Energy

Navy Sec. Mabus: LCS Freedom Ready To Keep Peace In The Pacific

By

CAPITOL HILL: Navy Secretary Ray Mabus talked up the controversial Littoral Combat Ship days before departing for Asia to visit the first LCS, USS Freedom, which recently arrived in Singapore (sporting a sniffy camo paint job). Freedom has been bedeviled by cost overruns, delays, and manufacturing defects, with a new problem, seawater contamination in lubricant fluid, arising on its trans-Pacific trip. But the bigger picture Mabus said, is how this new class of small and nimble ship will cooperate with foreign partners to keep the peace in the volatile South China Sea and the strategic Strait of Malacca.

“Freedom is the first of its class, and it was built as an experimental ship, and every first of the class has some issues,” Mabus said of the seawater contamination, speaking to reporters after a Friday speech on energy security hosted by the Truman National Security Project. “One of the reasons we sent Freedom forward on deployment was to see what those issues were.” Keep reading →

Published May 3, 2013 at 7:00 PM

Marines, Navy March Into ‘Fiscal Valley Forge’

By

PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA: As budgets tighten, the Navy and Marine Corps are looking at a host of ways to save, from installing LED lights on ships to slowing vehicle purchases to centralizing power on the Chief of Naval Operations’ staff.

“We are entering a fiscal Valley Forge, a time of austerity,” said Ariane Whittemore, the Marine Corps’s assistant deputy commandant for resources. Her analogy invoked George Washington’s brutal winter of 1777-1778, when the starving Continental Army lost a quarter of its men but emerged a leaner, harder force. Keep reading →

Published September 12, 2012 at 5:00 AM

DoD Moves Fast on Smart Grid Energy Tech; Boeing, Siemens Join Up

By

The next generation of smart grid may be deployed first by the military.

The Department of Defense is the largest energy consumer in the US, and is facing many of the same challenges as the rest of the country with aging infrastructure and an increasing need to use renewable fuels. As the forces become more serious about meeting those challenges, their contractors are rushing to help them. Keep reading →

Published August 15, 2011 at 9:36 AM