Keel Laying Ceremony for CVN 77
Navy tradition dictates that each ship constructed for the Navy be honored by ceremonies on four historic occasions: keel laying, christening (or launching), commissioning, and decommissioning. George H. W. Bush (CVN 77) will be honored with the first of its historic occasions on Saturday, September 6, at Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, VA. The keel laying celebrates the laying of the first timber of a ship and can be traced back to the construction of early Navy ships. The present-day ceremony maintains the tradition, but has been modified because of updated materials, technology, and shipbuilding techniques. Following the ceremony, the former President Bush will initial a nameplate to authenticate the keel that will then be welded to it.
U.S. Navy: AMCV Ships Are No Go
Subsequent to recent reports that the U.S. Navy had a vested interest in the half-completed cruise vessels for American Classic Voyages now-defunct U.S. Lines, the Navy has confirmed that it is no longer interested in pursuing the vessels, which are currently at Northrop Grumman in Pascagoula, Miss. According to Adm. Vernon Clark, the Navy had reached the decision after its engineers examined one of the ships at the yard. Clark confirmed the Navy's decision when he appeared before the Seapower Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee by simply stating that the ships were not suitable for Naval use.
Women Soon On U.S. Subs?
U.S. The U.S. Navy has no current plans to assign women to submarine duty but should carefully consider a Pentagon advisory panel's landmark recommendation to lift the ban, Navy Secretary Richard Danzig said. Danzig said that women had made major contributions to the Navy, including flying warplanes and serving on surface combat ships, and that undersea duty must not be discounted over concerns about privacy and the cost of modifying living quarters on subs. "We currently have no plans to bring women into submarines. But it needs to be talked through with the submarine community," he said regarding a recent recommendation by the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.
Despite Crunch on Funds, U.S. Navy Sticks To Building Plan
The top U.S. Navy officer said Thursday he would recommend the service stick to its plan to build a multi-billion-dollar class of new destroyers despite a crunch on funds for new warships. "I'd love to have DD-21," Admiral Vernon Clark, the chief of naval operations, said, referring to the Zumwalt- class destroyer designed chiefly to support Marines ashore with long-range firepower. He called the program "central to our transformation effort" for the 21st century. The DD-21 is one of the biggest U.S. arms programs apparently in danger of being killed in Defense Department strategy reviews under way. On May 31, the Navy announced it was delaying the selection of a team to build as many as 32 of the ships at a combined value of up to $30 billion pending the outcome of the studies.
Navy: U.S. Forces Cannot Handle Growing Threat of Mine Warfare
U.S. naval forces are poorly equipped to counter a growing mine warfare threat and are about to lose the potentially decisive ability to plant sea minefields of their own, a report for the Navy released on Thursday said. A committee of the National Research Council cited the "largely unregulated sale" of underwater mines by Italy, Sweden, Russia and other ex-Soviet bloc states as contributing to the danger to U.S. mobility. More than 50 countries now possess a sea mining capability, it said. "U.S. naval forces are not now likely to be able to adequately handle the plausible near-term threat of mines either offshore or inshore," said the report, prepared at the request of the chief of naval operations, Admiral Vernon Clark.
