After an 11 month, £20m refit, the HMS Argyll is currently sailing on six-month deployment in the middle east. Photo: Royal Navy

LONDON (Dow Jones)–Any attempt by Iran to disrupt the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz would be “illegal and unsuccessful”, U.K. Defence Secretary Philip Hammond will say Thursday.

In advanced extracts of a speech he is due to give in Washington, Hammond will say disruption to the flow of oil through the strait would threaten regional and global economic growth and it was in all interests that the arteries of global trade are kept open.

“The [U.K.] Royal Navy will continue to play a substantial role as part of the Combined Maritime Forces, both at the Headquarters in Bahrain, and through our mine counter-measure vessels which help maintain freedom of navigation in the Gulf,” he will say, according to the extracts.

Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, has threatened to block oil deliveries through the Strait of Hormuz if global powers impose sanctions on the country’s oil industry over its nuclear activities. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said last week that the strait carries about 20% of all oil traded worldwide.

Hammond is visiting Washington Thursday to hold his first meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and discuss Afghanistan, the Gulf and defense cooperation.

In his speech to be delivered at the Atlantic Council, Hammond will also say too many North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries were failing to meet their financial responsibilities in the group.

“Too many are opting out of operations or contributing but a fraction of what they should be capable of. This is a European problem, not an American one. And it is a political problem, not a military one,” he will say according to the extracts.

-By Nicholas Winning, Dow Jones Newswires

WHAT?!

First of all, any seaman, military or commercial, can tell you there is no heckler known as the “Filipino Monkey“. Rather it’s a phrase that’s been uttered anonymously by thousands of mariners for decades. This harassing radio call with racial origins is made over the radio when a sailor hears the distinct accent of a Filipino mariner on the VHF radio.

Why you may ask?

Mostly out of boredom but also for the simple reason that it is sure to get a heated response.

It also happens to be the bane of every Watch Officer’s existence; a joke that is no longer funny but refuses to die. Tim’s Times gave us the details behind this heckle back in September 2008:

The two tone alarm has gone again and this time it’s a pan pan from La Coruna Radio, other side of the Bay of Biscay. You wouldn’t mind so much if it was just the official users of VHF and MF radio that you had to contend with, but oh no there is every manner of animal sound, and jungle noise on the VHF from people who should not be on the radio, let alone a ship. One moron was calling out, “Gorilla from Manila, and Filipino monkey” my watchman who is from Manila laughed and said that it is often Indian’s who call this out to provoke a response from Filipinos, who say “Indian I can’t see you, but I can smell you”. So childish and these guys are in charge of ships, frightening, and these days it is all being recorded, so you must be dealing with stupidity, says a lot for the profession….

Boing Boing tells us;

Indeed, the voice in the audio sounds different from the one belonging to an Iranian officer shown speaking to the cruiser, USS Port Royal over a radio from a small open boat in the video released by Iranian authorities. He is shown in a radio exchange at one point asking the U.S. warship to change from the common bridge-to-bridge channel 16 to another channel, perhaps to speak to the Navy without being interrupted…

“For 25 years there’s been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats,” he said. “He could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship.”

And the Monkey has stamina.

“He used to go all night long. The guy is crazy,” he said. “But who knows how many Filipino Monkeys there are? Could it have been a spurious transmission? Absolutely.”

Initially I was shocked that a Navy ship, or any ship, could not have known the taunt was a joke. This is seamanship 101. I clearly remember having the taunt whispered in my ear by an upperclassmen during my plebe year that the Naval Academy and by the time I received my officers license I had heard it hundreds of time. How could the officers of the cruiser Port Royal not know this was a common joke? I’m admitting still confused but after hearing the audio file I must say it doesn’t sound like the typical ‘Filipino Monkey’ taunt.

I’ll give the last comment to the cruise ship captain quoted by the Navy Times since it’s both accurate and contains good advice to mariners:

“It was just a gut feeling, something the merchants did. Guys would get bored, one guy hears it, comes back a year later and does it for himself,”

The former skipper noted that he warned his crew about hecklers when preparing to transit Hormuz. “I tell them they’ll hear things on there that will be insulting,” he said. “You tell your people that you’ll hear things that are strange, insulting, aggravating, but you need to maintain a professional posture.”

A civilian mariner with experience in that region said the Filipino Monkey phenomenon is worldwide, and has been going on for years.

“They come on and say ‘Filipino Monkey’ in a strange voice. They might say it two or three times. You’re standing watch on bridge and you’re monitoring Channel 16 and all of a sudden it comes over the radio. It can happen anytime. It’s been a joke out there for years.”

While it happens all over the world, it’s more likely to occur around the Strait of Hormuz because there is so much shipping traffic, he said.

You can watch the Iranian video at EagleSpeak.

Soldiers from Ft. Lee, Va., helped mark Veterans Day ceremonies at the World War II Memorial in Washington.

Joshua Donahue and his daughter Addelyne walked through the Cambridge American Cemetery in Madingley, U.K., after a service. The cemetery is the only American World War II burial ground in England. It is the resting place of 3,812 American military personnel who died in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Veteran Philip Malins, 92, took part in two minutes of silence at the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, U.K.

A Filipino soldier played a trumpet at the Manila American Cemetery in Taguig, Philippines, at a ceremony to honor veterans and American and Filipino troops killed in World War II. More than 17,000 Americans and 570 Filipinos are buried at the cemetery.

David Price, 4, son of a U.S Navy officer, played with his toy car at the American Cemetery in Taguig, Philippines.

An American couple walked past thousands of marble crosses to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the American Cemetery in Taguig, Philippines. The cemetery contains the remains Americans who died during World War II in the Pacific, China, India, and Burma along with Filipino scouts.

The Rev. Bruce Hawkins attended a ceremony at the Franco-British National Memorial in Thiepval, France.

World War II veteran John Jeffrey, 90, who took part in the D-Day landings, attended a remembrance service at the Cenotaph, a war memorial in London.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy stood at a ceremony in Paris with the children of French servicemen killed in action.

Veterans attended a ceremony in Brussels.

President Barack Obama, center, and U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington bowed their heads for a moment of silence after Mr. Obama placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns during a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.

(c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Some of you may remember a cartoon which appeared during World War I, a drawing showing an inquisitive stranger talking with the gateman at a railway crossing. The gate was painted with the usual black and white stripes, and lying on the river beyond the tracks was a steamer painted with similar markings. The stranger asked, “Why do they paint the stripes on the gate?” And the gateman answered, “Oh, that’s to make them more visible.”

And then the stranger asked, “Well, why do they paint the stripes on the vessel out there?” And the gateman replied, “Oh, that’s to make the ship less visible.”

-Everett Warner [paraphrased from his lecture notes]

A ships in costume, gCaptain brings you Razzle Dazzle; history’s most unusually painted ship. What is Razzle Dazzle? GoTouring.com tells us;

During World War I, the British and Americans faced a serious threat from German U-boats. All attempts to camouflage ships at sea had failed, as the appearance of the sea and sky are always changing.  Any color scheme that was concealing in one situation was conspicuous in others. A British artist and naval officer, Norman Wilkinson, promoted a new camouflage scheme that was derived from the artistic fashions of the time, particularly cubism. Instead of trying to conceal the ship, it simply broke up its lines and made it more difficult for the U-boat captain to determine the ship’s course. The British called this camouflage scheme “Dazzle Painting.” The Americans called it “Razzle Dazzle.”

Artists were enlisted to draw up the camouflage designs. Early in the war, designs were drawn for individual ships, with each ship having its own distinctive pattern. As the war progressed, standard patterns were devised and applied to large numbers of ships. Even the great passenger liners were camouflaged for the duration of the War.

It is unfortunate that there are no color photographs of these WWI ships. People who witnessed convoys of dazzle painted ships reported that the scene was quite dramatic. Imagine sailing across the North Atlantic surrounded by dozens of brightly painted ships, each in different colors and patterns. If you compare the colored drawing with the black and white photograph of the ship “War Clover”, you can get an idea of how much we are missing. Read More…

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The problem confronting a submarine, once his prey has been sighted, resolves itself solely into estimating course and speed of the target, in order to determine how the approach to torpedo fire position should be made. The “dazzle” system of painting is based on this one consideration and that is, of rendering the problem confronting a submarine more difficult, confusing him as to how his approach shall be made and thereby adding in some degree to the safety of the vessel attacked.

U.S. Admiral William S. Sims (1917)

Camopedia has this amazing information on the World War I design team assigned to the project;

ONE METHOD camoufleurs might have used (but did not, apparently) to generate a large number of unique dazzle schemes is the stencil method.

It is indebted to American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921), sometimes called “the father of camouflage,” who (circa 1909) devised a clever, easy way for individuals to design their own camouflage, using cut-out silhouettes.

Whatever the surrounding, said Thayer, a person “has only to cut out a stencil of the soldier, ship, cannon or whatever figure he wishes to conceal, and look through this stencil from the viewpoint under consideration, to learn just what costume from that viewpoint would most tend to conceal this figure.” However, the purpose of dazzle camouflage was confusion, not concealment, so, in the examples below, we have used the silhouette as a mask with which to “find” valuable dazzle designs in an abstract, geometric plan. In studies of human vision, Gestalt psychologists and others have investigated embedded figures or “puzzle pictures” (Wolfgang Köhler called them “camouflaged figures”) in which a simple shape has been adroitly hidden within a larger, more complex surrounding.

In pre-computer days, one could make arbitrary compositions in art by overlapping “systems” on layers of tracing paper, viewed on a light table. Today, it is ever so easy to do the same thing (and much more) by using the “layers” function in software such as Adobe Photoshop. This could have been useful as a way to generate dazzle designs, had all that been available in World War I.

If you are looking for more information on this topic be sure to read things magazine‘s extensive ship camouflage links section.

According a recent MIG report titled “Unmanned Maritime Systems – UAV & USV  Outlook 2012 – 2020“…  they can, but they won’t.

The report suggest a number of problems with the use of unmanned systems. First, the international maritime laws & rules of engagement tightly control the use of weapons at sea. Second, the launch and recovery of the USV can be problematic. Third, the expertise required to conduct a USV operation is out of reach for most commercial seafarers, and poses issues of liability, costs, training, etc.

What is the current state of naval USV technology?

While each maritime power is taking a different view on the development of USVs, the US Navy has identified four types of vehicles for further study:

X-CLASS (SMALL) – The X-Class is unique in that these small, special purpose craft should be purpose-built and not standardized for modularity. But the navy believes to do so would not be cost-effective or efficient due the small size of the craft and the overhead associated with modular construction. The other three classes all benefit from modular construction and all four classes plan to utilize a common command and control system. The X-Class Unmanned Surface Vehicles are about 3 meters in length or smaller and built to support the needs of SOF Support and MIO Support. They have limited endurance, payload, weapons capability and sea-keeping ability.

HARBOR CLASS (7M) – The Harbor Class USVs use a 7 meter RIB as the sea-frame and is capable of being operated in both manned and unmanned modes. The requirements for the Harbor Class are driven by the US Navy’s need for them to be hosted by the majority of warship platforms and to perform advanced ISR and Maritime Security missions. The ISR payload will be arch-mounted such that it can remain in place for manned operation of the craft. Robust electronic warfare, advanced sonar, and deployable payload technologies are also needed to support this class.

SNORKELER CLASS (7M SS) The Snorkeler Class USV is a 7 meter semi-submersible craft operated off a large navy warship platform and designed for a wide range of future operational capabilities. During operation the Snorkeler Class USV  is submerged with only its snorkel above the surface. This mode of operation provides a stable platform in high sea states and inclement weather than other surface hull types. The need for for this class is driven by the MCM Search/ Neutralization and ASW missions of the United States Navy.

FLEET CLASS (11M) – The Fleet Class USVs are 11-meter planing or semi-planing hull craft. They provide moderate speed/endurance while towing MCM sweep gear or high speed and very long endurance to support ASW, SUW, or EW missions. This option is provided by a modular propulsion system. They also support manned operation through the ability to remove and replace their mission systems in less than 24 hours.

The US Navy expects unmanned systems, and Unmanned Surface Vehicles in particular , will provide multiply available force while lowering risk to manned vessels and personnel. These factors could potentially enable a smaller Navy to address widening Navy requirements including anti-piracy missions.

With the Navy’s USV program advancing slowly, what is the overall future of these vehicles in relation to maritime security threats in Somalia?

When launched from a host naval ship, USVs may be an effective tool to increase intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) coverage. Naval professionals are becoming increasingly comfortable with the use of unmanned maritime vehicles. A host of non-lethal and surveillance-only options are likely to be used until lethal weapons are an absolute necessity. The USV can be used to patrol an area on an almost-persistent basis, enabling it to provide a quick response and alert ships in advance of pirates boardings. Plus electronic data collected by USVs could be assist naval intervention units at sea – and be later use for litigation. In face of the growing violence of the Eastern African pirates, it is reasonable to assume that they will gradually become more adept at carrying out night raids.

While USVs are not a panacea to modern piracy, the report suggests that unmanned vehicles will gradually become part of the overall  maritime piracy strategy in both defensive and offensive capacities.

The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), shown under construction in March at Newport News Shipbuilding, is the first in a new class of ships being built for the U.S. Navy. Photo by Ricky Thompson via Huntington Ingalls Industries

NEWPORT NEWS, Va.–Mike Petters keeps a well-thumbed volume of naval history handy on his desk. One of its lessons, he says, is that maintaining a fleet is a long-term national investment that outlasts short-term politics.

“You end up building ships for the administration after next,” said Petters, the president and chief executive of Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. “That’s the history of shipbuilding.”

But with economic constraints putting pressure on the Pentagon’s budget, it may not be the future of shipbuilding — at least in the U.S.

Huntington Ingalls, formed as a spin-off of Northrop Grumman Corp., is building the USS Gerald R. Ford at its shipyard here. The Navy plans to buy the next Ford-class aircraft carrier in fiscal 2013, as part of a request to be submitted to Congress early next year.

In recent months, however, rumors have swirled in Washington about a possible delay. Rather than buying one carrier every five years, as it does now, the Navy may buy one every six or seven years.

Such attempts to save money, Petters said, can drive up the cost of the ships, which the Navy currently estimates at around $11 billion each.

“When you start stretching them out, you have to start disbanding the [shipbuilding] teams, and you have them go do other things,” he said. “So you break those learning curves, and suddenly you’ve lost the opportunity to create efficiency.”

How many ships does the nation need? Not everyone agrees that the Navy should maintain an 11-carrier fleet, its current force, set by law.

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a nongovernmental panel endorsed by Reps. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Ron Paul (R., Texas), concluded in a June report that the Navy could downsize to nine carriers without compromising national security.

“The capabilities to do what we did in the past with fewer carriers are there,” said Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives and a contributor to the report.

Naval shipbuilding has even emerged as an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign, with Republican candidate Mitt Romney proposing a 50% boost in shipbuilding budgets in a speech last week.

In congressional testimony in July, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, now the Navy’s top officer, told lawmakers that a five-year interval between purchases was “about in the sweet spot” for carrier construction. Asked whether a longer interval was being considered, he conceded that a “whole host of items” were on the table in internal discussions about the 2013 budget. Navy officials said no decisions had been made to change the procurement schedule.

Building carriers is a labor-intensive task that requires a sizable work force and major investments in heavy equipment. The 550-acre Newport News shipyard, which stretches for two miles along the James River, is bustling with activity: In addition to the work on the new carrier, employees are busy overhauling the USS Theodore Roosevelt, another nuclear carrier, and are building two Virginia-class submarines.

It also requires handing down skills from one shipbuilder to the next. Inside the machine shop, Jimmy Witt, a 50-year veteran of the yard, supervised shipbuilder Kenny Walker as he machined a 55-ton propeller shaft for the new carrier.

“Young guys are not too fond of the grinding and the legacy shipbuilding stuff,” said Joey Perry, the head of the machine shop. “We’re trying to make this stuff exciting and challenging as a career path.”

Naval analyst and author Norman Polmar said the Newport News yard could easily maintain its nuclear expertise without building carriers at the current rate, because it also builds nuclear-powered submarines. But piecing together a massive carrier, he said, “is a major issue, because that’s 100,000 tons of steel, and it takes a lot of skill to glue it all together.”

The yard currently employs 20,000 people, and with unemployment high around the nation, it has few problems attracting job applicants. Christopher Spanos, a second-generation shipbuilder who is enrolled in the company’s apprentice school, said the yard offered the promise of steady, long-term employment. “When the economy headed downhill, it was time to come back to what you know,” he said.

Petters, the Huntington Ingalls CEO, said the budget debate had forced a return to a recurring discussion in Washington: “How big does the Navy need to be? What do we need a Navy for?”

The key difference now, he said, was the nation’s fiscal situation. “Now we’re at the point where it’s time to make the deal,” he said. “Are we going to build the ship, or are we going to do something else?”

(c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Iran Kilo Class Submarine. Photo courtesy wikicommons

According to several reports this morning, Iran is threatening to send warships to the U.S. East Coast in a shocking threat to the United States.  The threats come as Iranian Navy Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari spoke at a ceremony marking the 31st anniversary of the start of the Iran-Iraq War.

At the ceremony, Sayyari declared “Like the arrogant powers that are present near our marine borders, we will also have a power presence close to American marine borders.”

Iranian navy officials said their ships may go as far as the Gulf of Mexico, and Iran may seek to establish a direct military hotline with the U.S., according to reports from the Iranian press.

The Pentagon, however, does not seem to concerned, dismissing any claims that Iran can pull off an operation of this magnitude.

A report from the ArmyTimes quotes Pentagon spokesman George Little, “We’ll have to see what they do or don’t do after these statements… Whether they can truly project naval power is a question in itself.”

Last week Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the United Nations Generally Assembly in New York, giving a controversial speech causing a number of U.S. and European diplomats to walk out.  In his speech, Ahmadinejad blamed Western powers for a number world problems including slavery, the two world wars and drug trafficking, and also questioned the Holocaust and the circumstances of the 9-11 attacks.

The Russian Navy or VMF is the naval arm of the Russian Military and above is a private video developed as part of a recruitment campaign to boost the number of sailors needed to for a 2015 rearmament program that, according to wikipedia, puts, for the first time in Soviet and Russian history, the development of the navy on an equal footing with strategic nuclear forces.

The program covering the period until 2015 is expected to replace 45% of the military inventory in the army and navy. Out of 4.9 trillion rubles ($192.16 billion) allocated for military rearmament, 25% will go into building new ships. “We are already building practically as many ships as we did in Soviet times,” First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov said during a visit to Severodvinsk in July 2007, “The problem now is not lack of money, but how to optimize production so that the navy can get new ships three, not five, years after laying them down.” According to the list of ships in the Russian Navy today the tonnage of the active navy is approximately 1,300,000, the ships in reserve have a tonnage of more than 300,000, this makes the Russian Navy by far the second largest in the world with a combined tonnage of 1,600,000.

USS New York painting by Tom Freeman, made available by the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command.

Harbor pilot Neil Keating, right, speaks with USS New York Commander William Herrmann on the bridge wing of the ship.

The biggest piece of security equipment at the 9/11 ceremony two weeks ago was the USS New York, a gray behemoth whose bow was made with 7.5 tons of steel from the World Trade Center. Piloting the battleship as it sat in the Hudson River by the World Trade Center site was Capt. Neil Keating, a Sandy Hook Pilot whose brother Paul was one of the 343 firefighters who died 10 years ago Sunday.

Mr. Keating’s fellow harbor pilots made a point of assigning him the special shift when the USS New York makes one its occasional trips to town. He and other Sept. 11 families say they feel a special connection to the ship.

“It’s almost like the trade center is still alive on that ship,” Mr. Keating said. “When you look at the ship and you look at the bow, the steel from the trade center is a different color, and you can see the ripples and discoloration.”

Mr. Keating, who turned 54 two days before the ceremony, said the anniversary is always difficult. But it is also comforting to spend time with his brother’s fellow firefighters. Paul Keating had been off duty that day but ran to help.

The youngest of six children in the family, Paul was known for his friendly nature and one-liner wit. His older brother says it is difficult to live not just with the loss of a brother, but with the constant public reminders of Paul’s death.

Piloting the ship “is very bittersweet. I still have to do my job. It’s very humbling, and an honor for my family.”

Mr. Keating said from the bridge of the ship he could still hear the names being read, and “Amazing Grace.”

“This is where my brother would want me to be,” he said.

By Devlin Barrett, Copyright 2011 Dow Jones

US Navy / U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class

Lockheed Martin says it has submitted a proposal for the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program that will consolidate complex network systems into one modern shipboard computing system for the U.S. Navy.

The CANES program will increase network reliability, while being flexible enough to quickly adapt to future requirements. By consolidating dozens of legacy systems into one, the Navy expects to reduce ownership costs and make maintenance easier.

“Our CANES proposal reflects more than 60 years experience in providing computing and network infrastructure to the U.S. Navy,” said Joe Villani, vice president of CANES for Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems & Sensors business. “Combined with our commercial off-the-shelf-insertion business model, Lockheed Martin is uniquely positioned to deliver a modern, cost-effective information-system network that integrates sailors’ operational needs.”

In March 2010, Lockheed Martin was one of two contractors down selected for the system design and development phase of the CANES program. The Navy has said it expects to choose a contractor for the limited deployment phase in early 2012.