Search results

Fantastic movie.

I know a couple guys who played sports at the academy and then spent the summer after they commissioned coaching at the academy and NAPS before they showed up to the ship. It seemed like a pretty good deal to be a commissioned officer for six months and do nothing but coach baseball or whatever.

I know of one dude who I have met along the way. He got NPQ'd sometime between getting his NFO wings and going to the FRS/RAG/whatever it's called. Fortunately, he was able to switch over to CEC. I also know a guy who got NPQ'd as an NFO and became an EDO. He said it was an eye-opener to...

Word of advice, never borrow the hard drive from the Boatswain's Mates. You aren't ready to see what the entirety of Deck Division/Department are into.

This is the way.

Oooooooo, you're squadron has one of the fancy G1000 cockpits. Very nice. I recommend ground flying the ELT/EPIRB/PLT equipment or going through the Basic Observer course. It really helped me.

Did you catch anything?

What exactly does buckwheat ice cream taste like?

What are these, battleships for ants? They need to be at least three times bigger! I don't know what the context is here but I like it.

Correct. Here's the company: https://aircombat.com/. They're located in SoCal, so if you want to go do some simulated dogfighting, then find your way to Orange County. They use some old Marchettis which is pretty cool. I wonder if they come with an espresso machine and angry Italian driver...

San Juan, PR, was fantastic. I can't wait to go back and visit. St. Thomas was also wonderful. Malta is still probably my favorite port call of my career. There's a fantastic Indian restaurant in St. Julian's which is the best Indian food I've ever had. If you ever find yourself in Batumi...

We should just revisit Project Habakkuk: https://medium.com/predict/the-story-of-pykrete-that-time-the-navy-built-a-ship-out-of-ice-and-sawdust-be8de5ab5a00

While we didn't put in place as much control of the manufacturing plants for the pandemic that we did in WW2, it's also really hard to do that when those plants aren't actually IN the United States. When the CCP decides they will take charge of the output from Chinese plants in China, there's...

The difference between then and now is that our industrial capacity has atrophied to the point that we no longer have the capacity to build that many ships that quickly. To make matters worse, we've even outsourced most of our industrial and manufacturing capacity to our primary adversary. We...

If we're including tankers, logistics, command, tenders, repair, and salvage ships, then 500 isn't nearly enough. Right now we have 130 USNS ships, 14 maritime prepositioning ships, and 290 war ships. That's a current total of 434 ships which can barely meet our current operational needs and...

1. Yes, forward-deployed ships are more vulnerable and patrol boats and corvettes will likely not be as survivable as DDGs, but you have to make trade-offs. 2. I don't want to develop another JSF debacle where we try to do everything with a single aircraft and crew pipeline. I was thinking...

Are you the tanker or the tankee in this picture?

1. You forward deploy them, move them by heavy sealift, or sail them across the world. We did this routinely during World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, and we do it currently. They have shorter legs than DDGs and CGs so you need a good logistics network in theater and you need tenders like we had in...

With the way we currently acquire ships, there's no fucking way we're reaching 500 ships. When SWOs demand that every ship be a billion dollar DDG or CG, there's simply not enough money in the Congressional budget for it. We need to accept that a 500 ship Navy is going to be made up of patrol...

I started working with a recruiter around the same time as Spekkio and didn't run into any of those problems. I did go through 5 different recruiters, though. I had two up and retire on me without even telling me; one day the calls and e-mails just stopped. I wasn't aware until I talked to the...

I doubt this is going to go into production by 2025. It takes far too long to get through the requirements generation and approval process just to start design talks. Unless we use a proven design, and there are very few DDG designs in the world, then it will take a far longer time to get to the...

There are a lot of things we do for fun in Kerbal Space Program. I've never had another game that made me want to make spreadsheets for delta-V calculations and orbital windows. Before anyone chimes in, yes, I understand I'm a nerd. It's literally in my job description.

Thanks for the clarification. The video made it seem like the Army was evaluating the two.

Slight threadjack: Do military aircraft all have AoA sensors or just the normal stall warnings? AoA sensors seem to be becoming all of the rage in GA to prevent this exact occurrence.

Yes, exactly! The differences in design orthodoxies is really interesting to see. There are entire programs that were cut simply because they were too far outside of those traditional design decisions. It always seemed like the Soviets and Germans were more willing to embrace radical concepts...

What a strange helicopter design. I've always thought it was kind of cool with the contra-rotating blades and quad-wheel undercarriage. The various design bureaus came up with some interesting designs.

I think it's 25% less salt than this:

I dig the hat.

Why you gotta ruin our fun?

What a cool SWO guy you are. Here's your award for winning this argument on the internet: Probably. But the way I understand what @treb is concerned with is that he absolutely cannot deal with doing paperwork and sitting through meetings. If that's true, he's going to spend at least 25% of...

Interesting, doing some research it looks like they split apart. B&W is now doing renewables and BWX is doing nuclear stuff. It's been a decade since I graduated and most of my friends have moved on to other companies so I really wasn't paying attention closely.

Babcock & Wilcox does a serious amount of business building reactors and reactor accessories. I have a number of brother rats who got hired by them directly out of college since they were just over the mountain in Lynchburg. They would also come over and provide ASME briefs and try to do some...

Ooooooo, a Knox-class frigate. How was it being on a boiler-driven ship?

Having served on the last USS Simpson, I'd prefer they let the name die. Bring back Stark, Sammy B, Underwood, Hornet, and all the names of old first. And if they finally run out of names, then they can bring Simpson back from the grave.

Typically, modern (post-WW2) warships are delineated by length or tonnage. It goes something like this: < 300 feet = Patrol boat 300-400 feet = Corvette 400-500 feet = Frigate 500-600 feet = Destroyer 600+ feet = Cruiser Then you have amphibious ships and carriers which are based upon design...

I've run plenty of combat watch teams. Way to get butthurt. That's the point I was making.

Which is why I followed it up immediately with: I highly doubt he can't stomach a desk job. He's likely a young man looking for some adventure and excitement in his life. I can sympathize because I was once that same young man. Hell, I still get restless every now and then and find myself...

Yeah, with modern multi-role ships the distinctions are largely pointless. For instance, what we call destroyers are called frigates in Europe. And we and the Russians are the only nations who operate cruisers. Any ship can be a minesweeper once.

I prefer reposado and anejo tequilla to joven. I wish Costco sold mezcal since that's where I buy all of the rest of my liquor.

Yes. It's bigger than a bread box and somewhere within CONUS. :p If you seriously want to know, I can shoot you an e-mail with details. Depends. Most warships these days are delineated based upon length or tonnage. Being under 400 feet long puts the LCS in the corvette range which isn't a bad...

So it will be similar to SPY-6? If so, that's a cool piece of kit. I got to see the anechoic chamber that they were testing an array in at Raytheon and it was fascinating.

Sad to say but you'll get about 12 years tops as a SWO of operational time, maybe more if you screen for command at sea, but by then you're chest deep in the politics. Even as a Senior LT or Junior LCDR, you'll end up mainly pushing paper with a little bit of standing watch. Really, the coolest...

The LCS wasn't selected for the new FFG program. They should be reclassified as corvettes, but alas.

What exactly about the corporate world did you not like? There's a distinct culture in the Navy that you will need to adjust to. It isn't all choker whites, dining outs, and port calls in Thailand.

I dream of a world where we abolish the NFA entirely.

And we still had the rum ration! The single greatest travesty in Naval history was Josephus Daniels abolishing the rum ration and making all of ships dry. Anyway, splice the mainbrace and all that: The following is an account of USS Constitution’s famous war cruise during the War of 1812. In...

Considering those public shipyards are commanded and managed by EDOs, I've seen enough of them. The most interesting stuff there is what's in the dry docks themselves and you can't get in there without somebody approving it. There's cooler stuff at the Navy Yard than those shipyards for...

I'll pass. Those public yards remind me too much of work.

I think this is the first time I've ever seen someone suggest visiting a shipyard for vacation.

Oooooo, battleships. Heavy SWO breathing Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts, is a great place to visit. They have a full reconstructed PT boat, an old boiler-fired DD, and even a Tarantul-class corvette. https://g.page/battleship-cove?share