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flyzies said:

I saw the Kitty Hawk the last time it was in Sydney...to be honest, it looked quite old lol...
I was more impressed when the USS Constellation came on that same year...now that was an almighty carrier!

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flyzies said:

I saw the Kitty Hawk the last time it was in Sydney...to be honest, it looked quite old lol...
I was more impressed when the USS Constellation came on that same year...now that was an almighty carrier!

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Thursday July 5, 06:53 PM

Kitty Hawk's Sydney visit sparks chaos

Thousands of US sailors had no inkling of the pandemonium surrounding the arrival in Sydney of their five ships, led by the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk.

The NSW government was determined to avoid a repeat of the traffic and public transport chaos which accompanied the visit to Sydney of Queen Mary 2 and its smaller sister ship, Queen Elizabeth 2, in February this year.

But in introducing parking restrictions throughout much of the city's CBD, they caused headaches for inner-city motorists and businesses on a day when high winds triggered massive disruptions to traffic and the Sydney rail system.

The Roads and Traffic Authority said the towing of 60 cars from clearways was a small price to pay for avoiding traffic gridlock during the arrival of the Kitty Hawk and the other US ships.

The NSW government said the Kitty Hawk battle group's 6,900 sailors - 5,500 from the carrier alone - will provide an economic boost for the city, estimated by US authorities at $2 million a day for the five days the ships are in port.

But Darlinghurst Business Partnership president Andrew Duckmanton said the first he heard of the parking restrictions was on Wednesday night - from the City of Sydney, not the RTA.

He said the government's handling of the issue was "atrocious".

Mr Duckmanton agreed the ship's visit would boost tourism dollars but said conversely, the clearways would "clearly damage businesses' turnover" for shops who lost customer parking.

The RTA said special event clearways in place for the Kitty Hawk visit were in addition to those already planned for the World Youth Day cross visit and the Live Earth concert and the AFL at Moore Park this weekend.

"The fact the Kitty Hawk is in means where the clearways are in place has expanded to include a number of foreshore locations," an RTA spokesman said.

But Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said there was too little notification given to residents and business of the special event clearways.

During a news conference he called, a tow truck attempted to remove a car with a disabled parking sticker that was parked in one of the temporary clearways on Hospital Road at the back of NSW Parliament House.

After a number of attempts and with television cameras rolling on his tow truck, the driver eventually left the four-wheel drive where it stood.

"The problem here was an over-reaction to the last incident, the QE2 and the Queen Mary 2 - we're seeing signs going after the clearway has gone up and people being fined," Mr O'Farrell told reporters.

Aboard the 323 metre long super carrier, Captain Todd Zecchin said his crew's enthusiasm for the five-day leave "knew no bounds".

Acting NSW Premier John Watkins said the "cashed-up sailors" would provide a welcome boost to Sydney's economy.

Prime Minister John Howard addressed about 300 of the Kitty Hawk's crew, offering them a warm welcome to Sydney.

Standing in front of a large US Navy flag, The Navy Jack, Mr Howard spoke of the US Navy's long association with Sydney, ahead of a key foreign policy speech.

He said Australians and Americans had long fought together in the defence of freedom.

"We continued to do it today and work together around the world defending our way of life and fighting terrorism," he told the sailors.

The Kitty Hawk is no stranger to Sydney, having berthed here before in 2001 and 2005.

However it will be her last visit. The carrier nicknamed "Battle Cat" is the US navy's oldest serving ship, and will be decommissioned next year.

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Missile defense a success for ship

By Steve Liewer
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

SAN DIEGO – Fixated on an array of video screens, the weapons team of the San Diego-based destroyer Decatur focused on history in the making.
Deep below the ship's decks, Petty Officer 2nd Class Richard Nezdoba could feel the rumble grow to a roar. The SM-3 missile, a vital piece of President Bush's controversial missile-defense system, trailed flame and smoke as it shot into the sky over the Pacific.

“Once that thing ignites, you can feel it all over the ship,” said Nezdoba, 25, a fire controlman from Kingman, Ariz.

The SM-3 sped toward a rocket launched four minutes earlier from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, a Naval installation on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

“I was thinking, 'Please, just let it hit,' ” said Lt. j.g. Leah Vincent, 26, the Decatur's fire-control officer. “We had worked six months, and now it was down to five minutes.”

An infrared camera caught the explosion of color as the SM-3 slammed into the rocket 100 miles into space. The crew went out on deck to celebrate.

“There were lots of high-fives, lots of cigars,” said Lt. Simon McKeon, 32, the ship's combat systems officer. “Everybody cheered.”

Mission FTM-12, completed June 22, marked the first successful interception of a target by a Navy destroyer equipped with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Weapon System. And it was the ninth time any Navy ship has destroyed a midrange test rocket.

The Decatur and its crew returned to San Diego last week.

Mission FTM-12 brought San Diego's fleet into the nation's missile-defense picture. The Decatur is the only local ship that Navy officials have outfitted with computer systems to detect and shoot down missiles.

There are seven such vessels altogether. The Navy plans to install the Aegis missile-defense technology on 11 more ships by 2009, most of them in the Pacific.

The Aegis program is expected to cost $13.5 billion between 1995 and 2013, according to the Congressional Research Service.

It emerged from President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, which critics derided as “Star Wars” when he proposed it in the 1980s.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union staked their survival on the threat of “mutually assured destruction” – the idea that both nations maintained nuclear arsenals so large that neither side could win a war even if it struck first.

Despite their distrust of each other, the two countries signed a treaty in 1972 to bar the development of antiballistic missile-defense systems.

Then, three months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush announced his decision to pull out of the treaty. He said “mutually assured destruction” couldn't deter missile attacks by rogue states or stateless terrorist groups.

For the United States' safety, he said, it must develop a missile defense shield. Arms-control advocates feared that cancellation of the treaty would restart a nuclear arms race, but that hasn't happened.

U.S. officials decided to develop a land-and sea-based missile defense network.

The land component would target intercontinental missiles fired from thousands of miles away. Congress has funded that program and the Bush administration has fiercely defended it against critics who believe the technology is far-fetched and the price tag too high.

“It's a big-ticket missile system that's targeted at the wrong threat,” said Christopher Hellman, an analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.

The sea-based Aegis system has gained more support.

It was fielded in the 1980s to find and destroy enemy aircraft. The Pentagon now intends to use it against short-and medium-range missiles.
Essentially, Aegis uses a bullet to stop a bullet.

“It's a very rudimentary concept, but very complex technology,” said Victoria Samson, a research analyst from the Center for Defense Information, a think tank in Washington, D.C., that is critical of defense spending.

Despite some difficulties with its guidance capabilities, she added, the Aegis system looks promising.

“It's done fairly well,” Samson said. “It's a step in the right direction, but they've still got a long ways to go.”

Last month's test wrapped up a busy six months for the Decatur crew. The weapons team had to master the new technology. Its members practiced tracking and engaging missiles at least 25 times before the test.

“Seeing it actually work was definitely (exciting),” Nezdoba said. “I'd been studying it for four years, and I finally got to see it do its job.”

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WASHINGTON - The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans' health care two years from now - even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012.

After an increase sought for next year, the Bush budget would turn current trends on their head. Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly - by more than 10 percent in many years - White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.

The proposed cuts are unrealistic in light of recent VA budget trends - its medical care budget has risen every year for two decades and 83 percent in the six years since Bush took office - sowing suspicion that the White House is simply making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better.

...

The number of veterans coming into the VA health care system has been rising by about 5 percent a year as the number of people returning from Iraq with illnesses or injuries keep rising. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans represent almost 5 percent of the VA's patient caseload, and many are returning from battle with grievous injuries requiring costly care, such as traumatic brain injuries.

...

The White House budget office, however, assumes that the veterans' medical services budget - up 83 percent since Bush took office and winning a big increase in Bush's proposed 2008 budget - can absorb a 2 percent cut the following year and remain essentially frozen for three years in a row after that.

"It's implausible," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said of the budget projections.

The White House made virtually identical assumptions last year - a big increase in the first year of the budget and cuts for every year thereafter to veterans medical care. Now, the White House estimate for 2008 is more than $4 billion higher than Bush figured last year.

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Cutting funding for actual veterans coming home is just wrong, from any side of the aisle.

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bd popeye said:

As someone who actually uses the VA medical system I would like to know what sort of cuts are proposed??? Personally I get great care from the VA in Iowa City IA. Right now I have only to make a co-pay on my medication. That comes to about $500 annualy. Everything else, apointments, lab work, x-rays etc is free for me...

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The_Zergling said:

That sounds pretty good, and I hope that you continue to have access to those resources! Unfortunately I don't know exactly what the nature of the cuts would be, as the article doesn't go into further detail.

As far as I know, it's just planned and hopefully has to pass legislation and what now first.

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Unmanned Reapers bound for Iraq, Afghanistan

By Charles J. Hanley - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jul 15, 2007 13:00:39 EDT

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq — The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It is outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there is no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.

The arrival of these outsized U.S. “hunter-killer” drones, in aviation history’s first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected “soon,” says the regional U.S. air commander. How soon? “We’re still working that,” Lt. Gen. Gary North said in an interview.

The Reaper’s first combat deployment is expected in Afghanistan, and senior Air Force officers estimate it will land in Iraq sometime between this fall and next spring. They look forward to it.

“With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home,” North said.

The Associated Press has learned that the Air Force is building a 400,000-square-foot expansion of the concrete ramp area now used for Predator drones here at Balad, the biggest U.S. air base in Iraq, 50 miles north of Baghdad. That new staging area could be turned over to Reapers.

It is another sign that the Air Force is planning for an extended stay in Iraq, supporting Iraqi government forces in any continuing conflict, even if U.S. ground troops are drawn down in the coming years.

The estimated two dozen or more unmanned MQ-1 Predators now doing surveillance over Iraq, as the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, have become mainstays of the U.S. war effort, offering round-the-clock airborne “eyes” watching over road convoys, tracking nighttime insurgent movements via infrared sensors, and occasionally unleashing one of their two Hellfire missiles on a target.

From about 36,000 flying hours in 2005, the Predators are expected to log 66,000 hours this year over Iraq and Afghanistan.

The MQ-9 Reaper, when compared with the 1995-vintage Predator, represents a major evolution of the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.

At five tons gross weight, the Reaper is four times heavier than the Predator. Its size — 36 feet long, with a 66-foot wingspan — is comparable to the profile of the Air Force’s workhorse A-10 attack plane. It can fly twice as fast and twice as high as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.

While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14 of the air-to-ground weapons — or four Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs.

“It’s not a recon squadron,” Col. Joe Guasella, operations chief for the Central Command’s air component, said of the Reapers. “It’s an attack squadron, with a lot more kinetic ability.”

“Kinetic” — Pentagon argot for destructive power — is what the Air Force had in mind when it christened its newest robot plane with a name associated with death.

“The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system,” Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last September.

General Atomics of San Diego has built at least nine of the MQ-9s thus far, at a cost of $69 million per set of four aircraft, with ground equipment.

The Air Force’s 432nd Wing, a UAV unit formally established on May 1, is to eventually fly 60 Reapers and 160 Predators. The numbers to be assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan will be classified.

The Reaper is expected to be flown as the Predator is — by a two-member team of pilot and sensor operator who work at computer control stations and video screens that display what the UAV “sees.” Teams at Balad, housed in a hangar beside the runways, perform the takeoffs and landings, and similar teams at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base, linked to the aircraft via satellite, take over for the long hours of overflying the Iraqi landscape.

American ground troops, equipped with laptops that can download real-time video from UAVs overhead, “want more and more of it,” said Maj. Chris Snodgrass, the Predator squadron commander here.

The Reaper’s speed will help. “Our problem is speed,” Snodgrass said of the 140-mph Predator. “If there are troops in contact, we may not get there fast enough. The Reaper will be faster and fly farther.”

The new robot plane is expected to be able to stay aloft for 14 hours fully armed, watching an area and waiting for targets to emerge.

“It’s going to bring us flexibility, range, speed and persistence,” said regional commander North, “such that I will be able to work lots of areas for a long, long time.”

The British also are impressed with the Reaper, and are buying three for deployment in Afghanistan later this year. The Royal Air Force version will stick to the “recon” mission, however — no weapons on board.

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bd popeye said:

The MQ-9 Reaper is being deployed to Iraq & Afghanistan.

The MQ-9 Reaper is a medium-to-high altitude, long endurance remotely piloted aircraft system. The MQ-9's primary mission is as a persistent hunter-killer against emerging targets in support of joint force commander objectives. The MQ-9's secondary mission is to act as an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance asset, employing sensors to provide real-time data to commanders and intelligence specialists at all levels.

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