quote:

Originally posted by FishOn:
My niece receives her commission today. She is off to SWO Nuke school and then on to an aircraft carrier to run the reactor. Thanks for posting that.

She’s in for the hardest year of her life…

I wish her luck!

When I went through nuke school, we started with 13 sections. Each section had 10-15 guys.

We graduated with 5 sections. The rest washed out…

I worked 15-20 hours a day to end with a 3.4 GPA.

To most other countries, that ship is an aircraft carrier. We don’t even consider her part of our carrier fleet (admittedly it is a considerably smaller ship than one of our carriers) and we have 3 or 4 times as many carriers as the next closest navy. Truly no other Navy has so ruled the seas as our US Navy. Good bless our sailors!

Here's a 6:00 video of the ship tied up in Stockholm. On deck I saw lots of Ospreys, several Cobras, a couple Sea Hawks, and one Harrier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDXyrHCrw8s

quote:

Originally posted by Patriot:

quote:

Originally posted by FishOn:
My niece receives her commission today. She is off to SWO Nuke school and then on to an aircraft carrier to run the reactor. Thanks for posting that.

She’s in for the hardest year of her life…

I wish her luck!

When I went through nuke school, we started with 13 sections. Each section had 10-15 guys.

We graduated with 5 sections. The rest washed out…

I worked 15-20 hours a day to end with a 3.4 GPA.

She's up for the challenge. She was a physics major which was fairly difficult. She's a go-getter.

Very impressive. While I never served, I have had the pleasure on working on 2 of her sister ships, LHD 1 USS Wasp and LHD 5 USS Bataan while in port at Norfolk.

The ships and their crews are quite impressive.

quote:

To most other countries, that ship is an aircraft carrier.

While some of her sisters have recently functioned as "lighting carriers" with about twenty F-35's and only a few helo's onboard, the biggest issue why they can't function as true carriers is that they don't have any Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft (think E-2 Hawkeye on the regular carriers). Some of our allies with smaller carriers use helicopters in this role but as of right now the US doesn't have any carrier based aircraft that can fill this role other than the E-2 Hawkeye and that won't work on this platform.

Unless the US adopts a helicopter AEW for these ships or even the proposed EV-22 Osprey AEW aircraft, they will be more vulnerable to our enemies than a traditional carrier will be.

quote:

Originally posted by sigarms229:
While some of her sisters have recently functioned as "lighting carriers" with about twenty F-35's and only a few helo's onboard, the biggest issue why they can't function as true carriers is that they don't have any Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft (think E-2 Hawkeye on the regular carriers). Some of our allies with smaller carriers use helicopters in this role but as of right now the US doesn't have any carrier based aircraft that can fill this role other than the E-2 Hawkeye and that won't work on this platform.

Unless the US adopts a helicopter AEW for these ships or even the proposed EV-22 Osprey AEW aircraft, they will be more vulnerable to our enemies than a traditional carrier will be.

There's a number of limitations with the 'lighting carrier' concept, and very reliant on shore based assets to conduct the catalog of carrier operations. Besides the lack of AEW aircraft, the air wing lacks EW aircraft, the lack of tanker assets drone or, aircraft; the variety of offensive operations are limited. Then there's the issue of magazines being too small, not sure how much this was changed with the non-well deck flight-I America-class but, the LPH/LPD's prior, the aircraft munitions were limited. The Navy is definitely trying to feel-out how to operate a smaller-deck carrier, will be interesting what results come about in the next 10-years.

Wondering where she was going to tie-up, Stockholm's deep water port is far away from it's downtown heart. There's a number of viewers who've uploaded their own videos, Sweden's Navy and Kearsarge are rolling out the carpet to the public in the capitol city prior to departing for the NATO exercise, they have her anchored in the basin right in the middle

Back in ye olden dinosaur tymmes, we wouldn't even have pulled into Norfolk with the hull looking like that. We would have anchored at Chesapeake Light and painted all visible surfaces, liberty be damned. The proportion of Bosun's mates and deck department is much lower these days under the minimum manning philosophy. But still, any rate can run a paint roller.

Some quality seamanship to be sure. When we were leaving San Diego, my div. commander had the conn. A freighter was coming in and a bit out of lane leaving us in possible extremis.

Well, the Lt. thought putting the engine to astern was the right thing to do to avoid a collision. That's a violation of the maritime rules. He also backed over a buoy in SD harbor fouling and damaging our single screw. A violation of the Navy's rules.

Instead of going back to San Fran and our wives, we spent the next 3 weeks in drydock.

quote:

Originally posted by CaptainMike:
Back in ye olden dinosaur tymmes, we wouldn't even have pulled into Norfolk with the hull looking like that. We would have anchored at Chesapeake Light and painted all visible surfaces, liberty be damned. The proportion of Bosun's mates and deck department is much lower these days under the minimum manning philosophy. But still, any rate can run a paint roller.

Considering they had enough time transiting the Baltic, they could've dealt with those stains and presented the United States Navy in a better light.

I don't believe minimal manning has hit the PHIB's, that was a LCS concept; which will soon be out of the navy. My understanding its a likely combination of the Navy's maintenance attitude/policies of having the yard's handle such work while it's sailors are continually focused for their next quals and/or, recruitment/retention is so bad, every department is going to sea undermanned. Regardless, pulling into a foreign port looking like a soup sandwich, displays a lack of pride and attention from leadership.

I thought they retired the Harrier years ago.

I recall the first time I saw a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier up close.

I stood there recalling when I saw an America class aircraft carrier as a child. I recall thinking then “Holy Jesus this thing is big.”

As I stood on the quay, before that leviathan, and I thought “Holy Jesus this thing is big.”