Category Archives: US Navy

A link to Kearsarge, up at auction

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We’ve talked extensively in passed Warship Wednesdays and other posts about the epic contest off France between the British-built steam privateer CSS Alabama, under the swashbuckling Capt. Raphael Semmes and the Mohican-class screw sloop of war USS Kearsarge on June 19, 1864.

The Battle of the USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama By Claude Monet, hanging today at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Aboard Kearsarge that day was Acting Master James R. Wheeler, a Massachusetts man who later went on command, as a volunteer lieutenant, the captured blockade runner-turned-Union gunboat USS Preston in the tail end of the war before serving as U.S. consul to Jamaica under President Grant, where he died in 1870. Importantly, Wheeler commanded the crew of the Union vessel’s key 11-inch Dahlgren shell gun, which pummeled Alabama into the sea at relatively close range.

This guy:

Well, sometime after Alabama and before Preston, Wheeler was presented a custom Ames Model 1852 Officer’s Sword by popular subscription among Boston gentlemen, complete with acanthus scrollwork, naval battle scenes and the likes of both Amphitrite and Poseidon.

Interestingly, it is well preserved and is coming up at auction in May, after once being part of the esteemed collection of Norm Flayderman.

(Photo: RIA)

More here:

Estimate Price: $75,000 – $125,000.

Warships in Nebraska

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It’s odd to find a submarine or a minesweeper out on the Great Plains but such an example exists at Omaha, Nebraska’s Freedom Park which has long had custody over the old WWII-era (3 Battle Stars) Admirable-class minesweeper USS Hazard (AM-240) and the downright cute Cold War-era T-1-class training submarine USS Marlin (SST-2) since 1971 and 1974, respectively.

Typically high and dry hundreds of miles from blue water, they are now seemingly ready to set sail once more as the Missouri River has crested.

(Nati Harnik/AP)

Hopefully, the water will not get too high there. The park closed as a result of flooding along the Missouri River in 2011 and took four years of restoration and cleanup work to reopen.

From Freedom Park: “We learned much from 2011, & had many discussions of what to do if; so with hi-water predicted again, precautions were done today, in minimum time. Thanks to big-time support from Omaha Parks Dep’t. Since the ship, thanx to 2011, is a good 6 ft. higher than before, it will take water more than 2011 to put her afloat. Not that much predicted. So she’s not going anywhere”

George is a big boy…

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The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), after a decade with the fleet, arrived at Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY), Feb. 21, for a 28-month dry-docking planned incremental availability (DPIA). Bush will be on blocks for the majority of her yard period.

As noted by the Navy, “Dry-docking and maintaining a 103,000 ton, 1,092-foot aircraft carrier is complex work. This DPIA marks the first time George H.W. Bush has not been waterborne since 2006. Requiring an estimated 1.3 million man-days, it will be the most extensive maintenance period for the ship yet and one of the most complex CVN chief of naval operations availabilities in recent NNSY history.”

Hauled out in drydock, she is impressive:

Those anchors, tho.

The shipyard workforce will be providing approximately 775,000 man-days, with ship’s force, alteration installation teams and contractor work comprising the rest.

Now if they can just keep the Navy from decommissioning the 23-year-old USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) from being put to pasture prematurely, all will be good.

According to the FY2020 Navy budget, Truman would not be funded for a midlife refueling, which is surely news to the lawmakers and policy wonks that talked up the planned 50-year lifespan of the vessel to get her funded in 1988 when she was ordered.

While Big Navy and the Acting SECDEF supports the move as freeing up cash for other items (read= F35s), it seems like a repeat of the time they decommissioned the USS America (CV-66) to avoid putting that flattop through a SLEP that would have extended her life for another 10-15 years.

And we all remember what happened to USS America…

 

Prowlin’ no more

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Before they merged with Northrop in 1994, the old-school Grumman Corporation fielded some of the most iconic military– and specifically carrier– aircraft ever made in the 20th Century.

We are talking the F4F Wildcat (which the Brits used as the Martlet, their most common naval fighter of WWII), the Zero-busting F6F Hellcat, the briefly-loved F7F Tigercat, the F8F Bearcat (which the French continued to fly in Indochina and Algeria well into the jet age), the F9F Panther, F11 Tiger, and, of course, the F-14 Tomcat– last of the “cats.”

They just didn’t make fighters. They also produced the Cold War ASW king S-2 Tracker and the Yankee Station bomb truck that was the A-6 Intruder.

Sadly, all of the above have long since faded from the fleet. Other than a few ragtag IRIAF F-14s and some Taiwanese and Latin American S-2s, they aren’t even in the service of Third World countries.

And last week, the last armed Grumman combat aircraft used by the U.S. was put to bed.

First flown in 1968, the EA-6 Prowler was an A-6 that had been converted to be an “Electric Intruder” developed for the Marine Corps to replace its 1950s-era EF-10B Skyknights in electronic warfare missions. By 1971, they were flying over Vietnam with VAQ-129 flying from USS America (CV-66). Over the next 48 years, the plane matured and no carrier air boss would leave home without it. Not just an EW jam spreader, it could also target enemy radar sites and surface-to-air missile launchers in SEAD missions with high-speed anti-radiation missiles– more than 200 AGM-78 Standard ARM/AGM-88 HARMs were fired by Prowlers in combat over the years, with the first “Magnum” HARM warshot being against a Libyan SA-5 battery in Operation El Dorado Canyon in 1986.

Later, in Iraq and Afghanistan, they even jammed the cell phone and garage door signals used to trigger IEDs.

No Prowler was ever lost in combat, although they have been in the thick of it over Vietnam, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Serbia, Afghanistan, Grenada and other points of conflict for a five-decade run.

In all, more than 20 Navy and Marine VAQ squadrons took to the sky in the flying jambox although just 170 of the aircraft were produced.

Now, replaced by the EA-18G Growler, the last Prowlers of Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron (VMAQ) 2, Marine Aircraft Group 14, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, have been put to pasture.

U.S. Marine Corps EA-6B Prowlers assigned to Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron (VMAQ) 2, fly off the coast of North Carolina, Feb 28, 2019. VMAQ-2 is conducting its last flights prior to their deactivation on March 8, 2019. VMAQ-2 is a subordinate unit to Marine Aircraft Group 14, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Liam D. Higgins)

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Liam D. Higgins)

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Liam D. Higgins)

But Grummans are not totally out of the fleet. The E-2C Hawkeye lingers on.

Further, EA-6B BuNo. 162230/CY-02, part of the Sundown Flight, will be put on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Petrel does it again

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Wasp dresses with flags for Navy Day while she anchors in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 27 October 1940. Note the old flush-deck destroyer in the distance. (U.S. Navy Photograph NH 43463)

Built with 15,000 leftover tons allocated for U.S. aircraft carriers under the Washington Naval Treaty, the ninth USS Wasp (CV-7), was a lightweight version of a fleet carrier. Some 5,000-tons lighter than the preceding Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown, she was only about 80-feet shorter and could still carry roughly the same-sized airwing. In addition, she had a 4th catapult whereas the preceding and much larger half-sisters only had three. Granted it was a hangar deck cat, but still.

Commissioned on 25 April 1940 at the Army Quartermaster Base, South Boston, Mass, the war in Europe was on and the U.S. was out of it for another 20 months, but Wasp soon wandered into the periphery of the conflict. In August 1941, after shakedowns, she carried 30 Army Curtiss P-40C’s and three Stearman PT-17 trainers from the AAF 33rd Pursuit Squadron to Iceland– where they flew off her deck to land on the U.S.-protected island, one of the first times Army planes took off from an operational U.S. carrier.

After the U.S. entered the war, she was quickly assigned to watch over convoys routed to North Russia, looking for German surface raiders, and twice carried RAF Spitfires to embattled Malta.

To make good the losses of the Lexington (CV-2) at Coral Sea and Yorktown (CV-5) at Midway, Wasp was recalled from her North Atlantic and Med adventures and rushed to the Pacific, where her service was brief. Wasp arrived off Guadalcanal in early August and her aircrew was soon delivering “stings” to Japanese positions in the area.

Narrowly missing the Battle of Eastern Solomons on 24 August, on 15 September Wasp, Hornet, the battleship North Carolina, with ten other warships, were escorting the transports carrying the Seventh Marine Regiment to Guadalcanal as reinforcements. That day, Japanese submarine I-19 fired a spread of 6 torpedoes at the ripest of targets. Four hit Wasp, one hit the destroyer USS O’Brien and the final hit North Carolina— surely the most effective torpedo attack in naval history.

Abandoned later that afternoon, Wasp was scuttled by torpedoes from the destroyer USS Lansdowne. Of the 2,162 on board, 176 were killed as a result of the attack.

Now, after 77 years on the bottom, the research vessel RV Petrel has located her sitting upright in 4,345 meters (14,255 feet) of water.

“Wasp represented the U.S. Navy at the lowest point after the start of WWII. Her pilots and her aircrew, with their courage and sacrifice, were the ones that held the line against the Japanese when the Japanese had superior fighter aircraft, superior torpedo planes, and better torpedoes,” said Rear Adm. (Ret.) Samuel Cox, director of the Naval History and Heritage Command. “The first year of the war, it was touch and go. Those who served at that time deserve the gratitude of our nation for holding the Japanese back.”

The follow-on 10th USS Wasp, (CV-18), was an Essex-class aircraft carrier commissioned in 1943 and sold for scrap in 1973 after a very busy and successful career. The 11th Wasp, (LHD-1), is the lead ship of her class of very aircraft carrier-like (nearly three times larger in tonnage than CV-7) amphibious assault ships and was launched in 1989.

Ironically, at about the same time Petral discovered Wasp‘s namesake, LHD-1 was working alongside the JMSDF amphibious transport dock ship, JS Kunisaki (LST 4003) in a training exercise off Japan.

USS Wasp (LHD 1), JS Kunisaki (LST 4003) and USS Green Bay (LPD 20) transit in formation in the East China Sea, Jan. 12 (U.S. Navy/MC1 Daniel Barker)

Vraciu remembered

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On 19 June 1944, during the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,” VF-16 Hellcat flyer Lt. Alexander Vraciu splashed not one or two or three but six (6) Japanese Yokosuka D4Y Judys in eight minutes, firing just 360 rounds of .50 cal to get the job done– 60 rounds per bogey.

The event led to this iconic image:

Battle of The Philippine Sea, June 1944 (Catalog #: 80-G-23684): Lieutenant Junior Grade Alexander Vraciu, USNR; fighting squadron 16 “Ace”, holds up six fingers to signify his “kills” during the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”, on 19 June 1944. Taken on the flight deck of the USS LEXINGTON (CV-16). Note: Grumman in the background and sailor A.L. Poquet at right.

An Indiana native, Vraciu was a first-generation American of Romanian parents and cut his teeth as “Butch” O’Hare’s wingman. He finished the war with 19 confirmed aerial victories (plus 21 on the ground) and, although nominated for the MOH, he walked away with the Navy Cross instead and 3 DFCs, among other decorations. Overall, he is the 4th highest U.S. Naval ace in history when ranked in terms of victories.

USS Lexington deck crews pose for a picture with the carrier’s ace, Alexander Vraciu, in his Grumman F6F Hellcat.

Retiring from the Navy in 1964 after 23 years in uniform, he was still one hell of a good shot late in his career. In 1957, he won the individual gunnery championship at the U.S. Navy’s Air Weapons Meet at NAS El Centro, California, while pushing 40 as skipper of VF-51, then flying the FJ-3 Fury.

To commemorate Vraciu, who died in 2015, the Navy has dedicated the field at El Centro in his honor.

EL CENTRO, Calif. (March 9, 2019) The U.S. Navy flight demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels, conduct a flyover during the naming ceremony of Vraciu Field at Naval Air Facility El Centro, California, March 9, 2019. The Blue Angels are conducting winter training at Naval Air Facility El Centro, California, in preparation for the 2019 show season. The team is scheduled to conduct 61 flight demonstrations at 32 locations across the country to showcase the pride and professionalism of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to the American public in 2019. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Timothy Schumaker/Released)

Vale, RADM Ed Keats, (USNA 1935)

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Edgar Salo Keats was born in Chicago in 1915.

Let that sink in.

When he was minted, Eugene Ely had just four years before took off in a Curtiss pusher from a temporary platform erected over the bow of the light cruiser USS Birmingham— a first in U.S. Naval Aviation history. He was six years old when USS Langley (CV-1) joined the fleet.

By the time Keats graduated from Annapolis at the ripe old age of 20, the Navy had just commissioned their first ship designed from the keel up as an aircraft carrier, USS Ranger (CV-4). The future icons of Midway, USS Yorktown, and USS Enterprise, were still under construction at Newport News and had yet to be launched.

Keats earned his wings at Pensacola in 1938 and flew Dauntless dive bombers extensively. He was named skipper of Bombing 16 (VB-16) early in WWII but was soon appointed Air Officer for Commander Amphibious Force, Pacific, a role that put him in the driver’s seat for the air attack portion of amphibious landings at Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

“I was part of the group that wrote the aviation portion of the amphibious course plans for the capture,” said Keats modestly on the occasion of his 100th birthday bash at Bancroft Hall. “You just don’t go out there with a lot of people. It takes a lot of planning, and everyone doing their part. I don’t claim that I was a hero. I flatter myself that I helped contribute some little bit to our victory.”

After the war, he went on to fly F9F Panthers and command the Air Group on USS Shangri-La before being appointed director of the Armament Division at NATC Patuxent. He continued to rise to the rank of rear admiral before he retired in 1958 after 23 years of active duty across two shooting wars.

After an active career in business once leaving the military, including over a decade spent at Westinghouse, Keats continued to weigh in on naval topics and was a frequent contributor to Naval History Book Reviews.

Keats, the oldest Annapolis alumni, died over the weekend while in hospice care. He was 104.

His oral history of the war is in the Library of Congress.

Warship Wednesday, Mar. 6, 2019: The good doctor’s fine ‘Frida

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Mar. 6, 2019: The good doctor’s fine ‘Frida

NH 73392

Here we see the fourth-rate scout patrol vessel USS Elfrida at the New York Navy Yard, circa 1899, just after the Spanish-American War. A steel schooner with fine lines, she looks like a gentleman’s yacht that would be more at home on Lake Champlain if it was not for her mix of 3-pdr and 1-pdr deck guns.

Speaking of which…

Prior to the dustup with the decaying Spanish Empire, Elfrida was the personal pride of one Dr. William Seward Webb, founder of Shelburne Farms and President of the Wagner Palace Car Company of New York (that latter of which later became Pullman).

This guy:

Webb came from the best family.

His father, a Whig, held the rank of general (as did his grandfather) and was minister to Austria, Brazil and other points of interest– importantly brokering a deal with Napoleon III to get French troops out of Mexico. Webb’s older brother was the likewise meticulously groomed and well-dressed Union Brig. Gen. Alexander S. Webb, who famously earned the MOH at Gettysburg at the head of the Philadelphia Brigade on Cemetery Ridge.

When your brother has a monument at Gettysburg, your dad got the French out of Mexico, and your granddad picked up a star from Washington himself, you may come from an illustrious family.

Studying medicine in Europe, the younger Webb acquired a love of Mozart and Schutzen target rifle shooting, both of which he brought back to the U.S., usinb the latter as “Inspector General of Rifle Practice” for the Vermont militia with the state rank of colonel.

Built at a cost of $100,000 by the Harlan & Hollingsworth Company Wilmington, Delaware (the same firm built yachts for customers such as Charles Morgan, William Astor, and W. K. Vanderbilt) Elfrida was launched at the yard on 13 April 1889.

She was reportedly the “first steam yacht ever built with both a detachable stern and bow” so that Webb could use her on to pass through the narrow canals to Lake Champlain. She went just 117-feet long overall, closer to 102 at the waterline.

Finished in paneled red mahogany, “Colonel” Webb’s double stateroom was aft and three others were set aside for guests– each with its own lavatory. The crew had another trio of staterooms forward but had to share a head.

Electrically lit and steam-heated, the very modern schooner carried telegraph for use when close to line and used a triple expansion engine as an “iron mainsail” complete with a steam plant consisting of a compact Hazelton vertical water tube boiler that generated 160 pounds of steam. Her speed was about 10ish knots.

Photograph of the Webb family steam yacht Elfrida, with the crew, docked at Steam Yacht Elfrida at Quaker Smith Point at Shelburne Farms on Lake Champlain. Julie Edwards (Shelburne Farm’s archivist) writes on 06-03-2008 that the image ( depicts Elfrida I, the darker hulled vessel and the image would date c. 1888-1898. UVM photo SF1026

A favorite of the Lake Champlain Yacht Club (which still exists today) Elfrida was the commodore’s ship for the regatta off Plattsburg, New York in August 1897 attended by no less a personage as President William McKinley along with Vice President Garret Hobart in tow.

Webb also apparently packed a fairly loud “yacht gun,” as one did, to celebrate during “the season.”

When the “Splendid little war” came just the very next summer, Webb did his personal duty and sold Elfrida on 18 June 1898 to the Navy for the relatively paltry sum of $50,000. Refitted at New York Navy Yard with a single 3-pounder 47mm gun and a pair of 1-pounder 37mm pieces, she was commissioned less than two weeks later, on 30 June, and immediately put to service on coastal patrols between New York and New London.

As the war was short and the Spanish never made it up to the Northeast, she was placed out of commission 14 September 1898, service in her first war complete.

DANFS says she was used by the Naval Militia in Connecticut and New Jersey to train seagoing militiamen from 1899 to 1908 in the days prior to the establishment of the Navy Reserve. Typical summer cruises would range a week or two and often proved eventful, with the New York Times reporting one such 1903 voyage encountering a “frightful” storm at sea.

In 1908, our 20-year-old armed patrol yacht was decommissioned and her powerplant swapped out for a new 200ihp engine powered by two boilers with an increased speed of 14 knots.

By 20 August 1909, along with the old torpedo boat USS Foote (TB-3), Elfrida was assigned to the North Carolina Naval Militia, a force she belonged to as a drill and school ship until the U.S. entered the Great War in April 1917. While there, her armament was upgraded to a single 6-pounder 57mm rapid-fire mount.

USS ELFRIDA at New Bern NC circa 1909-13 as North Carolina naval militia ship. Postcard via Valentine Souvenir Co. NH 94934

North Carolina Naval Militia, Elizabeth City Detachment, 1907. BM2 Leonard K. Rutter, standing on the far left, back row, has his uniform preserved at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.

In 1914, the 32 ships allocated to the 19 various Naval Militias were diverse and somewhat motley. These ranged from the old cruiser USS Boston (3,000 tons, 2×8 inch, Oregon Naval Militia) and the shallow draft monitor USS Cheyenne (3,255 tons, 2×12 inch, Washington Naval Militia) to the downright puny yacht USS Huntress (82 tons, 2×3 pdrs, Missouri NM) and everything in between. Notably, several of the ships were on the Great Lakes training reservists in Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota. Like Elfrida, most had a SpanAm War pedigree.

When Congress declared war on the Kaiser in April 1917, the remobilized Elfrida (SP-988) returned to the active fleet and resumed her 1898 mission of coastal patrol, rated, along with the old 100-ton ex-Spanish Navy gunboat USS Sandoval as, “suitable for harbor defense only.”

On 25 August 1917, she suffered an explosion while making the passage from Norfolk to Yorktown, Virginia, killing one and injuring two others. This likely limited her wartime career and, after a stint assigned to the 5th Naval District to patrol to take charge of a fleet of motorboats tending the submarine nets at York River Upper Barrier, she was demobilized at the end of 1917. Before the war was even out, she was decommissioned 31 March 1918 and sold 11 May 1918.

Her final fate is unknown.

As for the esteemed Dr. Webb, he passed in 1926, aged 75, but his model farm at Shelburne, Vermont, where Elfrida was often docked, is today a National Landmark non-profit institute that does research into sustainable farming techniques.

Elfrida‘s plans and those of 207 other Holling & Hollingsworth built vessels, are in the collection of the Mariners’ Museum Library in Newport News.

Specs:

Her 1914 Jane’s entry, under North Carolina’s Naval Militia

Displacement: 164 to 173 tons
Length (between perps) 101′ 6″
Length (on deck) 117′ 0″
Beam molded 18′ 0″
Depth at side 12′ 6″
Draft: 7′ 9″
Machinery (As built)
Engine triple expansion engine 10½”xl6″x24″/ 16″ 200hp, Hazelton boiler
Dia. of wheel 6′ 4″
Pitch 8′ 6″
Coal: 12 tons, as built (listed as 23 max in Navy service)
Speed: 10.5 knots as built, 14 knots after 1909.
Crew: Unk in civilian service, likely 20-25 in Naval service.
Armor: None
Armament:
(1898)
1 x 47mm 3-pounder
2 x 37mm 1-pounders
*Note, Jane‘s listed this as standard through her career
(1911)
1 x 57mm 6-pounder

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The briefly loved Grand Rapids, on the block

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The U.S. Navy has always had a weird love-hate relationship with gunboats. Over the past two centuries, they crank them out for use in littoral operations that do not warrant a destroyer or cruiser, then quickly shed them while almost new to buy a couple more destroyers or cruisers that they can’t use in littoral situations.

One such example was the 17 Asheville-class gunboats built in the 1960s. Just 244-tons, the 164-foot ships were fast due to their CODOG hybrid gas turbine/diesel plant, could float in 10 feet of water, and packed a 76mm gun as well as other assorted party favors.

Builder’s model of the design that became USS ASHEVILLE (PG-84). Photographed circa the mid-1960s. NH 95837

However, once Vietnam wrapped up and they lacked much of an immediate mission (never mind that Iran would implode in 1979 and leave the Persian Gulf as a chokepoint nightmare for a half-century), most of the class was pulled from the fleet and given to Third World allies who it was thought could better use them. A few stuck around in niche (non gunboat) roles into the 1980s and 90s, but they were the exception to the rule.

USS Grand Rapids (PGM-98/PG-98), Tacoma Boat Building Co. photo 33218, via Navsource

One of the last in such a niche was USS Grand Rapids (PGM-98/PG-98). After just seven years with the fleet, she was decommissioned on 1 October 1977 and transferred to the same day to the Naval Sea Systems Command where she was used as the disarmed research vessel Athena II (165NS762) for another 40 years.

Liquidated by the Navy in 2017, she is now docked in the Mobile, Alabama area in private hands and is for sale for $350K, should you be interested.

Navy gives LCS’s minesniffer a thumb’s up (finally)

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The Navy last week announced the completion of developmental testing for Raytheon’s AN/AQS-20C mine-hunting sonar system at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City Division.

This thing:

For these things:

PACIFIC OCEAN (Feb. 27, 2019) The Independence variant littoral combat ships USS Independence (LCS 2), left, USS Manchester (LCS 14), and USS Tulsa (LCS 16) are underway in formation in the eastern Pacific. Littoral combat ships are high-speed, agile, shallow draft, mission-focused surface combatants designed for operations in the littoral environment, yet fully capable of open ocean operations. As part of the surface fleet, LCS has the ability to counter and outpace evolving threats independently or within a network of surface combatants. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Shannon Renfroe/Released)

PACIFIC OCEAN (Feb. 27, 2019) The Independence variant littoral combat ships USS Independence (LCS 2), left, USS Manchester (LCS 14), and USS Tulsa (LCS 16) are underway in formation in the eastern Pacific. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Shannon Renfroe/Released)

The presser:

The AQS-20C is the next generation of the AN/AQS-20 system designed to be incorporated into the Littoral Combat Ship Mine Countermeasures Mission Package. The system consists of four sonar arrays: two side-looking arrays; a gap-filler sonar array; and a forward-looking sonar array providing simultaneous detection, localization, and classification of bottom mines, close-tethered moored mines, and volume-moored mines.

The system delivers high-definition images of bottom mines, providing the operator with both range and contrast data that combine to form a three-dimensional image during post-mission analysis to aid in mine identification.

Developmental testing verifies that a system’s design meets all technical specifications and that all contract requirements have been met. During testing the Raytheon-developed towed sonar sensor conducted 12 underway missions in various operational modes and at different depths at four separate NSWC PCD test ranges. The missions were conducted aboard the test vessel M/V Patriot.

The AQS-20C will now be integrated with and deployed from the Mine Countermeasures Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MCM USV), a long-endurance, semi-autonomous, diesel-powered, all-aluminum surface craft that supports the employment of various mine countermeasure payloads. The MCM USV can be launched and recovered by the LCS, from other vessels of opportunity or from shore sites to provide minesweeping, mine-hunting, and mine neutralization capabilities. The MCM USV is currently undergoing developmental testing as a component of the Unmanned Influence Sweep System at the South Florida Test Facility in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Test results will now undergo scoring and performance assessment leading up to a final developmental testing report that is expected to be completed in the spring. Findings from this report will be used for future performance improvements of the system.

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