Navy Archives

As I reported today, both the Army and TRANSCOM are eying development of a new class of airships that can carry up to 40,000 pounds of cargo 1,000 miles.

But that's not all, folks. Lockheed won a $400 million contract from DARPA in 2009 to develop an airship to carry a radar so powerful it could detect a car hidden under trees 185 miles away.

Though Lockheed lost an Army $517 million contract to Northrop Grumman to develop an airship packed with sensors this June, the company says it "absolutely" sees other opportunities for new business.

The Navy, which operated large fleets of blimps during World War II, decommissioning the last in 1962, once again got back into the blimp game this spring when it took delivery of a new blimp, the MZ-3A airship manufactured by the American Blimp Corp. based in Hillsboro, Oregon.

The Thai Army has contracted for an airship from Aria International to perform border surveillance while the U.S. Air Force operates a fleet of tethered aerostats for border surveillance in this country.

All of the above goes to show that a concept first hatched by Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier in France in 1783 still has currency today.

The Navy's new online system for leave requests aims to reduce paperwork and expedite processing.

The service's E-Leave system is not only faster than paper, it also speeds up recordkeeping with the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Manual leave requests submitted into DFAS run late about 20 percent of the time, the Navy says.

All shore commands are supposed to be using E-Leave as of today, and ships will phase it in over a two-year period, which started in October.

A Navy buddy of mine working on the Pakistan relief operation mused in an e-mail on Monday that for some odd reason Paris Hilton and her arrest for alleged cocaine possession received more media play over the past weekend than the fact that "we rescued thousands of people."

So, for those of you tired of Hilton coverage, here's an update on the Defense Department operations in Pakistan as that country struggles with one of the worst disasters in history.

On Monday, Marine and Navy helicopters rescued 625 people and flew in 114,000 pounds of supplies. Afghanistan-based Air Force C-130s delivered about 55,000 pounds of goods.

Since late July, Army, Navy and Marine helicopter crews have rescued 9,433 people and flown in 1.7 million pounds of goods, and Air Force C-130s have delivered 985,000 pounds of supplies since operations began.

The Pentagon has dispatched an additional 18 Army helicopters from the 1st Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment, 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, based at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, for the flood relief mission. They're expected to arrive in mid-September.

The Navy is operating the USS Peleliu amphibious ready group, home to the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, off the Pakistan coast and dispatched the USS Kearsarge and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Norfolk, Va., to the same waters on Aug. 27.

All this is in addition to the Defense Department's primary day jobs in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It's good to get some perspective on what counts and what does not.

Navy Chief Information Officer Rob Carey approved an electronic signature policy for the Navy and Marine Corps on Aug. 27 in a move designed to save paper, improve security and save money.

Carey said the policy is not a mandate to replace hand-written signatures but rather a policy to adopt electronic signatures as the preferred means of conducting business transactions within the Navy and Marine Corps.

Electronic signatures will be certified by using the Common Access Card issued to all military personnel and qualified contractors, he said.

Ironic side note: Cary signed his new electronic signature policy with his old-fashioned hand-written signature.

Rob Carey, the Navy's chief information officer, said in a statement he expects to weigh anchor and move to a new position inside government, most likely by the end of the summer.

Carey was appointed Navy CIO in November 2006 when he was serving on active duty as plans officer for a construction regi¬ment in a Seabee regiment in Iraq and took the CIO job in April 2007.

He was the first CIO in the Defense Department to embrace the blogsphere, a practice he still continues with a post this month on the power of information, not networks, data or digits:

Critical to the success of the Navy and Marine Corps is the capability to publish and consume information to support warfighting decisions at will. The Navy termed this outcome "information dominance." But what is it? I believe simply it's about providing any information, to any device, anywhere, at any time giving us the freedom to quickly identify, counter or defeat any threat.

Not a bad sign off.

The Navy wants to beef up its networks at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, headquarters for the Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn of Africa. So the service invited interested vendors to attend a two-day briefing there next month.

Based on the medical requirements to attend the event, I think only vendors truly desperate will attend.

To make the gabfest, vendors will need to have been administered a yellow fever shot, malaria pills, a TB test and have undergone a full examination by their primary care physician, the Navy said. It added a warning: Camp Lemonnier has limited medical facilities.

The camp -- and I empathize with the troops pulling a year tour there -- is an old French Foreign Legion post, located between the runways of the Djibouti airport and a French ammo storage facility.

The weather also may serve as a disincentive for attracting large crowds of widgeteers. The temperature on Tuesday was a crispy 104 degrees. I can't begin to imagine the temperature in July.

I don't think the vendor who whined about driving from Washington to Eatontown, N.J., for a Veterans Affairs Department industry day has any plans to make the Djibouti gig.

I'm just guessing.

We have all come to accept the fact that the Navy and Army have sizeable air forces. And the Army even has its own mini-Navy of just fewer than 50 ships, including a nifty high-speed ferry that can transport 600 troops and their gear.

Now, it turns out every service has its own fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles in development, including a Navy vertical take-off-and-landing gizmo that looks like a miniature version of the manned V-22 Osprey used by the Marines.

The Navy has successfully proved it can operate helicopter-like Fire Scout UAVs from the decks of small ships such as frigates. The Senate Armed Services Committee thinks the Navy should now develop a submarine-based UAV capable of a stealthy, underwater launch.

In its report on the fiscal 2011 Defense Department Authorization Act, the committee added $4.6 million to the Navy budget to develop a capsule to covertly launch a UAV and integrate its systems with submarine command and control systems.

Now, I know the submariners would feel left out if they couldn't play in the au courant UAV game, but with bucks tight, do we really need an underwater UAV?

In December 2009, Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughhead put out a directive establishing nifty new camouflage uniforms for Navy SEAL and other Naval special warfare folks -- but not mere mortals engaged in the ground combat theaters of operations.

The Senate, in it's report on the fiscal 2011 Defense authorization bill, said it "believes that the most advanced technologies and materials should be made available to all military personnel serving in the theater of operations."

And those SEAL camos are really advanced , according to the Roughead directive, consisting of:

Two unique four-shaded digital camouflage profiles (desert and woodland) developed by Naval Special Warfare (NSW) under the authority and guidance of U.S. Special Operations Command for NSW and Maritime Special Operations Forces. The tactical advantage provided by NWU Type II (Desert) and Type III (woodland) digital patterns will increase probability of mission success and survivability in combat and irregular warfare operations due to the reduced visual signature in these operational environments.

I think every sailor -- no matter his or her specialty -- should be able to reduce their digital signatures just like the SEALS.

As we get ready to honor those who served and died for this country on Memorial Day, the New Mexico Department of Veterans' Services will take care of some forgotten veterans: those who died with no known family to bury them.

Through its Forgotten Heroes Burial Program, the department -- in cooperation with the Veterans Affairs Department, the Santa Fe National Cemetery and New Mexico's 33 counties -- has stepped up to become the "family" of these servicemen ignored in death.

Ray Seva, spokesman for the veterans' services department, said it became aware of the issue this year after Thaddeus Lucero, the manager for Bernalillo County, informed them that no family member had stepped forward to claim the remains of 14 veterans despite repeated attempts by the county and its medical investigator office to locate relatives.

John Garcia, the secretary at veterans' services, said unclaimed remains of veterans are a national problem. "It's extremely disheartening to hear that there are thousands of unclaimed cremated remains of veterans nationwide," he said.

Seva told me that the 14 veterans will be buried with full military honors on June 4 at the Santa Fe National Cemetery. They are:

Charles Walker Curlee, Army
Patrick Faudi, Air Force, Korean War
Wesley D. Fontaine, Army
John Thomson, Marines
Carl N. Peterson, Navy, Korean War
Howard Fried, Army, WW II
Patrick Ford, Air Force
Donald K. James, Army, Vietnam War
Clovis Walker, Air Force
Lonny Douglas Greg, Navy, Vietnam War
Norman Stiver, Air Force, Vietnam War
Carleton Crouch, Air Force, Vietnam War
William Bailly, branch and date of service unknown
John Mercado, branch and date of service unknown

Garcia said, "All fallen veterans deserve to be treated with respect because they sacrificed to serve and protect our country. We are now pleased to be able to do this for those veterans who have been forgotten in the end."

Left to right: Elmo Zumwalt III, James "Jim" Zumwalt, and Elmo Zumwalt Jr. at a patrol boat base in Vietnam 1969. Credit: Zumwalt family photo.

Like many Vietnam veterans, Lt. Col. James "Jim" Zumwalt (ret.), my fellow Marine, says he has spent the past 40 years trying to expiate what he calls the raw wounds of that war and its aftermath.

For Jim, the years following the war turned out worse than the combat. His father, Elmo Zumwalt Jr., served as commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970 at the same time his brother, Elmo Zumwalt III, commanded riverine patrol craft PCF-35 operating near Da Nang and later the southern tip of Vietnam.

Crewman on those patrol boats experienced a high casualty rate because they operated on narrow waterways where the banks were lush with vegetation, giving the Viet Cong ample cover to ambush crews.

Zumwalt Jr., who became the youngest chief of Naval operations in 1970, decided to eliminate this natural cover by ordering the spraying of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange on the river banks patrolled by the boats of the "brown water Navy," including the one commanded by his namesake son.

That tactical decision unleashed a chemical time bomb on the Zumwalt family. Agent Orange contained carcinogens, and in 1983, Zumwalt III was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, a result of his exposure to Agent Orange, he later wrote.

Zumwalt III died in 1988, but not before he co-authored with his father the book My Father, My Son, a tale of generational military service that dates back to the American Revolution and courage in the face of adversity.

Today, Jim Zumwalt has weighed in with his own book, Bare Feet, Iron Will: Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam's Battlefields, a courageous story of our enemies in Vietnam. The book will have its formal launch at noon on April 26 at the Navy Memorial in Washington. (The Navy Memorial has a bas-relief that features PCF-35, the patrol boat commanded in Vietnam by Zumwalt III.)

I write courageous because it treats the enemy we faced in Vietnam with understanding and sympathy, a take Jim told me that he feared would arouse the wrath of some Vietnam veterans who have yet to come to terms with the war.

But, as Jim told me and as he relates in his book, by meeting his enemy, he started the process of healing his anger and grief, especially over the loss of his brother.

In 1994, Jim accompanied his father on a trip to Hanoi to provide Vietnamese veterans of the war with artificial limbs and wheelchairs. On that trip, Jim watched his 73-year-old father lift and then place a legless Vietnamese veteran in a wheelchair. At that moment, Jim realized that his father had "an immense compassion . . . for those who were less fortunate, whether friend or foe."

This compassion and humanitarianism, Jim says in his book, provided his father with "a basis for putting the tragedies of this war behind him."

During that 1994 trip, however, Jim still felt more anger than compassion towards the Vietnamese he first encountered -- until he met Maj. Gen. Nguyen Huy Phan. When the two met, Phan immediately expressed sympathy for the loss of Jim's brother, Elmo. Later in their conversation, Phan, Jim wrote, became reflective and his "eyes betrayed an internal anguish." As Phan's eyes misted, Jim wrote, "I sensed a personal tragedy loomed in his life as well. I felt an instant bond forming with him."

That bond deepened, Jim said, when he found out that Phan, too, had lost a brother in the war, and his anger started to dissipate as he came to "recognize the significance of a loved one's loss was not measured simply by which side of the battlefield on which he had stood."

Inspired by this encounter -- and with a nod to the compassion of his father -- Jim decided to tell in Bare Feet, Iron Will the tale of soldiers on the other side of the Vietnam War, interviewing some 200 former enemies.

In writing his book, Jim says in the introduction, he came upon the principal of universality, which to him means the recognition of "the commonality of suffering, so that, once the fighting ends, a common ground can be plowed in which the seeds of friendship are sown."

This is a powerful tale told by a real warrior -- Jim served in the Marines from the Vietnam War through the first Iraq War -- not a sunshine patriot. That fact can help heal the still raw wounds of the Vietnam War.

Jim Zumwalt will discuss and sign copies of his book at the Navy Memorial, 701 Pennsylvania Ave., NE, in Washington at noon on April 26. The event is free and open to the public.