FRIDAY FOTO (March 25, 2022)

Not All Drones Fly

(U.S. Army photo by Cpl. DeAndre Dawkins)

The U.S. Coast Guard Sentinel-class cutter Glen Harris sails near a U.S Saildrone Explorer in the Gulf of Aqaba of February 13, 2022 during the international maritime exercise Cutlass Express 2022.

A saildrone is a wind and solar-powered unmanned surface vehicle (USV) (a sea-going drone) capable of collecting ocean data for up to 12 months on the open water. In October 2013, a saildrone completed the first autonomous Pacific crossing, sailing 2,248 nautical miles in 34 days from San Francisco to Hawaii, according to the manufacturer, Alameda, California-based Saildrone Inc.

The Saildrone Explorer is 23 feet long, 16 feet tal. It’s reliant on wind power for propulsion and carries a package of solar-powered sensors.

Last December (2021) U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) began testing the new USV in the Gulf of Aqaba — a narrow body of water that separates’ Egypt’s Sinai peninsula from Saudi Arabia — as part of an initiative to integrate new unmanned systems and artificial intelligence into U.S. 5th Fleet operations.

On December 13, NAVCENT launched a Saildrone Explorer USV for the first time from the Royal Jordanian naval base at Aqaba, Jordan. A month earlier, U.S. and Jordanian naval leaders announced the base would become a joint hub for Saildrone operations in the Red Sea.

The Glen Harris, homeported in Manama, Bahrain, is the third of six fast response cutters (FRCs) that are relieving the 110-foot Island-class patrol boats assigned to the Fifth Fleet’s area since 2003. Stationing FRCs in Bahrain supports U.S. Patrol Forces Southwest Asia, the Coast Guard’s largest unit outside of the United States.

The Sentinel-class is a key component of the Coast Guard’s offshore fleet, capable of deploying independently to conduct missions, including port, waterways and coastal security, fishery patrols, search and rescue, and national defense. The FRCs are 154 feet long weighing 353 long tons in displacement. They have a top speed of more than 28 knots, a range of 2,500 nautical miles, an endurance of up to 5 days at sea. The FRCs carry a crew of up to 24.

Cutlass Express is the largest multinational training event in the Middle East, involving more than 60 nations and international organizations committed to strengthening maritime security and stability by building partnerships and interoperability.

Participating nations in Cutlass Express 2022 include Comoros, Djibouti, Georgia, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, the Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The international police agency, Interpol, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime are also participating in the exercise.

SHAKO: 100 Years of U.S. Navy Aircraft Carriers

Milestone for Flatops.

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Abe McNatt)

This month marks the 100th anniversary of aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy.

On March 20, 1922, following a two-year conversion at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, the former USS Jupiter (a coal transport ship) was recommissioned as the United States Navy’s first aircraft carrier USS Langley (CV 1).

The ship was named in honor of Samuel Pierpont Langley, an American aircraft pioneer and engineer, CV 1 started as an experimental platform but quickly was shown to be an invaluable weapons system that changed how the US Navy fought at sea.

Langley (CV-1) at anchor with an Aeromarine 39-B airplane landing on her flight deck, circa 1922. (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command photograph. Catalog #: NH 63545.)

By the end of its first year as an aircraft carrier, USS Langley had been the site for numerous historic events: the first piloted plane launch from an aircraft carrier, the first landing in an Aeromarine, airplane and the first aviator to be catapulted from a carrier’s deck.

“For 100 years aircraft carriers have been the most survivable and versatile airfields in the world,” Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday said during a Navy League centennial celebration Monday (March 21) in Norfolk, Navy Times reported. “Perhaps no single military platform distinguishes what our nation is … and what it stands for … more than the aircraft carrier.”

In the 100 years since — from CV 1 to the newest nuclear-power carrier CVN 78 — aircraft carriers have been the Navy’s preeminent power projection platform and have served the nation’s interest in times of war and peace.

“The advent of the aircraft carrier and the commissioning of the first aircraft carrier 100 years ago really started our Navy and our nation on a path of having the most formidable, mobile, survivable sea bases and aviation platforms in the world,” said Rear Admiral John Meier,  commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic, which provides operationally ready air squadrons and aircraft carriers to the fleet.

Today, the Navy currently has eleven commissioned aircraft carriers in its arsenal.

Meier noted the carrier Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) is in the Mediterranean, “demonstrating our resolve and our partnership with our NATO allies, as we watch the horror unfolding of Russian aggression into Ukraine.”

Newport News Shipbuilding, a unit of Huntington Ingalls Industries, is the world’s only maker of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

The most recently completed carrier — USS Gerald R. Ford — is scheduled to make its first overseas deployment sometime later this year.

An F/A-18E Super Hornet lands on USS Gerald R. Ford’s (CVN 78) flight deck, March 22, 2022. Ford is underway in the Atlantic Ocean conducting flight deck certification and air wing carrier qualifications as part of the ship’s preparation for operational deployment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Zachary Melvin)

Ford-class carriers are twice as long and weigh eight times as much as their 1922 counterpart, yet they are twice as fast and carry nearly three times as many aircraft. The nation’s newest most advanced aircraft carrier, CVN 78, will be in service until at least 2070. All U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers operating in the Navy fleet today were built at Newport News Shipbuilding. USS Enterprise (CVN 65) was first in 1961, serving the nation more than 50 years, before being decommissioned in 2017, according to SEAPOWER.

Three other Ford-class aircraft carriers are currently under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding. They include John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), Enterprise (CVN 80) and Doris Miller (CVN 81). In addition, Newport News Shipbuilding is conducting mid-life refueling complex overhauls on two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers: USS George Washington (CVN 73) and USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74). These overhauls will extend the service life for each platform by another 25 years.

*** *** ***

SHAKO is an occasional 4GWAR posting on military history, traditions and culture. For the uninitiated, a shako is the tall, billed headgear worn by many armies from the Napoleonic era to about the time of the American Civil War. It remains a part of the dress or parade uniform of several military organizations like the corps of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York.