Where does the Navy go?

[Joe]

Hey fourpoints. Consider for a minute who may be reading the info on this site. And you might want to tell your sister to practice good OPSEC and not brag so much.
Loose lips sink ships.
Divulging the max speed of a boat is like posting a picture of your blown up hummer and saying "if the terrorist had just blown up the bomb a half second later we would all be dead" Kinda asking for more trouble don't you think?

Hey.... Four Points...... we're watching you. You're in danger of losing your security clearance and thus your right to post here. You know the enemy agents who can't afford a subscription to Jane's Fighting Ships regularly check in here for naval intelligience. heh, heh.

 

[Steve Kamp]

What made my day about the Navy leaving Norfolk was an info babe interviewing a Navy Public Information Officer on one of the drive by networks. She asked the PIO where they were going, just on a cruise, or, could they get some training out of it.
What the info babe didn't realize is that everything the military does is either charged off to combat or training.

 

[Bill Roosa]

Sorry all for hijacking the thread
For the record Joe, everything in Jane's is a lie. Excepting the obvious stuff like "it has four wheels" all that max effective range and max speed is just not the truth. And we in the military like it that way. The last thing I want is for the enemy to know that I can't go faster than xxx MPH or my rifle is only good out to xxx meters. I know that when we know that stuff about our enemies we kick their forth points of contact all the way across the desert.
And what makes you think our government is not watching this site? I sleep very well at night knowing what the uber geeks at NSA are capable of. I suspect other countries have similar assets
The truth is, as all this social networking and collaboration tools have become available we have become our greatest liability. I know the first time I saw the myspace post of the guy next to his blown up hummer talking about how he almost lost his entire crew except for the ..... I almost fainted. As Americans we have the right to free speech. We have to temper that with some common sense though.
Now back to your normal programming

 

[rgtet]

I wouldn't sweat the OPSEC too much in this case Bill, mainly because the information posted was grossly inaccurate. Anyone in a position to exploit such information would know that accurate caps/lims are much easier found in a place such as GlobalSecurity.org, FAS.org, or Jane's Fighting Ships. The takeaway from your message is a good one, though. Unfortunately, in the social media age, it becomes a very difficult task for us to keep the cat in the bag.

There are only a couple of ship classes (mainly, those that are black and sink) where performance details are classified and those caps are listed as "Greater than ...."; for the rest of the stuff that is gray and floats/flies, those capabilities are unclas and published in open source material.

 

[Cayennita]

In St. Croix, I normally go out to sea and sail at a 90 degree angle to the left of the hurricane path. We leave early enough to be able to adjust course depending on the hurricane's path. Even 30 hours before will put us 150-180 miles away. The southwest part of the path. Once we arrive at a safe distance, we hove to and relax and read for a couple of days and listen to AM radio. We then go north back to the island and all is well.
Navy ships go faster than our 6-7 knots. Need to get away from a lee shore to have room to drift.

 

[NotCook]

I have to agree with Bill Roosa on this one. People can divulge information without understanding the significance or the sensitive nature of the info. Intel is gathered from any source that is available. Most people neither understand what kind of information is classified, or why, and seldom understand the impact of divulging the information. The posts here prove that. Regardless of whether the information is already known at this point, Bill's point is still valid.

Four years in the DIA Intelligence Operations.

 

[DRhoads]

Flyboy

In the case of Irene, they ran east, then looped south and west to follow the storm back to Norfolk. The track routing is generally to keep the transit distance to a minimum, while keeping the seas at 12' or less. Each storm is unique and it depends on which base is forced to sortie. They likely keep the SOA under 22 kts, which enables the CRUDES types to run at a split plant line-up and not waste fuel (gators are limited to ~22 kts and anything above that for a carrier using hot rocks for an extended period means that they're burning a noticeable amount of that fuel, which makes certain people in DC upset- fuel management for that stuff is VERY closely monitored). Anything over 22 kts for CRUDES means that all 4 GTM's are online, which burns an incredible amount of fuel, somewhere around 40,000 gph for a 30+ knot speed run.

There's no sense in beating the ships and crews into a pulp if it isn't operationally necessary. In these cases, there is no operational necessity to beating them senseless in a higher sea state (if you've ever ridden out a hurricane while underway, you know that ships flex a lot in those sea states, even at an SOA of 12 kts).

OK care to decrypt - I flew fighters for the AF although I can get most??

"CRUDES" I assume are older ships Diesel not Gas turbines (GTMs?) or is that so far back they are all scrapped now?
"SOA" guess the gang headed in a group (we called them targets bunched for easy picking)
"gators” another name for those moving runways?

Little help here please.

 

[Mikem]

The primary goal of the navy ships would be to steer clear of the dangerous semi-circle. Since the rotation of the hurricane winds in the northern hemisphere is counter-clockwise and it travels roughly northwest the highest winds are found in the nw quadrant. The sustained winds of 100kts are augmented by the 15kt nw direction of the storm so the total wind is 115kts. In the se quadrant those sustained winds of 100 kts are reduced by that same 15 kts so that resultant wind is 85 kts. The direction the navy ships took would be determined by their proximity to those quadrants, the ship's best speed, and position of the Gulf Stream.

As to a former reply that stated the speed of an "amphib", the theoretical hull speed of a displacement vessel is the same for sailboats as it is for amphibs. Take the square root of the waterline length of the vessel and multiply it by the constant 1.34. If the waterline length of the amphib was 600', well do the math.

Mike, former ship's navigator of USS Nimitz.

 

[rgtet]

DRhoads- Translation as follows:

CRUDES = Cruisers and Destroyers, powered by 4 GE LM2500 gas turbines (20,000 SHP each on CG's, 25,000 SHP each on DDG's)

GTM = Gas turbine main (main engines). CG and DDG also have gas turbines for electrical power (3 GTG's)

SOA = Speed of Advance, a term used when laying out a track

Gators = amphibs = "L" class ships....LHD, LHA, LSD, LPD. Shallower draft (~20-24ft), flat bottomed, well decks/stern gates (except the remaining few AUSTIN-class LPD).

Those thingies that are gray and float with runways on them? That's called "Is Helen Keller driving that thing?" as they chase the wind.

We probably see each other on the Bay. The winds aren't looking so good for this weekend, just like nearly every weekend since May.

If we cross paths, I'll show you how pilots wave to divers (I have nearly twice as many take-offs as I do landings in aircraft.....don't trust you guys up front to land safely, so I prefer to do it myself).

 

[Cooperstownsailor]

NY City Coast Guad sent their bigger ships and boats up to Kingston Harbor; up the Hudson River, then sailed down on Sunday and Monday.

 

[prishi]

>
Or does the Navy use this time to train for heavy weather conditions and send the ships far enough to be out of serious trouble but still in heavier weather?
<
I doubt that any Navy needs to send ships to 'train for heavy weather'. If you are in the Navy, you've generally seen it all sooner than later. And *nobody* needs to be trained for heavy weather.

 

[RobertLangdirect]

All the terroist has to do is get by -- Two RAM launchers; two NATO Sea Sparrow launchers; three 20mm Phalanx CIWS mounts (two on LHD 5-8); four .50 cal. machine guns; four 25 mm Mk 38 machine guns (LHD 5-8 have three 25 mm Mk 38 machine guns). Oh, yes, from the US Navy web site.