tactical blueberry

half-staff

KABUL, Afghanistan — A military helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan, killing 31 U.S. special operation troops and seven Afghan commandos…

The Associated Press has learned that more than 20 Navy SEALs from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden were among those lost in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

I’m just heartbroken. And I don’t know what it is about August, but this makes it four years running when the month has brought me great change and great sorrow.

Rest in peace, brothers.

continuing non-resolution

Okay. The president’s new FY12 budget is getting a lot of press these days, but all that attention is perhaps distracting folks from something very important and significantly more urgent: Congress still hasn’t passed the FY11 budget. And we’re almost out of cash.

This is bad. The Navy Times colorfully reports:

 As it stands, the Navy has less than three weeks left of a budget. No one knows what comes next. That uncertainty has left planners reconsidering yard repairs and scheduled projects on-the-fly. Already, the Navy has canceled five shipyard availabilities set for March and April, and as many as 29 are on the chopping block if Congress renews the funding extension, known as a continuing resolution, instead of passing the proposed budget.

Meanwhile, the service’s just-proposed budget for the next fiscal year, a part of the larger federal budget, seems certain to sail into gridlock in Congress. All this has left the sea service adrift, its top budget official warned.

“Right now, we are in uncharted waters,” Vice Adm. Terry Blake said Wednesday in a speech before the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Naval Academy Alumni Association. “We have three budgets in the air,” and the prospect of a year-long continuing resolution. He added, “We have never been in that situation before.”

Already fouling up the service’s finances, the cuts will get closer to the bone the longer the stopgap funding is in place. If it is extended through the year, for instance, the Navy couldn’t afford to pay sailors their final paycheck this year, Blake said.

For those of you who may be reading, and who may have sway with Congress: Please, fix this. It’s really not funny anymore.

yes, this is what they look like

superlasers

Okay, the Navy’s been in the news this week and last. First, it was bad news — the firing of another CO. Then, we got a (small) taste of the good news as a boat from USS Laboon took out a pirate skiff in the Gulf of Aden on Monday. Then, it was more bad news — a sailor tragically fell from her destroyer and was lost at sea.

But today — oh, today. Scientific breakthrough. Superlasers.

Wired’s “Danger Room” has the scoop:

But now the Navy thinks it’s broken a power threshold. Tests in December of a new injector yielded the electrons necessary to get the Free Electron Laser up to “megawatt class” beams, the Office of Naval Research said in a statement issued today, nine months ahead of schedule. One of the project’s lead researchers, Dinh Nguyen, said in the statement that he hoped to “set a world record for the average current of electrons.”

I don’t even know what that means, but I’m damned excited about it. They’re expecting these…ahem…carrier-killer-killers…to be in shipboard tests by 2018. Too cool. I guess it really finally is the 21st century.

the great green fleet

Thomas Friedman’s latest column in the Times shines a welcome spotlight on the Navy’s two-year-old push to “go green” in a big way — including having set a lofty goal of having 50% of all the Department of the Navy’s operations, afloat and ashore, powered by alternative energy by 2020.

The underlying thesis is simple — Congress can’t keep itself from buckling under the pressure of Big Oil and Dirty Coal, but the DoD, (with SECNAV leading the charge,) must do everything that can literally save lives, including going green:

Their efforts are based in part on a recent study from 2007 data that found that the U.S. military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan.

SECNAV has plans in the works to put to sea an entire 13-ship carrier battle group wherein every component member is powered by cleaner energies — nuclear power and 50-50 biofuel blends. Even the air wings would be flying biofuels. This “Great Green Fleet” should be getting in gear by 2012 and fully combat operational by 2016 — and the progress made already, including a successful super-sonic biofuel flight and a handful of surface ships in various phases of production and testing, is keeping spectators impressed by the effort.

A green fleet could fly and drive further on the same tank of fuel, increasing combat effectiveness through the bigger operational range, saving taxpayers millions in fuel costs, all while keeping those deadly fuel convoys to a minimum.

It’s a program of scientific innovation driven by solid leadership and allowed the resources to be successful — and with NASA’s shuttle program trickling to a halt, it’s probably among our military’s most inspiring and forward-thinking campaigns.

the ‘echo’ version

I suppose there are probably relatively few people whose eyes are called to attention by a headline like “Training changes trickle out to the fleet,” but mine were when the line popped into my Google Reader this afternoon. I eagerly clicked through to the story, which began:

Surface Navy officials are at work on the newest edition of an unglamorous but highly influential document in the lives of sailors — the Surface Warfare Training Manual — that promises more training at sea and more live-fire events for ships gearing up to deploy.

My former colleagues can attest to my absolute love for the institutionalization of training procedures. To me, a corporate body (or similar structure) that is constantly reviewing its own procedures and reinventing itself — while at the same time holding fast to its core principles — is the most dynamic place to work. Because when the workplace itself changes, each day brings new challenges that motivate and inspire everyone involved. The job becomes not just about doing the work, or even about doing the work better; it actually becomes about doing better work smarter. It’s a thrilling prospect.

The new version of the manual is version E — as in ‘Echo’ — and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.