Happy re-birthday Navy!

     Everybody in the Navy knows that they had better have their Service Dress Blues ready for the first part of October because that is when Navy Day Ball goes down. October 13, 1775, that is our Navy's birthday right? Yes and no. let me explain.  The Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, established during the War of Independence by the Continental Congress, ships were built, seamen recruited and officers trained to lead these men and vessels into war. When the War of Independence was over all the ships were sold and the seamen and officers were let go.

When the Constitution was ratified in 1798, Congress was empowered to provide and maintain a Navy. That was when the USS Constitution and USS Constellation were constructed(plus 4 more ships), but the Navy was a branch under the Department of War.
     It wasn't until a Naval war with France was on the horizon that our country realized the need for a permanent department able to procure, train and equip Sailors and ships, this war is now known as the Quasi-War.  so on April 30th, 1798, the Department of the Navy was established with Benjamin Stoddert as the first Secretary of the Navy.
Does this mean the Navy has two birthdays? Well... no, as an active duty Sailor, October 13th is the Navy's birthday.  That is when our Founding Fathers sat down in Philadelphia and voted to construct two ships armed with guns to set sail to intercept British ships carrying ammunition to America.  April 30th is an important day in Naval history though, and I hope this little blog can shed some light on the importance that this day holds.

11 Carrier Navy

     It is a congressional mandate that the United States Navy have 11 aircraft carriers in service at any given time.  Yes there has been a modification of this to allow the retirement of the USS Enterprise in 2012, but the commissioning of the USS Gerald R. Ford in 2015 will return the Navy to a 11 Carrier Navy.

     What does the SecDEF Gates think of this?  In May 2010, at a  Navy League's Sea-Air-Space conference, Secretary Gates questioned the need of a 11 A/C Carrier Navy. He spoke of the considerable mismatch we hold over any other country's Navy, no other country has more than two operational A/C Carrier. Along with the over match, Gates joked that tracking down pirates with billion dollar vessels is a bit of over kill. He used that to lead into his desire to use smaller more capable brown water ships like the Littoral Combat Ship despite its current production problems.  He also questioned whether a multi-billion dollar carrier was in the countries best interest, especially when the Navy is about to take on the incredibly expensive task of replacing the ohio class ballistic missile submarines. So what is SecDEF getting to, obviously he does not want to get rid of carriers, but he does want to think of ways to more efficiently use our carrier force. 
     Now that Gates is on his way out and Panetta is in, does that mean that things will be different? Yes and no. Secretary of the Navy  Ray Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Roughead are advocates of our current 11 carrier Navy and feel it is vital to our National security. Panetta will definitely listen to his top people in the Navy but his past history shows he is not afraid to cut military spending. He voted for a 5% cut across the board in military spending when he was a congressman and cuts in missile defense. Also, the president has asked for a 400 billion dollar reduction in military spending over the next decade and the majority of those reductions are going to be penned by Panetta. One of the obvious places to cut spending is to eliminate one or two of the carrier strike groups.
     

This day in Navy History - Operation Frequent Wind

Operation Frequent wind - April 29, 1975, the evacuation of 1,373 American civilians and 5,595 "at-risk" Vietnamese from Saigon, South Vietnam by helicopter. The evacuation aircraft came from the Task Force 76 led by the USS Blueridge.


photo of evacuation in progress. 

There were so many helicopters landing on the task forces ships that there was no room for any more. so the Sailors simply pushed them overboard! that would have been fun.

Who is Leon Panetta? Our new Secretary of Defense, thats who

     **Dont be afraid to be the First person to leave a comment on my blog....EVER** You know you want to!!

     So Robert Gates wife finally convinced him to hang up the suit and retire to the private sector. With two ongoing wars, a conflict in Libya, trouble in Lebanon and high tensions in the Persian Gulf who should the president select to replace Mr. Gates? The White House has confirmed that on Thursday Obama will name Leon Panetta, currently director of the Central Intelligence Agency, as the next Defense secretary.
Who will take the reigns at the CIA?  Gen. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan.

     A Democrat, Lawyer and Professor, Panetta, has been in politics since the 1970s when he was a congressman for the 16th district of California. Most of his work focused on budget issues, civil rights, education, health, and environmental issues such as preventing oil drilling off the California coast during his time as a Congressman. He was re-elected nine times as a Congressman and eventually left his post to take on the role of Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton White House.  He impressed President Clinton so much that he was appointed Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997.
     Panetta was nominated Director of the Central Intelligence Agency by President Obama on January 5, 2009, but not to the approval of a few high powered individuals. There were complaints that Mr. Panetta did not have the necessary intelligence background needed to run such an organization. President Obama's defense of Panetta was that he was President Clinton's chief of staff and sat in on highly sensitive briefs every day for 3 years and had a clear understanding of what the "Three Letter Agencies" (NSA,CIA,DIA,FBI,ext) were all about.  During his time as the director of the CIA, Mr.Panetta, has stated his preference and desire to use Unmanned Ariel Vehicles in a more prevalent role.
     He is a long time friend of Vice President Joe Biden from their time in congress together and has been known to back the VP in heated white house power struggles. This could be an especially important factor in the VP's effort to remove war fighters from Afghanistan. If Mr.Biden gets Panetta to back him completely and knowing Panetta's bias towards UAV's, we could be seeing a fast withdrawal from Afghanistan, or atleast faster than it is currently going.
     I think Leon Panetta will be a good SecDef, he will be the second oldest man to fill that position since its inception, and only time will tell if he will be the man who will be credited with getting our troops out on his watch. I am particularly interested to see how he treats the military members, Secretary Gates twitted this "I've done my best to care for them as if they were my own sons and daughters", I can only hope Panetta feels the same way. He did spend two years as a second and first LT in the Army, so that is a plus.

Whats this all about

It has been ten year now that I have been in the Navy and I have loved every minute of it. I cant wait to see what the next ten to twenty years have in store for me. You might ask why I started this blog, why write an article about news that anyone can get online. Well here is my answer to that, I want to create a place that I can put my thoughts down on "paper" about whats going on in the Navy today and hopefully help people learn new things about the Navy they might not have already known.  I also need to improve my writing skills and I thought to myself what better way to improve my skills than to write everyday about something I love, the Navy.  I hope to have fun with this site and have lots of discussions with you about the Navy. GO NAVY!