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: Training
For Navy veteran Bob Barker, the price is never right when it comes to using goats to train Navy and Coast Guard medical personnel. He’s written a letter to both Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging them to replace training on live animals with lifelike human simulators. Barker’s letter comes just a week after the release of a video showing a live goat that appeared to be conscious while its legs were sawed off with tree trimmers during a Coast Guard training session. According to a PETA press release, veterinarians watching the video said the…
Buoyed by some Hollywood hype, the Navy’s weeklong large-scale training exercise “Solid Curtain/Citadel Shield” generated a bit more excitement today than the annual security drill tends to muster around the Navy town of San Diego. Naval security boats gave chase to a motorboat with gun-toting men racing through San Diego Bay that came dangerously close to the cruiser Princeton as it headed out of the bay. The suspected “terrorists” tried to scuttle their boat along a beach at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado, but a fiery explosion wounded two men as two others raced for cover in nearby…
He may have retired in September, but retired Adm. Mike Mullen’s legacy lives. An auditorium was dedicated in his name March 1 before a graduation ceremony at Surface Warfare Officers School in Newport, R.I. In speaking to Department Head Class 215, Mullen reflected on his own department head graduation and the training he received throughout his career, according to a Navy news release. Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs and former chief of naval operations, also had kind words for the school: “Newport has always been a great Navy town and a big part of our family’s life.…
Between rolling blackouts and very limited connectivity, the press gaggle I was with out on Wasp and Kearsarge this weekend had a devil of a time getting on line long enough to transmit stories back to land. Timing is everything. I finally managed to get one sent Sunday night from Kearsarge that was posted Monday morning. It was a pretty blustery day out there Sunday — so much so that flight operations were practically non-existent. But as the story notes, it was fun watching the topsiders track some “bad guys” who disembarked early afternoon into a small boat or two.…
I’m spending Friday AM cruising south to MCAS Cherry Point, N.C., where I’m to take a noon hop out to the Wasp to begin Navy Times’ coverage of a certain gi-normous amphibious training exercise you may have heard of by now. Bold Alligator is the biggest Navy-Marine Corps at-sea training exercise in some 10 years. Wasp is sort of the exercise mothership, so that’s where we’ll get our senior leader interviews and exercise briefings. On Saturday, I’m slated to fly over to Kearsarge and begin covering the training itself, as the Navy-Marine Corps team prepares to launch an amphibious assault…
No matter what the service, military rescue swimmers are a pretty remarkable bunch. In addition to being skilled at their normal rating duties, they’re able — and willing — to be lowered into some pretty hair-raising situations that most normal folks would regard as out of the realm of possibility. The Atlantic waters looked to be fairly calm when the dock landing ship Gunston Hall conducted a man-overboard drill last week, as you can see: That’s a long way down, though. In addition, the water temperature was on the cool side. According to the National Oceanographic Data Center, the average…
The Norfolk-based carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower is deep into the basic phase of pre-deployment training while underway in the Atlantic. Technically, it’s taking part in a Tailored Ship’s Training Availability and Final Evaluation Problem, or TSTA/FEP, and conducting carrier qualifications for Carrier Air Wing 7 fliers. Ike will be out for several weeks to come, so it’s a busy time for the crews of the ship and the wing. All that activity demands fresh stores of all sorts. On Oct. 18 — not clear if it was pre-sunrise or post-sunset — the fast combat support ship USNS Arctic delivered the…
This simple yet atmospheric photo should resonate with anyone who’s ever been at sea …
So you want to be a Navy master-at-arms or join a ship’s security force? Know that this is a hurdle you’ll have to clear: Yep, that’s a faceful of Oleoresin Capsicum spray — a staple of master-at-arms “A” school training and part of a requirement for shipboard security force qualification. But you don’t just get a level one (directly in the face) spray shot of the (obviously) non-lethal pepper spray, which burns like the dickens and can cause breathing problems. You have to show you can fight through the pain and do your job: That guy in the Storm Trooper…
