Virginian Pilot – The aircraft carrier Enterprise and its strike group will begin departing Saturday for a scheduled six-month deployment.
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Virginian Pilot – Ditching the nuclear fleet is a complex, budget-draining process. The Navy began planning the program in the 1970s. A vessel is defueled, then its reactor is removed. The core is taken to a nuclear reservation, where it is buried.
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Virginian Pilot – Navy inspectors found 30 major flaws aboard the USS San Antonio. Despite the flaws, the Navy has earmarked $13 billion to purchase nine more of the ships.
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Virginian Pilot – Four warships and several hundred sailors from France, Russia and Great Britain joined U.S. forces this week for a series of exercises off the Virginia and North Carolina coasts aimed at forging better relationships and operations among navies.
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Army Times – In the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, 4 SEALs made a tough choice. Only one lived to tell.
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Aviation Week – If you asked anyone to guess what were some of the most in-demand aircraft in Afghanistan and Iraq, the answers would not include aircraft designed to hunt Soviet submarines in the open ocean. But a combination of high-end sensors and displays, trained crews with space for more, and the ability to carry a wide range of communication equipment has made RAF Nimrods and US Navy P-3s uniquely valuable.
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Associated Press – The USS Michigan was welcomed back to duty Tuesday during a ceremony at Naval Base Kitsap that celebrated its conversion to a guided missile submarine.
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Virginian Pilot – The Norfolk-based amphibious ship Carter Hall fired on pirates off the coast of Somalia as they overtook a Danish cargo ship. The Carter Hall fired several warning shots over the Danish vessel Danica White on Saturday and then destroyed three skiffs used by the pirates.
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Armed Forces Journal – A proposed maritime strategy for the US.
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Armed Forces Journal – Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Mullen has outlined the Navy’s plan for constructing the next-generation fleet in the 30-year shipbuilding plan, which details the road to a 313-ship force structure required to support the National Security Strategy. The goal is a future fleet that balances capability with affordability.
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CNN – U.S. Navy destroyer off the coast of northern Somalia Friday fired on a suspected al Qaeda operative believed to have been involved in the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. There was no immediate word on the results of the attack, which was carried out using one of the destroyer’s 5-inch guns.
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Aviation Week – The General Accountability Office explains in a new report how the Navy’s Advanced SEAL Delivery System program got so messed up that the service had to cancel its orders last year in favor of an ASDS improvement program. GAO says the Navy paid $885 million over 13 years for the first and only ASDS which is so flawed that it’s only available for limited operational use, prompting Congress to ask for a detailed investigation.
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Seattle Times – The USS Kitty Hawk, the U.S. Navy’s oldest ship in full active service, embarked on its last major deployment Wednesday before being decommissioned next year.
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Virginian Pilot – Several thousand sailors from the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and three smaller ships arrived in Norfolk Naval Station on Wednesday, weary from an extended, nearly eight-month deployment fighting wars and securing seas in the Middle East.
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Aviation Week – A look at a new AESA radar for the P-3 Orion.
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Virginian Pilot – The elite commando force is fighting a two-front war, battling to retain experienced warriors in the face of grueling demands and to find new recruits able to meet its rigorous standards.
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Virginian Pilot – The USS Eisenhower heads for home, leaving the USS John C. Stennis and USS Nimitz in the Gulf.
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Armed Forces Journal – “Partner in the brown water; secure the green water; own the blue water,” is a colorful new US Navy mantra. It refers to the need to work closely with other nations to operate in the riverine and sea-land interface environment, to ensure access in the littoral and to maintain dominance in the open ocean ó or blue water ó environment. Although the Navy will operate closer to shore, it will not cede supremacy of the high seas. And although potential adversaries are not vying for open ocean superiority today, one cannot assume that will be the case in the future.
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Armed Forces Journal – The very core of the Navy’s transformation is Sea Power 21. The Navy is making a major effort to create a new maritime strategy, to be formally completed in June. Perhaps it is also necessary to refocus, modify and refine its Sea Power 21 concept???
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Armed Forces Journal – British maritime authority Martin Murphy says the Navy can no longer afford to sit out at sea; it must take the irregular fight to where the irregular enemy crouches, close to shore and along the maritime fingers that stretch into urban centers. To take on that specialized task, the Navy needs a special force. He proposes the creation of a “blue berets” unit.
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Virginian Pilot – Under a cloudless Carolina-blue sky, shipbuilders and the Navy on Saturday celebrated the christening of the North Carolina, the nation’s newest fast-attack submarine.
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Virginian Pilot – The new amphibious ship San Antonio failed to complete a series of sea trials in late March, and faces $36 million in repairs during the next three months. The Norfolk-based ship, the first of a new generation of helicopter and troop transports, could not be sea-tested during a five-day inspection period because one of its two steering systems completely failed.
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San Diego Union Tribune – A look at the US Navy’s sea mammals program.
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Associated Press – The U.S. Navy on Thursday said it was canceling a widely criticized Lockheed Martin Corp. contract to build a next-generation combat ship after negotiations to control cost overruns failed.
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Wired – The Secretary of the Navy is pissed. And that is really good news.
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