Intruders beware: When this 80-pound German Shepherd isn’t patrolling Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, he’s training to take trespassers down at the drop of a command. Bleck, a 6-year-old German Shepherd, is assigned to Navy Installations Command as a member of Pax River’s force protection team along with his handler, Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Evan Desrosiers. Desrosiers knew when he joined the Navy more than a decade ago that he wanted to be a dog handler, he told Navy Times Tuesday, but he had to spend some time in the fleet as an MA before he could get orders for training at…
Browsing: Sea Air Space
Hundreds of exhibitors came to show their wares at the 2014 Sea Air Space expo near Washington, D.C., but none drew a crowd as much as Naval Supply Systems Command’s booth around lunchtime. Smiling attendees milled around with small plates of seared snapper and field greens prepared by Navy culinary specialists, getting a small taste of the Navy’s plans for meals underway. “What it does is, it cuts the edge off of all the technology that’s going around here,” Cmdr. Danny King, director of food service for NAVSUP, said of his booth. “So you’ve got all this great technology, millions…
Lt. Brad Snyder’s presentation at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space symposium outside Washington, D.C., didn’t have any PowerPoint slides. “I can’t see it, so you can’t either,” he said during the Monday afternoon speaker floor session at the Navy League booth. Snyder was blinded by an improvised explosive device blast during a deployment to Afghanistan in September 2011. During his recovery, the Naval Academy grad and former swimmer got back into the pool to regain his confidence. He never imagined it would lead him to the London Paralympics last summer, where he won two gold medals and one silver. The…
The new flight deck jerseys we wrote about last month are on display at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space symposium outside Washington, D.C. A mannequin is wearing the new jersey, as well as a float coat, gloves and the new trousers at the Office of Naval Research booth. The new trousers have more secure pockets, with stitching to prevent anything from falling out while working. The trousers also fit better and are less expensive to make, an ONR news release said. The new flight deck gloves are commercially available and feature better knuckle and finger protection, increased ventilation and improved fire…
Culinary Specialist 1st Class (SW/MST) Matthew Susienka, an enlisted aide at U.S. Fleet Forces Command, was cooking up something delicious Monday for attendees of the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space symposium outside Washington, D.C., at the Naval Supply Systems Command booth. Susienka cooked a trial run for his certification exam for executive chef, coming up on Saturday. His exam piece, which he made at the conference, is pan-seared salmon with poached lobster in a warm butter sauce. He also made a spinach and bibb lettuce salad with candied pecans and poached apple, and an artichoke fritter with a bacon vinaigrette. He…
The biggest attraction at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space symposium Tuesday was not on the day’s agenda. Just before 10 a.m., the crowd at the convention center south of Washington began to thin out. People headed outside and looked toward the Potomac River. Soon enough, the space shuttle Discovery flew by, piggy-backing on a modified Boeing 747. The shuttle was traveling from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to a Smithsonian-owned hangar just outside the city. It actually made two passes.
Tucked between displays of what will become the future of naval aviation is a tribute to the previous century of naval flight. An early flight simulator is one of the more interesting attractions. It looks like a really intense kiddie ride, one of those machines found outside of grocery stores that that blare really loud music and buck kids around for a quarter. Basically, the aviation simulator is a miniature open-cockpit airplane — it’s around the size of a golf cart — sitting atop a hydraulic system. The cockpit has a series of controls that make the whole device move…
Unmanned aerial vehicles aren’t brand-spanking new to naval aviation; UAVs the Navy uses include the rotary-wing Fire Scout and the RQ-2A Pioneer. But the next big thing in unmanned flight at sea will be an aircraft that can take off from and land on a carrier. Several companies are in the process of making that happen. The big names in flight are displaying wares that they hope become the backbone of the Navy’s collection of UAVs at the Sea Air Space Expo at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md. Look at the pictures above.…
Huntington Ingalls Industries must have made a Best Buy run before they set up their stall at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space Exposition. Exhibitors use all sorts of displays to show off their goodies, but HII’s came complete with video games and a huge 3-D television, which would make teenage boys everywhere incredibly jealous … at least if they came here. The video game ran on an X-Box but it wasn’t getting much attention, maybe because the objective was to fight fires on a flight deck. It’s just not quite the same as “Call of Duty.” Nearby was a…
Defense Secretary Robert Gates dropped the bomb of the week. In his first invitation to the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space symposium, Gates suggested a need for cutting carriers, sinking SSBN(X) and eliminating Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles. You can read Gates’ speech here, and find out how this affects you in Monday’s edition of Navy Times. Speaking of amphibious operations, the personnel bubbas in Millington are starting to dry out. Two days of rain dumped more than 14 inches in the area. A levee couldn’t hold the water back and the base was flooded. This delayed one promotion board and threw many administrative matters into…
