NAS PENSACOLA, Fla. – The U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, will conduct a final flight on the F/A-18 A/B/C/D “Legacy” Hornets, Nov. 04 from 4 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. CST, the Navy said in a Nov.2 release. The final flight of the Legacy Hornets signifies the official transition of the Blue Angels to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet platform. 
 
“We are incredibly honored to have the opportunity to salute those teams who have flown, maintained and supported this platform for over three decades of service,” said Cmdr. Brian Kesselring, U.S. Navy Blue Angels commanding officer and flight leader. “We deeply appreciate the expertise and operational knowledge Blue Angels past and present have brought to the team and we look forward to enhancing our operations as we fully transition to flying the Super Hornet.” 
 
The 2020 show season marked the end of the service life of the aircraft the team has flown for 34 years. The 2021 show season will be the Blue Angels’ first year flying the Super Hornet platform as well as the 75th anniversary of the team. 
 
“Undoubtedly, 2020 presented the team with unprecedented challenges. That said, the unique nature of this year also allowed our team to deepen our interaction with past teams, in particular, those teams that transitioned to new aircraft during their tenure,” Kesselring said. “This engagement has helped us lay the foundation for a safe and effective transition for our team’s pilots, support, and maintenance personnel as well as postured us to take on the high operating tempo of the team’s highly anticipated 2021 air show season and 75th anniversary.” 
 
The final flight will take-off and land at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola lasting approximately 30 minutes. Flyover locations include, but are not limited to: 

Orange Beach 
Gulf Shores 
Fort Morgan 
Ferry Pass 
Navarre Beach 
Pensacola Beach 
Perdido Key 
Community Maritime Park 
Palafox Street in downtown Pensacola 

The Blue Angels will be visible from many locations throughout the Pensacola area and along this route. The public is reminded to continue to follow health and safety guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help prevent the spread of COVID- 19. 
 
The Blue Angels are scheduled to begin their winter training syllabus over NAS Pensacola beginning Nov. 16. The team will return to its winter training facilities in El Centro, CA in January. Training will continue through April in preparation for the 2021 show season 
 
The mission of the Blue Angels is to showcase the teamwork and professionalism of the United States Navy and Marine Corps by inspiring a culture of excellence and service to country through flight demonstrations and community outreach. Since 1946, the Blue Angels have performed for more than 500 million fans. 

ARLINTON, Va. — The U.S. naval force in 2045 — reflected in a forthcoming force structure study called Battle Force 2045 — will reflect a more closely integrated Fleet and Fleet Marine Force to meet the challenges of the future operating environment.  

In an Oct. 29 webinar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and Huntington Ingalls Industries, Marine Lt. Gen. Eric M. Smith, commander, Marine Corps Combat Development Center and deputy commandant for Development and Integration, and Vice Adm. James W. Kilby, deputy chief of naval operations for Warfighting Requirements and Capabilities, discussed the integration needed between the two services to support each other in support of combatant commanders in a joint environment. 

Asked by moderator retired Vice Adm. Peter Daly to offer any insights on the forthcoming Naval Force Structure Assessment and the subsequent fleet assessment by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Smith said, “The most importance from my perspective is the need for a balanced fleet. … You can’t choose pieces, parts, and look at the easiest way to get to X or Y number. You have to look at the totality of the fleet, and its capability, of which the Marine Corps is a proud part.” 

“In our force structure assessment process, we typically took a 10-year view, and this year we went farther to 2045,” Kilby said. “The farther you go out into the future, the less sure are in what is going to be. We had different expressions of what Red [enemy forces] could be and what Blue [friendly forces] could be, but I think it is consistent with what we’ve talked in many forms where we had a more distributed force.” 

During a recent wargame at Quantico, Virginia, “we able to establish our own ability to have effects if we don’t have the full national technical means available to us,” Kilby said. “We looked at some specific platforms and [noted that] they’re as impactful as we thought they were.” 

He said the wargame showed that the amphibious warfare force structure probably needed “some new elements to help us with Expeditionary Advance Base Operations, supporting littoral operations in a contested environment.  

“When you see the results that come out, there will be more work for us to do,” Kilby said, noting in particular the need for amphibious warfare force structure to align to Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger’s Force Design 2030. 

BREMERTON, Wash. – The Navy’s first Yard Tug (YT) 808 class tug recently was delivered to Naval Base Kitsap, Bremerton Annex, the Program Executive Office – Ships said in an Oct. 29 release.  Only 17 days after delivery, YT 808 was in the water assisting USNS Richard Byrd (T-AKE 4) as it moved away from the dock at Naval Magazine Indian Island.  

“Narrowing the gap between delivery and providing operational support is a priority for our team,” said Mike Kosar, program manager of Support Ships, Boats, and Craft Program Office within Program Executive Office Ships (PEO Ships). “It’s impressive that almost immediately after delivery YT 808 is at work and contributing to our fleet readiness.” 

YT 808 is the lead craft of six total tugs on the Navy’s contract with Dakota Creek Industries, awarded in July 2018. YT 808 is the first Navy vessel constructed to meet EPA Tier 4 marine diesel engine emission standards.  

The vessels are designed after the Navy’s existing YT 802 Valiant-class tugs and are built to commercial American Bureau of Shipping standards. The 90’x38′ tugs have a top speed of approximately 12.5 knots and a bollard pull of approximately 43 long tons allowing them to effectively perform towing and ship-handling duties for carriers, surface ships, submarines and barges. 

“YT 808 class tugs are replacing legacy single-screw YTB tugs built between 1964 and 1975,” said Kosar. “The new tug provides significantly improved capabilities, safety, and comfort for tug crews executing Port Operations missions in the Northwest Region” 

The tugs are outfitted with a hydraulic hawser winch and staple on the forward deck for towing, and an “H” bitt installed on the aft deck with an adjacent hydraulic capstan for tightening lines. Similar to the previous 802 Class, the new YT 808 Class tugs have an improved articulating hydraulic brow installed aft of the deckhouse to allow personnel transfers to and from alongside ships or submarines. A selective catalytic reduction system uses Diesel Exhaust Fluid to clean the exhaust for compliance with EPA Tier 4 marine diesel emissions requirements. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The secretary of the Navy is bullish on the future Constellation-class guided-missile frigate (FFG) and said it may be a possible candidate for sale to the nation’s allied and partner navies. 

In an Oct. 28 webinar discussion with retired Rear Adm. Frank Thorp IV, president and CEO of the Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C., Navy Secretary Kenneth J. Braithwaite sees the potential for service in many nations’ navies for the FFG, liking the potential of sales to the large number of customers for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.  

“Why can’t we create a Joint Strike Frigate?” Braithwaite mused. “Why can’t we take that same platform and offer it to our allies and partners around the world? After all, it is an amalgamation of an Italian-U.S. joint effort to build that ship in a U.S. shipyard. It’s already got an international footprint.”  

Thorp pointed out a comment Oct. 26 from National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien at the Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin, where the Constellation, will be built, that building two frigates would not be enough. 

“We’re going to need two, three, four frigates built a year to get to the numbers of where we want to be,” O’Brien told employees during a visit to the shipyard, reported Paul McCleary in the Breaking Defense website. “This yard has the capability to build two or three of them itself.” 

“It’s great to have that kind of support in the White House and I’d love to see us build [more],” Braithwaite said. “I’m a huge fan of that ship. It is an incredibly capable vessel. … I spent a lot of time picking the name for that ship to make it fit into the culture piece of who we are and what we are as the United States Navy. 

Braithwaite noted that the Navy’s FFG program of record calls for 20 to be built but predicted that “we’ll build more than 20 of those.” 

He also noted that many navies operate ex-U.S. Navy Knox- and Perry-class frigates, which could be replaced by new frigates.  

Just like any city or town, Sailors on ships or Marines ashore generate trash. Getting rid of rubbish isn’t always as simple as filling the dumpster in the back of the building or rolling the bins down to the curb once a week. The days of burning trash in smelly, smokey incinerators are over, and we no longer “dump all trash clear of the fantail.”

A small company, Hanover, New Hampshire-based Creare, Inc., has come up with a solution that turns the problem upside down.

The Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) and Navy Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) expressed an interest in technologies applicable to a forward operating base (FOB) or a remote location to efficiently dispose of its garbage. 

Dr. Jay Rozzi, Creare’s principal investigator for the effort, said “Solid waste disposal is an ongoing problem for the Department of Defense. So, we turned solid waste into useful energy.”

Creare partnered with Cogent Energy System of Merrifield, Virginia, which had developed an innovative and scalable gasifier to cleanly and efficiently process waste. Cogent’s Heliostorm uses  multiple stacked electrodes to fill the 3,800 cubic-inch  gasifier with an energized plasma field. Waste is fed directly into the plasma field that can reach up to 10,000 degrees Celsius — hotter than the surface of the sun.

The result is what Rozzi called “complete vaporization of the waste into its constituent elements,” resulting in the “full ionic conversion of waste into surplus energy.” 

Unlike plasma-assisted gasification technologies, the Heliostorm produces very little residue because waste is placed in direct contact with the plasma. Glass and metals  turn into inert  slag that can be used as construction material. Everything else becomes a very pure syngas.

“Once conditioned, we have high-quality syngas containing only hydrogen and carbon monoxide for reformatting into electricity or hydrogen-based fuel,” Rozzi said. “We turn waste to value.”

Creare designed the waste handling system, which can handle between one and four tons of waste per day, as well as a way to capture the resulting syngas from the vaporization process to power a diesel generator that provides the electricity to run the system. The result is a compact waste-to-energy (WTE) system.

Creare has received funding from the Navy’s Small Business Innovation and Research program to develop the process. The company is seeking opportunities to conduct a demonstration at a military installation with an operational prototype. According to Paul Movizzo, Creare’s DoD business and commercialization development manager, the company wants to transition the system out of the lab and into a representative operating environment to better understand how much it costs to run, how many people are required to operate it, what the mean-time-between failure will be for the different components, and how to refine the design towards more compact production systems.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The second Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine (SSBN) will be named for the state of Wisconsin, the secretary of the Navy said during an Oct. 28 webinar. 

In a discussion with retired Rear Adm. Frank Thorp IV, president and CEO of the Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C., Navy Secretary Kenneth J. Braithwaite took the opportunity to announce that the second new SSBN would be named USS Wisconsin (SSBN 827). 

The SSBN will be the third U.S. Navy ship to bear the name Wisconsin, the 30th state.  

The first USS Wisconsin (BB 9) was an Illinois-class pre-dreadnought battleship, commissioned in 1901. The ship served as flagship of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and later joined the U.S. Asiatic Fleet. It participated in the second leg of the Great White Fleet’s circumnavigation of the globe. It was put in reserve status in 1910 and became a training ship in 1912. BB 9 was decommissioned in May 1920 and scrapped.  

The second USS Wisconsin (BB 64), an Iowa-class battleship, was commissioned in April 1944. The battleship served in the Pacific Fleet in the last year of World War II, using its 16-inch guns for shelling enemy installations and its smaller guns to protect carrier task forces. The ship was decommissioned in 1948 but recommissioned in 1951 to serve in the Korean War, used to shell enemy positions in Korea. The ship was decommissioned for the second time in 1958. 

Thirty years later, as part of the Reagan Administration naval build-up, the Wisconsin was modernized with Tomahawk missiles and recommissioned in 1988. The ship served in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, striking Iraqi targets. The Wisconsin was decommissioned for the last time in September 1991. The ship was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in 2006 and in 2010 was donated to Norfolk, Virginia, as part of the Nauticus Museum.  

MOBILE, Ala. —Austal USA, in Mobile, Ala., hosted future USS Santa Barbara ship sponsor and keel authenticator, Mrs. Lolita Zinke, Oct. 27 at a keel laying ceremony for the 16th Indpendence-variant Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Mrs. Zinke welded her initials into the ship’s keel plate officially authenticating that the keel of the future USS Santa Barbara (LCS 32) “has been truly and fairly laid.”  

Lolita Zinke is a native of Santa Barbara. After graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Lolita graduated from California Western School of Law.  

Lolita married Ryan Zinke and began a second career as a Navy spouse and additionally served as a civilian employee on the Flag Officer staff of Adm. Jeremy Boorda at the commander in Chief, U. S. Naval Forces Europe in London, United Kingdom. Her husband is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL who served in the Navy for 23 years; a former United States Representative from Montana; and the 52nd Secretary of the Interior.    

Lolita was the Freshman President of the Congressional Club from 2015 to 2016, a congressional spouses club dedicated to furthering bipartisan relationships and charitable activities. She has served as a member of President Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council; the President’s Veteran’s Administration Landing Team; and the Veteran’s Administration’s committee on Veteran Families, Caregivers, and Survivors. 

LCS 32 will be the third U.S. Navy ship to be named after Santa Barbara. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has placed an order with Lockheed Martin for four MH-60R Seahawk multi-mission helicopters for the government of Greece. 

The Naval Air Systems Command, through the Foreign Military Sales Program, awarded a $194 million contract modification to Lockheed Martin for the helicopters and three airborne low-frequency sonar systems to be used by the helicopters, according to an Oct. 26 Defense Department contract announcement. 

The MH-60R is the U.S. Navy’s maritime strike and anti-submarine helicopter. The helicopter type also has been exported to the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Danish Air Force, and the Royal Saudi Navy. Greece would be the fifth operator and has stated an intent to procure seven. Other nations intent on procuring MH-60Rs are the Republic of Korea and India, which have announced plans for 12 and 24 helicopters, respectively.  

Work on the contract modification is expected to be completed in February 2025.   

PATUXENT RIVER, Md. — The U.S. Navy awarded a contract to Vertex Aerospace, LLC (Vertex) on Oct. 20, 2020, for the Contractor Logistics and Maintenance Support (CLS) in support of the Advanced Helicopter Training System (AHTS) program for $70.4 million for the base year, with six options for a total contract value of $465.2 million, the Naval Air Systems Command said in an Oct. 23 release. 

Three proposals were submitted for the contract. The task order contract for CLS was awarded on a best-value tradeoff basis with a base and six options. CLS availability is scheduled to begin in calendar year 2021 and continue through calendar year 2027. 

The procurement of this CLS includes logistics, maintenance and supply for both the TH-73A and the TH-57. The resultant task order award will provide services and materials necessary to provide aircraft maintenance and logistics aircraft support for both the TH-73A and the TH-57 platforms, to include: the repair of airframe and aircraft subsystems, including engines; maintenance/repair and logistics support of support equipment (as required); and maintaining records and reporting for aircraft and associated systems. 

Using a combination of best industry and Navy practices, AHTS will ensure Chief of Naval Air Training efficiently produces rotary wing aviators who are prepared for advanced rotary wing and intermediate tilt-rotor training and who will meet the challenges faced in the fleet through 2050. 

“The new Leonardo TH-73A helicopters are the cornerstone of AHTS, which is the planned replacement to address the capability and capacity gaps of the current aging TH-57 Sea Ranger helicopter training platform,” said Capt. Holly Shoger, Naval Undergraduate Flight Training Systems Program Office (PMA-273) program manager. “This contract ensures the Navy can successfully maintain the TH-57 helicopters until the TH-73A is operational in the fleet. Vertex will ensure the Navy has capacity to train several hundred aviation students per year at Naval Air Station Whiting Field in Milton, Florida.”  

EVENDALE, OHIO (October 26, 2020) – GE Marine recently hosted a virtual meeting that drew more than 60 attendees from the United States Navy, Bath Iron Works, Huntington Ingalls and other strategic partners, to celebrate the teams involved in the Module Modernization Program (MMP). The event also lauded those individuals who participated in the manufacturing and assembly of this first new module for the Arleigh Burke destroyer USS Ted Stevens (DDG 128).

This four-year collaborative U.S. Navy program resulted in the design, development, qualification and manufacture of a new lightweight composite module design for GE’s LM2500 marine gas turbine. GE currently has orders for 52 new composite enclosures for U.S. and international navy applications.

“This new module design provides significant weight reduction, improved sensors, along with reduced noise transmission and thermal heat rejection,” said Lee Fuglestad, U.S. Navy Technical Director of the AEGIS Destroyer Program Office (PEO Ships PMS 400). Fuglestad was the sponsor and leader of the MMP. “The lightweight enclosure is especially important since the U.S. Navy has more than 370 GE LM2500 engines in service as the backbone of the DDG fleet, logging over 6 million operating hours.”

“The MMP team is an excellent model of how the U.S. Navy and industry can partner on state-of-the-art fleet improvements. With delivery of DDG Flight III destroyers planned through 2028, GE’s LM2500 gas turbines will power these U.S Navy surface combatants until the 2070s,” Fuglestad concluded.

In addition to representatives from GE Marine, attendees included the U.S. Navy; Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, the lead design services shipyard; Huntington Ingalls, Pascagoula, Mississippi, construction lead on DDG 128; RL Industries, Fairfield, Ohio, composite fiber enclosure development and production; and Leonardo DRS Power Technology, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, gas turbine package integration.

According to Tony Mathis, Vice President, GE Military Systems, “GE appreciates the U.S. Navy’s leadership that brought the MMP team together. During this time of COVID, we are especially grateful for the opportunity to say thank you to our employees and our great partners that developed and produced this game-changing product.”

The virtual meeting included a summation by the U.S. Navy and GE team members of the improvements to the LM2500 including the composite module and components that yielded a 6,000-pound weight savings. In fact, GE recently delivered the first lightweight LM2500 composite module to Austal USA, Mobile, Alabama, for the future USS Santa Barbara (LCS 32). The future USS Ted Stevens (DDG 128), expected to be delivered in 2024, is under construction at Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard.

MMP improvements include fewer shock mounts for weight reduction all while leveraging the experience and loadings from previous LM2500 shock tests with running units. The lightweight composite module wall temperatures are 25 F to 50 F degrees cooler so there is less heat rejected into the engine room.