Browsing: LCS

Navy Times’ intrepid reporter Mark D. Faram got an all-access pass on the latest littoral combat ship, USS Coronado, this week. The takeaway? It’s as fast as a cheetah in Air Jordans. Cmdr. John Kochendorfer, the ship’s captain, told Faram that it handles like an Italian sports car. “What you have here is a big military Jet Ski with a flight deck, payload areas and weapons, and the thing handles like a Ferrari,” Kochendorfer said. “This ship is built to go fast; it likes to go fast; it rides better when it goes fast.” With a top speed of…

Sideways launch? Check. “Anchors Aweigh” in the background? Check. Big splash? Double check. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjzbhJXANs[/youtube] The future littoral combat ship Milwaukee, what will be the Navy’s fifth LCS and the third Freedom-class variant, hit the water Wednesday in a ceremony at the Marinette Marine shipyard in Marinette, Wis. Sylvia Panetta, wife of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, performed the christening honors prior to launch. The LCS will be the fifth Navy ship named for the largest city in Wisconsin, according to a Navy news release issued before the ceremony. The most recent, an oiler, was decommissioned in 1994; its crew was…

From eagle attacks to life-saving boots to new uses for littoral combat ships — maybe — here’s a round up of recent Coast Guard odd news. Let’s start with a report from Alaska: Coasties were attacked by an eagle in the Dutch Harbor Post Office in Unalaska. Eagle attacks are apparently not that rare for people living up there, see here. Then there was the man charged with allegedly attacking a Coast Guard boarding officer in San Francisco. The man was also charged with allegedly making a false distress call. He claimed that a Coast Guard boarding team would be…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb-mWG4uSek[/youtube] As Navy Times Prime members knew in January, the littoral combat ship Freedom became the first U.S. warship in recent memory to get a “dazzle camouflage” paint job — a four-color pattern that could confuse an adversary by creating a false bow wave and will help hide exhaust smudge with some strategically deployed black paint. Freedom left for its maiden deployment last week, paint in place, en route to the Asia-Pacific region to partner with allied navies in security operations. But how, exactly, did LCS 1 get from this to this? Thankfully, the folks at Naval Surface Force Pacific…

What’s wrong with this picture? Freedom, the first littoral combat ship, has been in service for only two and a half years. But it’s lost that new ship shine.  Exhaust blackens the superstructure and the hull in this photo, taken June 7 while Freedom landed a helicopter as part of a joint maritime exercise. More exhaust is visible spewing from the stack. “The exhaust marks can be scrubbed off, but the closer you get to the orifice, the less it is soot and more it is actual burnt on charring,” a user named spek commented on the blog, Cdr Salamander.…

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