Welcome to the CavasShips Podcast with Christopher P. Cavas and Chris Servello…a weekly podcast looking at naval and maritime events and issues of the day – in the US, across the seas and around the world. This week, noted author and scholar Nicholas Lambert has a new book out where he dives into Mahan and lessons from Naval History. Be sure to check out friend of the pod Steve Deal’s review of Nick’s new book: The Neptune Factor: Alfred Thayer Mahan and the Concept of Sea Power.
Please send us feedback by DM’ing @CavasShips or @CSSProvision or you can email chriscavas@gmail.com or cservello@defaeroreport.com.
This Week’s Naval Round Up:
The U S Naval Air Systems Command on March 8 issued a flight clearance for the V-22 tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft, grounded after a late-November accident in Japan killed 8 US Air Force airmen. An Air Force-led investigation into the accident identified the material failure that lead to the mishap, although the Pentagon did not reveal the specific failure. The aircraft is key to US Marine Corps operations, particularly those of the service’s seven Marine Expeditionary Units, and is in the process of becoming the US Navy’s primary carrier-on-board delivery, or COD, aircraft operating with aircraft carriers at sea.
The White House on March 7 announced a US effort to establish a temporary maritime pier in Gaza to provide greatly-increased humanitarian aid to the war-torn region. While details still are being developed, it appears the US military will deploy its joint logistics-over-the-shore, or JLOTS, system to provide an expeditionary pier along the Gaza shoreline in the Mediterranean Sea. JLOTS, operated by the US Navy and Army, allows ships to transfer cargo to smaller vessels for offloading cargo to a temporary causeway built for the purpose. According to the Pentagon, it will likely take several weeks to plan and execute the pier and system.
A Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile on March 6 struck the merchant ship TRUE CONFIDENCE in the Gulf of Aden, killing three mariners and injuring at least four more – the first mariner fatalities since the Houthi began attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November. The crew of the Liberian-owned, Barbados-registered TRUE CONFIDENCE abandoned ship and were rescued by the Indian destroyer KOLKATA, while the TRUE CONFIDENCE was last seen adrift and burning in the Gulf of Aden.
The US Sixth Fleet announced March 6 the BATAAN Amphibious Ready Group with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit left the Mediterranean Sea and is returning to the US East Coast. The group, including the amphibious ships CARTER HALL and MESA VERDE, deployed in mid-July and was twice extended to provide a US presence in the eastern Mediterranean after the Hamas-Israel war broke out in October.
The US destroyer JOHN FINN carried a transit of the Taiwan Strait on March 5th, the second US surface transit of 2024 and the second in a row by the Japan-based US destroyer. Meanwhile, China on March 7 announced it would raise its 2024 defense budget by 7.2 percent, the same amount it was raised in 2023. That yearly gain also follows a 7.1 percent increase in 2022.
US Marine Corps Lieutenant General Karsten Heckl on March 7 confirmed the Pentagon so-called “pause” on procurement of LPD landing ship dock amphibious ships is over. Speaking at a Capitol Hill event, Heckl said an effort to buy smaller, cheaper ships or cancel LPD production altogether was over. The Pentagon pause, announced in March 2023, followed three consecutive Department of the Navy studies looking at LPD design alternatives, all of which reaffirmed plans to continue production of Flight II San Antonio-class LPDs.
The British carrier HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH on March 7 arrived in Scotland for drydocking and repairs to her starboard propeller shaft. Problems were discovered February 3 just before the carrier was to leave Portsmouth, England for a series of extended exercises. HMS PRINCE OF WALES, Britain’s other aircraft carrier, is standing in for QUEEN ELIZABETH on those exercises.
