was in order to get out of work,” said NCIS special agent Jeremy Gauthier.

He added that Fury told investigators he was taking a variety of medications for anxiety, depression, allergies and insomnia at the time of the first incident.

Fury also said he was anxious about a text conversation with his former girlfriend and wanted to leave work when he set the second blaze.

The fire on the Miami, a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, took about 12 hours to extinguish. Seven firefighters sustained minor injuries.

The vessel’s nuclear propulsion plant had been shut down for more than two months during the repairs, and remained in safe and stable condition throughout the event. There were no weapons on board.

The Navy has yet to determine if it will repair the $900 million Miami or scrap it.

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Very irresponsible behaviour, like one commenter said, the hell was that guy thinking?

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Raytheon Company has achieved important milestones on three F/A-18E/F related programs, highlighting the company's ongoing, successful support of the Super Hornet aircraft.

Raytheon recently delivered the 300th APG-79 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar to Boeing for integration on F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers. Raytheon has also delivered the 600th ALR-67(V)3 radar warning receiver, marking six years of continual on-time delivery of that system. Additionally, Raytheon's Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pod has reached 1 million F/A-18 operational flight hours.

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asif iqbal said:

thats just unbelievable, one single mistake cost $400 million?? and that too when defence budgets are under strain

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[video=youtube;jmTHjzID6XM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmTHjzID6XM[/video]
Lockheed Martin has submitted its final proposal to the U.S. Navy to design, build, integrate and test the new Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) for the future DDG-51 Flight III class destroyer. The scalable AMDR S-band radar and radar suite controller will provide significantly increased sensitivity for simultaneous long-range detection and engagement of advanced anti-ship and ballistic missile threats.

“Our team has advanced a mature, affordable and highly reliable radar system with substantial investment by our company and the Navy,” said Carl Bannar, vice president of Integrated Warfare Systems & Sensors at Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems & Sensors business. “Designed with the sailor in mind, our modular, open hardware and software architectures minimize ship design changes, simplify operations and maintenance and enable capability improvements to accommodate future mission needs.”

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CAPITOL HILL: Those nine warships the Navy planned to retire in the face of the budget crunch? Fuggedaboutit. They're back in, if the Senate Appropriations Committee has anything to say about it.

The Army wants to keep working on tanks? Cool. We got their back.

Helicopters flew the guys who killed Osama bin Laden and have gotten beaten up flying in Afghanistan and Iraq? We're on it with $700 million to "modernize, replace combat losses, or procure new helicopters.

Patriot PAC-3 missiles, handy in any conflict with Iran, win an additional $194 million.

That ding dong who apparently set the fire on the USS Miami, causing some $500 million in damage? Well, we're sort of on it, with an extra $150 million in our bill.

"We" are the members of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee and Sen. Daniel Inouye, chairman, and his merry crew of cardinals.

The nine Navy ships the service paned to retire before the end of their service lives are mostly cruisers, an increasingly endangered class of ships in today's fleet. Attacks subs, boomers, destroyers, carriers and LCS all seem immune to cuts. The Navy planned to retire four cruisers in 2013. The next year three cruisers and two dock landing ships would head to the scrap heap or to foreign navies. This will cost "nearly" $2.4 billion to man, operate, equip and modernize these ships," Sen. Inouye said in his opening remarks.

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WA could be home for US Navy aircraft carrier group

AUSTRALIA'S HMAS Stirling navy base in Western Australia could become the base for an entire United States Navy aircraft carrier battle group, if a proposal by a US think tank is accepted.

The idea is contained in an independent assessment of US force posture in the Asia-Pacific commissioned by the military and delivered to US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta in late June.

The report prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) focuses on how to align US force posture, now tilted towards north-east Asia, Korea and Japan, to south and southeast Asia.

It outlines a number of options for US forces in the Pacific, including greater use of the Stirling fleet base in Fremantle, to increase overall military capability in the region.

If pursued, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, up to nine squadrons of aircraft, two guided missile cruisers, two or three guided missile destroyers, one or two nuclear attack submarines plus supply ships could be based at Sterling.

CSIS said Stirling offered advantages such as access to existing Australian naval facilities and Indian Ocean training areas, as well as opportunities to expand cooperation with Indonesia, other south-east Asian countries and India.

However, it's further away from troublespots in the western Pacific and Middle East than US bases at Guam and Diego Garcia.

"HMAS Stirling is not nuclear carrier-capable. This forward-basing option would require significant construction costs," the report said.

Costs of between $US1 billion ($A957 million)and $US6 billion for similar bases else where have previously been quoted.

Australia's Force Posture Review, released in May, said Stirling could support an enhanced US naval force posture in the Indian Ocean.

It recommended defence consider expanding wharf capacity and support facilities to meet the requirements of future acquisitions of submarines and warships.

Comment is being sought from the office of Defence Minister Stephen Smith.

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said WA should not become a base for the US and warned the state's emergency and police services were ill-equipped to deal with the risks posed by nuclear-powered submarines.

"The Australian government needs to take a clear stand against this encroachment on our independence. We are not a colony."

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The U.S. Navy has awarded Raytheon Company a $51.7 million contract for low rate initial production of the Rolling Airframe Missile Block 2. The contract includes options, which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to more than $105 million. RAM Block 2 features enhanced kinematics, an evolved radio frequency receiver, a new rocket motor, and an upgraded control and autopilot system.

"This next-generation RAM will enable U.S. and allied naval warfighters to defeat the more sophisticated threats emerging around the world today," said Rick Nelson, Raytheon Missile Systems' vice president of Naval Weapon Systems. "Through Raytheon's collaborative relationship with our German partner RAMSYS, we continue to improve and expand the capabilities of RAM."

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