The award, to Arizona-based and Norwegian-owned Nammo Defense Systems, amounts to a $498,092,926 firm-fixed-price contract for the full-rate production of assorted M72 LAW models variants and components to include training systems. The U.S. Army Contracting Command in Newark, New Jersey issued the five-year contract with an expected completion date in December 2026.
Developed in the 1960s to offer a more man-portable one-shot weapon in lieu of the 15-pound 90mm M20 “Super Bazooka,” the original 5.5-pound 66mm M72 LAW has seen continual service since then, although it has gotten heavier and better since then. The above images are from 1968 Vietnam, 1983 Grenada, and 2008 Iraq. The LAW endures, it would seem. (Photos: National Archives)
“With more than a million systems delivered, the M72 represents one of the most successful shoulder-fired systems ever developed,” says Nammo of the popular system that, besides military service with more than 20 countries since it was first adopted in the early 1960s.
NATO fighter jets scrambled around 370 times across Europe in 2021, mostly to check aircraft flying unannounced near Allied air space.
Around 80 percent of the missions, 290 in total, were in response to flights by Russian military aircraft.
Russia Air Force Ilyushin Il-78 Midas, RF-94269, and a German Luftwaffe Eurofighter Typhoon over the Baltic. In related news, Germany declared the MBDA-made Meteor missile ready for use by the Luftwaffe in the summer of 2021
An Italian F-35 intercepts a really modded Russian Ilyushin Il-18, the rare EW/COMINT sniffing Ilyushin IL-22PP Porubschik (RF-90786), near Allied airspace in the Baltic Sea Region. The Italian Air Force was the first to deploy 5th Gen fighters in Baltic Air Policing. Photo courtesy of Italian Air Force.
Classic-on-classic! Early 1980s F-16A Fighting Falcon fighter jets of the Portuguese Air Force out of Siauliai Air Base, Lithuania, intercepted Russian military aircraft, including a newly modernized Tupolev Tu-95MS Bear bomber, during an Air Policing mission over the Baltic, November 2021.
Last year’s figures are actually down from 2020, as noted by the alliance in December 2020:
NATO air forces across Europe scrambled more than 400 times in 2020 to intercept unknown aircraft approaching Alliance airspace. Almost 90 percent of these missions – around 350 – were in response to flights by Russian military aircraft.
The massive 18,500-ton Ohio-class Trident ballistic missile submarines– the largest subs constructed outside of Russia’s Typhoon and Borei-class boats– are bigger than Great White Fleet-era battleships and can carry enough firepower to practically erase a country from the map in a salvo.
However, they are also aging, with the first of class ordered in 1974 and the final vessel commissioned in 1997. While 24 Ohios were planned, only 18 were completed and the first four of the class later converted to SSGN Tomahawk throwers. The Ohio-class submarines were designed to have a service life of 42 years (two 20-year cycles with a 2-year midlife nuclear refueling period), which has been stretched a bit.
The 14 “boomers” left in service range in age from 24 to 37 years on active duty. The youngest of these,USS Louisiana (SSBN-743)just completed an outrageous 818-day overhaul and refueling at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard that required 6.5 million man-hours of labor to pull off.
Bremerton, WA – USS Louisiana (SSBN 743) undocked Dec. 7, 2021, at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility, as part of an Engineered Refueling Overhaul, the final ERO for Ohio-class submarines.
Now set to run another 20 years on that core, at which point she will be 44 years old, “Big Lou” and her sisters will need to be replaced within the coming decade by a fully-fleshed new SSBN, the Columbia class.
While the class leader of those new Tridents, USS Columbia (SSBN-826), was ordered in 2016 from Electric Boat, she was only laid down last October and is not scheduled to leave on its first deterrent patrol until 2031 at a cost of $10 billion with a “B.” Meanwhile, the oldest remaining Ohio bomber, USS Henry M. Jackson (SSBN-730), is set to begin recycling in FY27, although the Navy may try to slow roll that.
However, there is only so much juice you can squeeze from a submarine hull built during the Reagan administration.
We’ve talked about the old BRP Sierra Madre (LT-57)several times in the past few years, you know, the Philippine Navy’s reefed landing ship that is used as a desolate outpost against the Chinese military might pushing into the PI’s EEZ. Well, PI SECDEF Delfin Lorenzana posted some images of a special airlift of Christmas dinner to the garrison last week.
While most of us celebrated Christmas with our families, there are others who did not have that chance to do so, like our soldiers who are manning our islands in the West Philippine Sea. So that they may have something to celebrate with, the Philippine Navy airdropped foodstuffs, including lechon [roasted baby pig], for their noche buena.
What can be seen in a light platoon (24~) men worth of Marines and supporting Navy common/corpsmen in the ship’s topside jury-rigged tin and wood structure.
On the bright side, it looks like the ship is intact after Super Typhoon Rai/Typhoon Odette, which claimed more than 400 lives in the archipelago earlier this month. Further, it shows that the vessel is in helicopter range of the PI Navy’s five short-legged AW109E light helicopters, aircraft capable fo carrying FN-made rocket and machine gun pods, especially important because the Chinese have been making it hard to accomplish seaborne resupply.
Recently retired after 76 years of hard service under three flags in two wars, the Flag Officer in Command, Philippine Navy, VADM Adeluis S Bordado on 28 December approved the recommendation of the Philippine Fleet to reactivate ex-BRP Magat Salamat PS20 to augment current Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response efforts in areas severely affected by super typhoon Odette.
Salamat was originally built by the Winslow Marine Railway and Shipbuilding in Washington State as USS Gayety (AM-239, later MSF-239), an Admirable-class minesweeper with a similar hull to the PCE-842-class. Commissioned in time to see service off Okinawa, she suffered a near-miss from a 500-pound bomb and was damaged with several casualties who were buried at Zamami shima. Her postwar career limited largely to a training role, she was mothballed in 1954 then transferred to the South Vietnamese Navy in 1962 as RVNS Chi Lăng II, one of the first such American ships that force acquired.
CHI LANG II (HQ-08) (South Vietnamese patrol ship, ex-USS GAYETY, MSF-239) Photographed during the 1960s. NH 93779
She escaped to Subic Bay after Uncle Ho’s kids took over the south, and was later folded into the PN as a corvette. The vessel maintained her WWII-era armament including 3″/50s, 40mm Bofors, and Oerlikons although her engineering suites and sensors have been upgraded over the years.
She will serve as a temporary Command Post for the duration of the Navy’s HADR operations in the Dinagat Islands at which point she will likely be put back in mothballs, just in case.
The USCG and USN must be happy with the progress thus far because this came in yesterday’s DOD Contract announcements:
VT Halter Marine Inc., Pascagoula, Mississippi, is awarded a $552,654,757 fixed-price incentive modification to previously awarded contract N00024-16-C-2210 to exercise an option for the detail design and construction of the second Coast Guard Polar Security Cutter. Work will be performed in Pascagoula, Mississippi (61%); Metairie, Louisiana (12%); New Orleans, Louisiana (12%); San Diego, California (4%); Mossville, Illinois (4%); Mobile, Alabama (2%); Boca Raton, Florida (2%); and other locations (3%), and is expected to be completed by September 2026. Fiscal 2021 procurement, construction, and improvement (Coast Guard) funds in the amount of 485,129,919 (80%); fiscal 2020 procurement, construction, and improvement (Coast Guard) funds in the amount of $100,000,000 (17%); and fiscal 2019 procurement, construction, and improvement (Coast Guard) funds in the amount of $20,000,000 (3%) will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity.
As the USCG only has a single active heavy icebreaker, and it has been limping along for the past couple of years on bubblegum and duct tape, these new vessels can’t come fast enough.
With the end of the 2021 hurricane season– a busy one that produced 21 named storms (winds of 39 mph or greater), including seven hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater) of which four were major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater)– NOAA released a by the numbers graphic to show the nuts and bolts of their response.
Interestingly, the nation’s seventh uniformed service (in terms of commissioned officers) detailed they had 66 underwater glider (USV/UUV) deployments to study hurricanes, amounting to a serious 2,309 days underway. The agency uses Slocum gliders– the same as the Navy’s O office— among others.
An ocean glider is an autonomous, unmanned underwater vehicle used for ocean science. Since gliders require little or no human assistance while traveling, these little robots are uniquely suited for collecting data in remote locations, safely and at relatively low cost.
The very troublesome new first-in-class supercarrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78)has a lot of gee-whiz improvements over the 10 tried-and-true Nimitz class flattops which have been the backbone of Naval Aviation since the 1990s when they surpassed the legacy “smokers” of the Midway, Forrestal, and Kitty Hawk class in numbers. This includes a new nuclear plant with the (crucial) ability to generate nearly three times the amount of electrical power, an innovative advanced arresting gear, and the electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) that enables the Navy to leave the old (reliable) steam gear behind, and other improvements that lead to a huge ship that requires fewer Bluejackets to sail and fight.
One of the improvements was the promised Advanced Weapons Elevator (AWE) which the Navy billed as “using several advanced technologies including electromagnetic motors vice more labor-intensive, hydraulic systems,” that enables fewer sailors to safely move ordnance from weapons magazines to the flight deck with unparalleled speed and agility.”
The thing is, they didn’t work and the contractor has been scrambling for years to get them fixed. Finally, on Wednesday PEO Aircraft Carriers reported that the 11th and final AWE has been installed and turned over to Ford’s crew.
Sailors assigned to USS Gerald R. Ford’s (CVN 78) weapons department, receive MK-82 500-pound class inert bombs on one of Ford’s Advanced Weapons Elevators, May 30, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ryan Seelbach)
“This is a significant milestone for the Navy, ship, and her crew,” said RADM James P. Downey, Program Executive Officer for Aircraft Carriers. “With the completion of this final AWE, we now have the entire system to operate and train with.”
The work comes as Ford is at Newport News Shipyard in support of her Planned Incremental Availability (PIA), a six-month period of modernization, maintenance, and repairs, that began in September. When she emerges in March 2022, she will start workups for her inaugural deployment.
Keep in mind that she has already gone through 21 months of post-delivery tests and trials (PDT&T) and Full Ship Shock Trials (FSST), as she was delivered to the Navy by Newport News in May 2017 after eight years of construction.
Now to get EMALS working. Designed to achieve 4,166 aircraft launches between operational mission failures, a DoD report earlier this year said it went 181 launches between failures, or “well below the requirement.”
It’s not like USS Nimitz was laid down in 1968 or anything…
This looks bad when you consider the Brits have, with a smaller shipbuilding industry and without having crafted a large-deck carrier since the 1950s, was able to construct their new 65,000-ton carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08)— laid down the same year as Ford— by 2017 and just completed an extensive halfway-around-the-world deployment with her, albeit with some of help from “The Colonies.”
Let’s hope this lengthy teething period will help streamline the (successful) delivery of Ford’s classmates, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), Enterprise (CVN 80), and Doris Miller (CVN 81).
Likewise, Navy Air is not standing still, the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Aviation Demonstration (UCAD) of the MQ-25A unmanned air system prototype aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) has been going on this month, and shows promise, especially when it comes to halting the waste of using half the fleet’s Hornets to refuel the other half for strikes further than 400 miles out.
Last week the 5,000-ton ice patrol ship HMS Protector (A173) [ex-Polarbjørn] called at a place called Grytviken, located on a frozen splinter of land called South Georgia, an isolated British territory far closer to the Antarctic continent than Europe and a base of operations for the British Antarctic Survey.
The place holds two claims to fame, one dating back 100 years ago, where Shackleton (yes, “the” Shackleton) was interred, the other being the 1982 spark that started the Falkland Islands War– during which two different battles were fought for South Georgia.
Via the Royal Navy:
Sailors from HMS Protector paid tribute to legendary Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton – a century after he died pushing the boundaries of polar research.
Crew of the icebreaker held a memorial service at his graveside on the island of South Georgia – the latest stop for the survey ship as she heads to the frozen continent for a summer of scientific research.
The explorer – a Royal Navy reservist – died after suffering a heart attack aboard his ship Quest at the beginning of an expedition to circumnavigate Antarctica in January 1922.
He was buried in Grytviken cemetery, where Protector’s sailors – dressed in woollen sweaters in keeping with early 20th Century polar explorers – gathered for a service of remembrance to celebrate Shackleton’s achievements.
Importantly, Protector’s crew held their service just three weeks shy of the centennial of Shackleton’s death.
Designed for long Polar expeditions and for supporting subsea work, the Norwegian-built Protector was acquired with just a decade on her hull.
She has several small craft including two with two boats that are equipped with jet drives, GRP hulls, and bow ramps– great for landings in isolated areas
Her name has some teeth to it as she is armed with four GE M134 mini-guns, five GPMGs, and sports a helicopter deck and room for a platoon of Royal Marines who can move around at ease on three embarked Haaglund BV206 snowcats and a quartet of small boats– the largest of which is named after Shackleton’s own James Caird.
She has several topside small arms mounts
As well as extensive helicopter facilities. She is carrying two drones for her current mission.
Protector now heads even further South, on to Antarctica.
211214-M-HB658-1322 GULF OF ADEN (Dec. 14, 2021) Amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland (LPD 27) conducts a high-energy laser weapon system demonstration on a static surface training target, Dec. 14, while sailing in the Gulf of Aden. During the demonstration, the Solid-State Laser – Technology Maturation Laser Weapons System Demonstrator Mark 2 MOD 0 aboard Portland successfully engaged the training target. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Donald Holbert)
MANAMA, Bahrain – Amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland (LPD 27) conducted a high-energy laser weapon system demonstration, Dec. 14, while sailing in the Gulf of Aden.
During the demonstration, the Solid-State Laser – Technology Maturation Laser Weapons System Demonstrator (LWSD) Mark 2 MOD 0 aboard Portland successfully engaged a static surface training target. Portland previously tested the LWSD in May 2020 when it successfully disabled a small unmanned aerial system while operating in the Pacific Ocean.
The Office of Naval Research selected Portland to host the laser weapon technology in 2018. The LWSD is considered a next-generation follow-on to the Laser Weapon System (LaWS) that afloat forward staging base USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) tested for three years while operating in the Middle East.
Bzzzzzzzzzp! And this is how LWSD (Laser Weapons System Demonstrator) Mark 2 Mod 0 looks full face on USS Portland
