https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EypzUduBqiQ It’s an event years in the making: No, not the new Star Wars movie. The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower is out of the yards! The ship officially emerged in late August, and as it prepares for its first deployment next summer after two years in a Norfolk dry-dock, the public affairs department released an anticipation-building video parody entitled, “Sea Wars: The Ike Awakens.” The video mirrors the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” trailer, with a very startled petty officer third class on the flight deck, a rolling mop bucket beeping like R2-D2 and an F/A-18 Hornet battling an…
Browsing: Fleet Forces Command
Fleet Forces Command chief Adm. John Harvey sure raised eyebrows with his Thursday post on the command blog when he chastised those posting comments about “potential mismanagement of Navy projects and funds.” Harvey said he wants to know about potential problems — and he’s been one to solicit feedback in the past — but a blog, he said, is not the place to voice serious allegations that, if unresolvable by the chain of command, might be better directed to an inspector general. Harvey appears to be referring specifically to five comments posted at the tail of Feb. 9 post providing…
By custom, the surface warfare officer with the earliest Officer of the Deck qualification is recognized as the Navy’s “Old Salt” — an award initiated in 1988 by the Surface Navy Association. On Friday, that distinction will be bestowed on Adm. John Harvey, commander of Fleet Forces Command, in a ceremony aboard the amphibious transport dock ship San Antonio at Naval Station Norfolk. The current Old Salt is the recently retired Adm. Mike Mullen, who stepped back into civilian life Sept. 30 following four years as the nation’s top military officer and 43 years of service. There was no interim…
More than 90,000 sailors have served in individual augmentee assignments — largely in Iraq, Afghanistan and environs — and Tuesday, Fleet Forces Command launched a web site honoring those who’ve “performed above and beyond the call of duty.” The site pays tribute to the 1,416 IAs awarded the Bronze Star, the 10 given the Bronze Star with Combat “V” device, the 48 awarded Purple Hearts, the one sailor awarded the Silver Star and the 14 killed in the line of duty as of Aug. 9. The page also lists the totals, but not the IA recipients, for every meritorious service…
The path toward the Sept. 30 disestablishment of 2nd Fleet, the command that oversees all Atlantic-based naval operations and the training and certification of fleet battle groups, and its merger with Fleet Forces Command, runs this week through a “merged staff functional assessment” — a four-day exercise that aims to evaluate the soon-to-be merged command’s ability to react to a crisis event. It would be interesting to see that evaluation. Concerns about the merged staff’s ability to do so were raised internally by senior officials involved in the planning of the move, according to an internal Fleet Forces Command report…
A year ago, the dock landing ship Oak Hill was in poor shape — and that’s by the Fleet Forces Command chief’s reckoning. Beginning in 2005, five deployments in five years, no time for maintenance and inadequate manning had left the relatively young ship with a degraded power plant, endemic corrosion and a whole lot of systems that just didn’t work. A long-overdue yard period, money, lots of outside help and long hours produced a remarkable turnaround Apr. 4-8, when the ship passed its rigid underway material inspection by the Board of Inspection and Survey with flying colors. Oak Hill…
The amphibious transport dock Mesa Verde left its Naval Station Norfolk pier at 9:05 Wednesday morning as the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group began deploying to the Med and the Libya crisis. As it pulled away, its wake gently lapped up against the starboard-side hull of San Antonio, moored at the next pier over, in what amounted to a love tap. Mesa Verde’s crew might have preferred delivering more of a kick in the rear. The third ship in the class, Mesa Verde had been home only eight months since its last overseas deployment, and it wasn’t supposed to deploy until…
As you probably know by now, Adm. John Harvey of Fleet Forces Command on Thursday unveiled the results of his investigation into the controversial “XO Movie Night” video skits aired on the carrier Enterprise from 2005 to 2007, recommending that secretarial letters of censure be issued to two admirals and two of the carrier’s former executive officers — including Capt. Owen Honors, who as XO played a primary role in most of the questionable productions. If you haven’t read about the findings yet, here’s our short version. For those with a LOT of time on their hands, and perhaps curious…
We reported in our print edition this week (dated Feb. 7) that Fleet Forces Command chief Adm. John Harvey has recommended Capt. Owen Honors be detached for cause. As those in the service know, that’s not separation from the Navy, but the formal completion of the administrative process of removing him from command of the carrier Enterprise, which was done Jan. 4 when he was fired by Harvey over his involvement in controversial shipboard video skits recorded several years earlier when he was the flattop’s XO. And Harvey can only recommend a DFC; approval is up to the chief of…
Adm. John Harvey learned about the controversial, four-year-old shipboard videos co-produced by Capt. Owen Honors on Dec. 31 — the day before they were published for the first time outside the skin of the carrier Enterprise — and “immediately ordered an investigation,” he says in a Jan. 7 post on his command blog. Harvey also says he reviewed the videotapes published online by Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot newspaper that weekend and then made his controversial decision to fire Honors, who’d graduated from executive officer — his position when the sometimes-racy, meant-to-be-humorous short films were produced — to become the 49-year-old carrier’s commanding…
