I’ll believe it when I see it

The Russians talk a good game when talking about upcoming weapons systems and new technologies.  The latest is this.  But given that their Floating Drydocks are sinking and their only carrier has a hole punched in its flight deck and may never be repaired, I am a little skeptical.

Veteran’s day

No more fitting a story for this Veteran’s day.  What a great project.

and related, another important WWII USN ship is found.  The improvements in underwater technology clearly will lead to us at least knowing the final resting places of many WWI and WWII sailors.

Undersea spying

Are the Russians tapping into undersea cables?  Is this ship involved?  I’d bet the answer to both questions is yes.

New sub for the Navy

The USN gets another Virginia class attack boat.  The USS Oregon.

USN submarine plans

The US Navy is apparently planing on a rate increase in submarine production.  This sounds good. Let us hope they can pull it off.  My faith in the USN procurement system has been shaken of late.

Naming Navy ships

The Navy has made a report to Congress on plans for naming upcoming ships.  You can read it here. This is a pet peeve of mine. I hate the developing trend of politicians naming everything after themselves and their buddies.  The absolute pinnacle of this abomination is the late Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia who basically named everything in the state after himself.

I firmly believe that no ships should EVER be named after a living person.  With certain rare exceptions I don’t think that ships should ever be named after politicians ( I make rare exception for long dead persons of historical significance such as Lincoln and Washington)  Carriers should be named after battles, or historic previous ship names. Boomers should be named after States, Attack subs should be named after  major cities. APDs and the like should be named for smaller US cities and counties.  CGNs, DDs and FFGs should be named after naval heroes.  None of them ever should be named for living people, especially living or recently deceased politicians. <end rant>

 

Royal Navy

Glad to see the Royal Navy upgrading and expanding their fleet.  One of the few NATO partners who is pulling their weight.

Infuriating

Someone needs to be caught and hung from a yardarm.

Uh oh

The Russians have experienced some sort of submarine fire.  Also, in completely unrelated news, the Vice President dropped out of a scheduled event to rush back to the White House, Putin also altered his scheduled appearances for the day, and the EU security council has gone into emergency session.

Well, this isn’t good

China testing a new SLBM.