And the winner is … both
Yesterday, in-house heavy hitter Chris Cavas broke the news that both Lockheed Martin and Austal USA have been waiting for all year, and both companies can be happy with it. After a year-long wait, the...
View ArticleNew gun for hire
Here is a look at the Navy’s new Flight IIA destroyer the Jason Dunham, a product of Bath Iron Works, Maine. The service is set to commission the Dunham on Saturday. The ship is named after Marine Cpl....
View ArticleGobsmacked
Those with a particularly British cultural literacy know the meaning of this great slang term, but for the rest of us (including yours truly), “gobsmacked” means “utterly astounded.” It also describes...
View ArticleThe Navy strikes
Navy ships and subs launched a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles at Libyan air defenses Saturday, including this one, filmed by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jonathan Sunderman, leaping...
View ArticleSan Antonio: still pierside — but getting there
The amphibious transport dock Mesa Verde left its Naval Station Norfolk pier at 9:05 Wednesday morning as the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group began deploying to the Med and the Libya crisis. As it pulled...
View ArticleDaly: Amphibious forces are more relevant than ever
The deputy commander of Fleet Forces Command used his keynote speech at the decommissioning of the amphibious assault ship Nassau in Norfolk March 31 to stump for continued support for the “Gator Navy”...
View ArticleTop ship-driver chosen
At a San Diego, Calif. trainer, over rounds of virtual underway replenishments, man overboards, and pierside moorings, the Navy’s top junior officer shipdriver emerged from a field of 28 finalists, the...
View ArticleBush to make first-ever overseas deployment
The vision that began with a January 2001 contract award will be fully realized on Wednesday, May 11, when the carrier George H.W. Bush leaves Norfolk to begin its first-ever combat deployment. The...
View ArticleBack where it belongs … in the water
Twenty months in dry dock will end Saturday, May 21, when the carrier Theodore Roosevelt checks out of Dry Dock 11 at Newport News Shipbuilding (so nice to be able to use the simple name again, though...
View ArticleIt still floats
We’ll let the picture tell the story: The carrier Theodore Roosevelt got underway Saturday for the first time in nearly two years when it left its dry dock at Newport News Shipbuilding and entered...
View ArticleSome good news, for a change
The much-maligned amphibious transport dock ship San Antonio returned to Norfolk Thursday afternoon after 10 days of sea trials, and commanding officer Cmdr. Thomas Kait seemed like a very happy man...
View ArticleI’m thinkin’ that’s Lincoln
An eagle-eyed reader named “Mike” wrote us over the weekend to make an interesting point about the Navy’s photo illustration released the day the Navy announced that the second Gerald R. Ford-class...
View ArticleOne for the history books
No, it’s not a doctored photo. That’s two — TWO — San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships operating simultaneously. To be fair, two of the other three commissioned ships in the class are also...
View ArticleFreedom fades from gray to black
What’s wrong with this picture? Freedom, the first littoral combat ship, has been in service for only two and a half years. But it’s lost that new ship shine. Exhaust blackens the superstructure and...
View ArticleAlmost back in the fleet
The carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower is underway for sea trials following a nine-month maintenance availability at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Va. Ike’s planned incremental availability began...
View ArticleThe ship that buried bin Laden
It’s gotta be at least a little frustrating. You’re just wrapping up a highly successful deployment and you’ve finally got a whole mess of reporters who want to talk to you about it. But they don’t....
View ArticleSea spray and sea trials
SURFLANT and the San Antonio wanted to tout what officials are calling a successful second phase of sea trials for the much-troubled ship, so they invited me and five other reporters and photogs to...
View ArticleHome for Dad’s day
The destroyer Stout came home to Norfolk Saturday following a Med cruise in support of theater security operations and ballistic missile deterrence … … and just in time for Father’s Day: Stout took...
View ArticleIt’s a real FRUKUS
No, we haven’t lost our sense of decorum here at Scoop Deck. FRUKUS 2011 is an invitational naval exercise now underway off the Virginia coast involving ships from Russia, France, the U.K. and the U.S....
View ArticleGood works in Jax
More than 40 sailors from the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower spent the morning of July 26 sprucing up a resource center for the homeless in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., during a three-day port call in...
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