| By RICHARD R. BURGESS
The Navy's 28th Arleigh Burke-class Aegis
guided-missile destroyer has been commissioned and assigned to the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
The USS Porter (DDG 78)--the 12th Burke DDG built by Litton's Ingalls Shipbuilding
in Pascagoula, Miss.--was welcomed into fleet service by more than 5,000 onlookers in
ceremonies at the Naval Ordnance Training Unit in Port Canaveral, Fla.
In the time-honored Navy tradition, the
ship's sponsor, Garland Hawthorne Johnson, wife of Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm.
Jay L. Johnson, gave the order to "man our ship and bring her to life!" Sen.
Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was the
principal speaker at the 20 March ceremonies. With the CNO as he placed the ship in
commission were Vice Adm. Henry C. Giffin III, commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S.
Atlantic Fleet; Vice Adm. George P. Nanos, commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command;
Rear Adm. Michael G. Mullen, director of surface warfare in the Office of the Chief of
Naval Operations; Rear Adm. William W. Cobb Jr., program executive officer, theater
surface combatants, office of the assistant secretary of the Navy for research,
development, and acquisition; and Jerry St. Pé, president of Ingalls Shipbuilding and
senior vice president of Litton Industries. The Cape Canaveral Council of the Navy League
sponsored the commissioning festivities, prepared by the Porter Commissioning Committee
under the leadership of John Porter (no relation to the ship's namesakes.)
The 505-foot DDG honors the careers of
two legendary Navy heroes, Commodore David Porter (17801843) and his son, Vice Adm.
David Dixon Porter (18131891), whose individual exploits earned them places of honor in
naval history. The elder Porter achieved fame while in command of the frigate Essex
in the War of 1812 by capturing the first British warship taken by the U.S. Navy in that
conflict. He later served as a member of the Board of Navy Commissioners before resigning
his commission to become commander in chief of the Mexican Navy. He died while serving as
U.S. Minister to Turkey.
Vice Adm. David Dixon Porter--considered
one of the most colorful U.S. naval officers ever to command a squadron--distinguished
himself during the Civil War by rising from the rank of lieutenant to rear admiral in only
two years. During the New Orleans campaign in 1862, he commanded a mortar flotilla under
Adm. David G. Farragut and captured Forts Jackson and St. Philip. He later assisted Gen.
William T. Sherman in the capture of Arkansas Post, and aided Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the
siege of Vicksburg. After the war, he served as superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy
(18661869) and as a senior advisor to the secretary of the Navy. In 1870 he became the
Navy's senior ranking flag officer.
Four previous ships have borne the name Porter:
a steam torpedo boat (TB 6), which served from 1897 to 1912, and three destroyers: DD 59,
which served in World War I; DD 356, which was sunk by Japanese forces off the Solomon
Islands in 1942; and DD 800, which participated in combat action during World War II and
the Korean Conflict.
The 8,950-ton Porter is equipped
with the Aegis combat weapons system, which includes the SPY-1D phased-array radar; the
Mk41 Vertical Launching System, which fires a combination of up to 90 Standard
surface-to-air missiles and/or Tomahawk surface-to-surface missiles; and the SQQ-89
antisubmarine warfare (ASW) system, the major components of which are a bow-mounted
SQS-53C sonar and an SQR-19 towed-array sonar. The Porter also is equipped with
eight Harpoon antiship missile launchers and six Mk46 torpedo tubes as well as two Mk15
Phalanx CIWSs (close-in weapon systems) and a 5-inch/54-caliber gun; the ship also
operates two Sikorsky-built SH-60B ASW helicopters.
"This commissioning is a joyous
event," said Nanos, "a day never to be forgotten by her crew, or by the
thousands of craftsmen at places like Ingalls Shipbuilding, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon,
United Defense, and hundreds of other locations who have put their hearts and souls, and
their skills, into this ship."
Cdr. Kenneth V. Spiro is the first
commanding officer of the 21 officers and 322 enlisted personnel assigned to the Porter,
which is homeported in Norfolk, Va., as a unit of Destroyer Squadron Two.
USNS Bruce C. Heezen
Christened at Halter Marine
A Navy ship named by students of an
elementary school in Rhode Island has been christened in ceremonies at the Halter Marine
shipyard in Moss Point, Miss. The USNS Bruce C. Heezen (T-AGS 64), the last of five
Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ships built by Halter Marine, will be operated by
the Military Sealift Command for the oceanographer of the Navy.
The new AGS was named by a group of
fifth-grade students from Oak Lawn Elementary School in Cranston, R.I., whose entry won a
nationwide competition--unique in naval history--sponsored by the Navy and the Navy
League. The contest was the key component of a larger initiative to encourage students to
learn more about the maritime sciences, naval oceanography, and use of the Internet. The
Oak Lawn students attended the christening ceremonies as guests of the Newport County
(R.I.) Council of the Navy League.
The 329-foot 4,762-ton ship is named for
oceanographer Bruce C. Heezen (19241977), a marine scientist who did pioneering work in
plate tectonics and ocean floor exploration. Through grants supported by the Navy and the
Office of Naval Research, Heezen helped compile extensive oceanographic depth soundings
which identified the midocean rift valleys, providing a visual interpretation of the
extensive fracture zones that mark the movements of the oceanic crust. He also contributed
to the design and construction of instruments capable of determining ocean floor depths
and charting their topography; the instruments were used to produce the famous Tharp
physiographic maps of all of the major oceans of the world. Heezen died while performing
research on board the nuclear-powered research submarine NR-1.
The ceremony's principal speaker was
Under Secretary of the Navy Jerry MacArthur Hultin. Susan E. Lautenbacher, wife of Vice
Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., deputy chief of naval operations for resources, warfare
requirements, and assessments, was the ship's sponsor; Esther Dauch, Heezen's mother, was
the matron of honor.
Among the other dignitaries participating
in the 25 March ceremonies were Rear Adm. Winford G. Ellis, oceanographer of the Navy;
Rear Adm. Gordon S. Holder, commander of the Military Sealift Command; Rear Adm. David P.
Sargent Jr., program executive officer, expeditionary warfare, office of the assistant
secretary of the Navy for research, development, and acquisition; Rear Adm. Kenneth E.
Barbor, commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command; Navy League National
President Jack M. Kennedy; and Dan Mortimer, CEO and executive vice president of Halter
Marine Group.
The Navy's oceanographic survey ships
conduct scientific surveys of the world's oceans. In addition to mapping the ocean floor
to update the Navy's nautical charts, they also analyze the physical properties of the
water column as well as the composition of the ocean floor, launch and recover various
instrument packages, and conduct acoustic property measurements. The ships built in recent
years possess the computer capability needed to process and analyze such data onboard.
USNS Bold Upgraded For
Littoral Warfare Ops
The Space and Naval Warfare Systems
Command has installed a second-generation surveillance towed-array sensor system (SURTASS)
on an ocean surveillance ship (T-AGOS). The Stalwart-class T-AGOS USNS Bold, based
at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek in Norfolk, Va., now has a surface-ship tracking
capability and has been upgraded with a twin-line towed array and new
commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) acoustic processing and communications equipment.
The upgrades are expected to enhance the
ability of the ship's SURTASS system to operate in the high-clutter acoustic environment
of shallow-water areas in the littorals. The twin-line array, which was developed by a
team that included the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Chesapeake
Sciences, and the Navy's Array Technical Support Center in Little Creek, uses COTS
telemetry architecture and possesses the flexibility for towing in shallow water. The
array consists of two parallel arrays--separated by several meters--that will be used to
resolve left-right ambiguities and compensate for back-lobe rejection.
The processing and communications
upgrades, developed and installed by Raytheon Systems Company, include: (a) improvements
to the desktop computers (FORCE CPU-20/7 central processing units, a second 100-mBit
Ethernet local-area network, and the SOLARIS operating system); (b) systems that enhance
the ship's capability to process bi-static acoustic waveforms; (c) improved connectivity
with joint maritime command information systems, Link 11, and secure voice; and (d) a
secret Internet protocol router network. Also installed is a Joint Task force Surveillance
upgrade, which provides an improved surface-ship tracking capability through use of a
fused surface-subsurface display that can rapidly separate surface from subsurface
contacts.
Patrol Wings Renamed To Reflect
New Recce Role
The Navy's patrol wings have been
redesignated to reflect the increasing role played by the P-3 Orion maritime patrol
aircraft flown by Navy patrol squadrons (VPs) in overland reconnaissance and the
absorption by two patrol wings of the Navy's two land-based fleet air reconnaissance (VQ)
squadrons, which fly EP-3E electronic reconnaissance aircraft.
The Chief of Naval Operations directed
that the patrol functional and type wings be redesignated, effective 26 March, patrol and
reconnaissance wings. Accordingly, Commander Patrol Wings, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, and
Commander Patrol Wings, U.S. Pacific Fleet, have been redesignated Commander Patrol and
Reconnaissance Wings, U.S. Atlantic Fleet and Commander Patrol and Reconnaissance Wings,
U.S. Pacific Fleet, respectively. Their subordinate type wings, Commander Patrol Wings
(CPWs) 5, 10, and 11, have been redesignated Commander Patrol and Reconnaissance Wings
(CPRWs) 5, 10, and 11, respectively.
The redesignation reflects the alignment
of VQ-1under CPW-10 three years ago and, more recently, of VQ-2 under CPW-11. The addition
of littoral warfare systems, especially long-range optics and sophisticated data links,
have made the P-3 aircraft invaluable as overland surveillance platforms in such crisis
areas as Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo.
NOAA Corps Resumes Recruit
Training at USMMA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) Commissioned Corps has graduated its first class of officer recruits
after a hiatus of four years. The NOAA Corps, which last year survived budgetary cuts that
threatened its continued existence, had lost nearly half of its strength and had frozen
new recruitment while awaiting a final decision on its future.
The new class of recruits (10 men and
seven women) has completed three months of training at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy
(USMMA) in Kings Point, N.Y., where the recruits received instruction in--among other
skills, subjects, and technologies--ship management, bridge operations, radar plotting,
navigation, firefighting, and service protocol. They also received at-sea experience on
the USMMA training ship Kings Pointer, the sister ship of two ships in the NOAA
fleet.
NOAA Corps officers manage and operate
the agency's 15 research ships and 14 aircraft. The new officers already have been
detailed to their initial two-year assignments on NOAA ships or aircraft.
NOAA officials said they plan to schedule
two officer recruit training classes per year until full officer strength is attained.
NOAA now has 240 officers on board, but is mandated by Congress to maintain a minimum of
264 and a maximum of 299 officers.
Sea Service Notes
Capt. Evelyn Fields has been nominated
by President Bill Clinton for promotion to rear admiral and to become the director
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps. If
confirmed, Fields would succeed Rear Adm. William L. Stubblefield, who has retired
after 35 years of service (29 at NOAA).
The Navy has decided to repair the
damaged Spruance-class destroyer (DD) USS Arthur W. Radford, which suffered
severe damage to her bow during a 4 February collision with a Saudi Arabian container ship
off the Virginia Capes. She will be repaired at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Va.
Repair costs are estimated by the Navy to be approximately $32.7 million, according to the
Virginian Pilot.
The New Carissa, a 6,000-ton
oil tanker that ran aground into coastal waters near Coos Bay, Ore., and
spilled part of its cargo, was sent to the bottom by Navy ships. The rugged
tanker's hulk, towed 280 miles out to sea, withstood charges placed by Navy explosive
ordnance personnel, but began to settle after being punctured by 69 five-inch rounds fired
by the Spruance-class destroyer USS David R. Ray. The hulk was definitively
dispatched by a torpedo fired from the Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered attack submarine USS
Bremerton.
The Perry-class guided-missile frigate
ex-USS Reid--decommissioned last year--has been commissioned in the Turkish
Navy as the Gelibolou (Turkish for Gallipoli), according to the San Diego
Tribune.
The Department of the Navy has issued
a record of decision (ROD) on the disposition of the former Naval Training Center
(NTC) San Diego, Calif. The ROD, the final step in the environmental evaluation
process mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, certified that
disposition of the former NTC is consistent with a proposed reuse plan developed by the
city of San Diego. |
