July 4th 1776 – 246 years ago our forefathers laid down claim to be an independent free nation with the declaration of Independence. The road to freedom has never been easy for any group, so as we celebrate let’s all remember.
Those who came before us, whom stood their ground so the rest of us could stand free today!!
Don’t let anyone bully you into giving up your rights even that you may not use them all. They were fought hard for for these 246 years.
Well I can see that Covid sure has taken it’s toll on supply chains and builders for #Shipmodels. Been a very different kind of couple of years. Wanted to let folks know we are still going strong and although things are moving slower they are still moving. Our inventory is stateside so although slower than previous years we still have the same quality and delivery times here. A couple of my suppliers are working towards solutions around the shipping dilemmas and we still can get you the ship models for sale on our website in a timely manner.
I hope all is well and hopefully things will get back to normal soon enough!
Operation Pacific Iron 2021 is scheduled to take place within the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s area of responsibility in July to showcase the U.S. air force’s strategic flexibility, according to Pacific Air Forces.
The announcement comes as U.S.-China tensions continue to simmer over the issues of Taiwan and the South China Sea.
The exercise involves more than 35 aircraft and approximately 800 Airmen from Pacific Air Forces and Air Combat Command, Pacific Air Forces reported on July 13. Notably, 25 F-22 raptors—a seemingly unprecedented number of its kind to deploy to the West Pacific—will join the drill from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.
U.S. Air Force Capt. Veronica S. Perez, chief of Engagements Division, Public Affairs of Pacific Air Forces, told The Epoch Times that the purpose of the operation is “to conduct simulated combat-related dispersal operations to develop tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), for real-world operations.”
“Operationalizing readiness-enhancing concepts is critical to ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” she emphasized.
When asked about the start and completion dates of the operation, Perez said they would not provide specifics at this time over operational security concerns.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Fig” Leaf, a former deputy commander of U.S. Pacific Command, said he’s not aware of a previous exercise utilizing F-22s in such numbers, according to Tribune News Service.
Leaf believed that China should “take it as a demonstration of the legitimacy of the American commitment to the region” because it is not cheap to deploy 25 F-22s from two different bases to the Western Pacific.
Functionally, the F-22 has persistently “demonstrated precision attack capabilities, defeating both air- and ground-based threats with unparalleled lethality and survivability,” according to F-22 manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
“The F-22’s ability to collect and share tactical information with friendly assets enables U.S. and allied forces to engage targets with unmatched battlespace awareness,” says the manufacturer. “The Raptor makes other coalition aircraft more survivable.”
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula and Douglas Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute, commented in 2020 that the F-22 is a fundamentally unique airplane due to the unparalleled integration of stealth, sensor technology, processing power, and unrivaled flight performance.
“Adversaries respect the aircraft and that is precisely why they are regularly deployed as a signal of resolve,” they wrote. “If conflict erupts, F-22s will be at the forefront of operations.”
Operation Pacific Iron 2021 also includes about 10 F-15E Strike Eagles from Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, and two C-130J cargo aircraft from Yokota Air Base, Japan.
Perez declined a request for comment on whether communist China poses a threat to international peace and order over the issues of Taiwan and the South China Sea. However, indications show Beijing has ratcheted up military maneuvers against the regions in the first half of 2021.
On March 24, Xi Jinping inspected the 2nd Mobile Contingent of the People’s Armed Police. At a subsequent conference, he urged the audience to “Keep focusing on preparedness for war, and push forward actual combat training.”
China commentator Xia Luoshan noted that Xi’s speech carried a crucial message that the CCP has betrayed its attempt of going to war, which necessitates genuine preparation prior to its outbreak.
Two days later, 20 Chinese military aircraft—including four nuclear-capable H-6K bombers, 10 J-16 fighter jets, two Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and a KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft—entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. It was the largest incursion ever reported by the ministry.
On June 24, Ren Guoqiang, spokesman for China’s Ministry of National Defense, expressed at a regular press conference that the ammunition consumption across the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) surged in the first half of 2021, compared with the same period in each previous year. And the proportion of training in sophisticated programs continued to climb as well.
Beijing’s latest maneuver is an ongoing five-day live-fire exercise from July 16 to 20 in waters of the Bohai Sea, according to a notice released by China’s Tangshan Maritime Safety Administration, China’s state media outlets reported.
The salvors attempting to cut up the shipwreck of the car-carrier Golden Ray have run into new problems. For the last seven months, the salvors have attempted to cut the ship up using a heavy-lift catamaran VB-10,000, nicknamed the “Golden Arches.” To make the cuts, the VB-10,000 hauls a heavy chain up through the steel hull. After delays related to equipment failures and most recently a significant fire, progress has again come to a near standstill as the chains have encountered thick structural brackets inside the hull.
The salvors have come up with a new plan — explosives, specifically, “low hazard flexible linear-shaped charges.” The Brunswick News quotes U.S. Coast Guardsman Michael Himes saying that the devices pack a certain amount of the explosive RDX inside a foam casing. The resulting charge delivers a precisely aimed blast that makes precise cuts through steel obstacles.
T&T Salvage received the necessary permitting from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to employ such charges, Unified Command announced Wednesday. Use of the linear shaped charges also required National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration approval, Himes said.
As of now, salvors continue to use a cutting chain to tear through what is known as Section 3 of the shipwreck, Himes said. There are no immediate plans to use the charges, he said.
In September 2019, the car carrier Golden Ray lost stability and partially capsized as it departed the Port of Brunswick, GA, carrying about 4,200 vehicles. It was declared a constructive total loss. Plans are to cut the 660′ long ship into eight blocks that would be each carried by barge to a scrapyard.
Last November, salvors began cutting up the Golden Ray and predicted that the job would be completed by the New Year. Now, five months later, the job is less than half-finished and the new target for completion looks more like June 2021. In September 2019, the car carrier Golden Ray lost stability and partially capsized as it departed the Port of Brunswick, GA, carrying about 4,200 vehicles. It was declared a constructive total loss. Plans were made to cut the 660′ long ship into eight blocks that would be each carried by barge to a scrapyard. Originally, the goal was to salvage the ship prior to the start of hurricane season in June 2020. That slipped to September and then October, delayed both by the pandemic and by hurricanes. Ultimately, the cutting began in the beginning of November. To cut the ship up, the salvors are using a heavy-lift catamaran VB-10,000, nicknamed the “Golden Arches.” To make the cuts, the VB-10,000 hauls a heavy chain up through the steel hull. Each cut through the hull was supposed to take about a day. Allowing time to hoist the blocks and position a barge that would haul the block away, if all went well, the ship was expected to be removed in about eight weeks. Things have not gone well. VOA News reports that the first cut began November 6 and took three weeks. Lifting the ship’s bow section revealed battered cars and SUVs in neat, layered rows on the interior decks. The second cut started a month later, on Christmas Day, and was finished in a week. Crews spent all of February attempting a third cut through the ship’s engine room, a section fortified with thicker steel. After strain on the cutting apparatus forced extensive maintenance, the salvage crew stopped with the cut only about half-finished. They spent days moving the crane to the other end of the ship, where they began cutting a new section while rethinking plans to complete the unfinished one. The ship’s steel has proved tougher than anticipated, slowing the process, and crews have taken pauses to perform extra inspections and maintenance, said Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Himes, a spokesman for the multiagency command overseeing the demolition. “If people are wondering when it is going to be done, we’re doing it as quickly and as safely as can be done,” Himes said. “But quick takes a back seat to safety.” The salvors have now completed the cutting of a third block toward the bow and are now returning to the partially completed cut rough the engine room. In the meantime, local officials and residents are concerned about debris and pollutants drifting away from the salvage operation. Bumpers, tires, and other car parts falling from the ship have been found on beaches. Birds have been found coated in oil. And though most fuel has been drained from the ship’s tanks, there’s concern that an estimated 44,000 gallons (166,500 liters) remaining could come gushing out once the cutting chain severs the ship’s fuel line. “It’s been nothing but problems out here,” said Andy Jones, a St. Simons Island resident who heads to the wreck site in his small fishing boat most days to monitor the demolition and post updates to a YouTube channel. “It’s a disappointingly slow pace.” Responders remove another section of Golden Ray wreck
Missing holiday lights this year? If you live near Norfolk, Virginia, you don’t have to! Amidst countless cancelations of winter festivities this year, the battleship Wisconsin is restoring a little light to the season- literally. Kicking off the massive ship’s first annual WinterFest, the entire boat is decked out with so many lights that they can probably be spotted from space.
Decorating the ship was quite the undertaking.
Just decorating an ordinary house takes hours. Try decorating a 50,000-ton battleship the size of three football fields!
According to the Nauticus Executive Director, Stephen Kirkland, the event took months to prepare for. They had to enlist the help of Blue Steel Lighting Design, led by lighting expert Jeremy Kilgore, to turn the cold, metallic ship into a winter wonderland. And transform it they did. Working up to 15 hours a day, a small crew installed over 250,000 lights and custom-built displays that can’t be seen anywhere else in the world.
The ship itself isn’t perfectly primed for decorating. It’s not very symmetrical, which makes it trickier to make aesthetically pleasing displays. To add to the challenge, every installation has to be done by hand. It’s really a labor of love, but as you can see, the effort paid off. The ship’s massive guns were even turned into candy canes!
Beneath the glittering lights, the Battleship Wisconsin has a storied history.
It’s one of the largest battleships in American history, and one of the last to be built by the US Navy. She was first launched on December 7th, 1943, and commissioned the following April commanded by Captain Earl E. Stone. She earned five battle stars during WWII, along with numerous other honors. Visitors can enjoy the lights and learn more about the incredible ship’s history at the same time!
What to know before you go
The WinterFest will continue every weekend through the end of December. Tickets are $10 for kids and $12.50 for adults, with discounts for members. When you get there, expect plenty of fun with plenty of precautions. Tickets are timed to avoid overcrowding, masks are mandated for visitors ages 5 and up, and social distancing is required.
Once you get there, a one-way path will take you through a glowing forest, with live entertainment, Santa sightings, holiday treats, and sailboat parades on Saturdays. A live tree can be spotted in the harbor, too! To save a spot, purchase tickets online.
The US Navy has decided to scrap the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, which burned for more than four days this summer in San Diego. The cost and time required to rebuild the gutted ship would be simply too great to justify. Rear Adm. Eric Ver Hage, commander of the Navy Regional Maintenance Center, told reporters Monday that the extensive damage to the flattop’s flight deck, island, mast and lower levels from the July 12 inferno would have required about 60 percent of the ship to be replaced. To rebuild and repair the 22-year-old amphibious ship would have cost between $2.5 billion and $3.2 billion, and would have taken five to seven years. To turn the stricken amphib into a hospital ship would have cost more than $1 billion and taken the same amount of time. By contrast, decommissioning the ship will cost roughly $30 million and will be implemented over the next nine to 12 months, Ver Hage said. Navy Times reports that the ignominious loss of one of the Navy’s mightiest symbols of sea power came after Bonhomme Richard had already been in the shipyard for 18 months, undergoing $250 million worth of upgrades to accommodate the F-35B joint strike fighter. “It was a pretty substantial investment,” Ver Hage said of those upgrades. “Clearly a loss.” The Navy is conducting four separate investigations into the fire, including a criminal probe into whether the inferno was caused by arson. The video below provides a glimpse of the charred wreckage of the ship.
A view shows the damage at site of Tuesday’s blast in Beirut’s port area, Lebanon August 6, 2020. REUTERS/Aziz Taher
By Scott Edwards, University of Bristol, and Christian Bueger, University of Copenhagen – At the time of writing at least 100 people have lost their lives and a further 4,000 have been wounded following an explosion in the Port of Beirut. While the actual cause remains uncertain, the tragedy calls to attention the tremendous consequences of a lack of port security.
The explosion, on August 4, at around 6pm local time, appears to have been fuelled by 2,750 tons of the highly reactive chemical ammonium nitrate. The chemical had been the cargo on a ship, the the MV Rhosus, which entered the port at Beirut in 2013 due to a lack of seaworthiness and was prohibited from sailing. After the ship’s owner abandoned the vessel soon afterwards, the ammonium nitrate remained in a storage facility in Beirut’s port.
While the disaster itself was exceptional, the events leading up to it were not. Hazardous material is shipped across the world’s oceans on a daily basis. It is often mishandled or illegally traded. Abandoned containers of hazardous goods are found regularly in ports.
While maritime security tends to focus on preventing high-profile events such as piracy, terrorism or cyber-attacks, all too often it is daily mishandling that makes disasters possible. Part of preventing disasters such as what has happened in Beirut will mean strengthening port management and addressing crimes such as smuggling and corruption.
Abandoned ships
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has recorded 97 cases of abandoned ships and crews since 2017. Ships are abandoned by their owners if a vessel is no longer lucrative to maintain, or perhaps if the ship has been stopped by authorities and fined. While the situation of the seafarers aboard these ships is often tragic, as they may receive little pay or even food for months, what happens to the load of the vessels is often unclear.
And the IMO number only reflects the cases of ships – we know little about how many containers stand abandoned in ports around the world.
A UN report indicates that this number may be large. Containers often lie abandoned within ports, sometimes even by design, fuelled by criminal activities such as waste smuggling and corruption. Despite some efforts to counter this, the issue remains widespread and there are continued obstacles to tackling it.
International waste trade
Shipping companies often sail to Asia with empty containers, as much of the flow of trade is from Asia to Europe. As a result, they are willing to take low-value and high-volume bookings on the initial leg.
This has facilitated a burgeoning waste trade and with it a smuggling sector, where illegal forms of waste such as unrecyclable plastics are shipped from western countries to countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Thousands of these containers lie abandoned once they reach the port.
Much of the waste is less dangerous than the ammonium nitrate that fuelled the Beirut explosion, but it can still have dreadful effects. Plastics, for example, can cause hazards if not properly disposed of. Much of it ends up in the ocean, fuelling the ocean plastic crisis.
In 2019, Sri Lankan authorities discovered more than 100 abandoned containers in the port of Colombo. They contained clinical waste, potentially including human remains, and were leaking fluids. The risk that the containers had contaminated the ground and surface water in the two years they had lay in port unnoticed fuelled public health concerns. Sri Lanka has been able to investigate this problem – but it is likely that, in many cases, abandonment goes undiscovered.
Prevention
The abandonment of dangerous containers in ports is not a new problem. Since the 2000s there have been significant efforts to increase security levels in ports through surveillance, training and safety protocols. In light of the continuing abandonment problem, we know that these measures – and their implementation – are insufficient.
First, we have to start seeing the smuggling of waste and the abandoning of ships and containers as major offences. They should be seen as important parts of the blue crime and maritime security agenda. Appropriate legislation is needed to criminalise them. An international database for such crimes is required, as is transnational cooperation to address them.
Second, corruption in ports plays a key part in ensuring that abandonment goes unnoticed. It needs to be addressed with a concerted international effort.
Finally, increased efforts in building the capacity of ports to deal with hazardous waste, to detect smuggling and to deal with abandonment cases are needed. In particular, this will be necessary for ports which have limited resources and are common destinations for abandoned containers, such as ports in Asia and Africa.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the International Maritime Organization and the European Union already conduct port security capacity building work, in particular in Africa. More of this kind of work is needed.
Beirut has shown us the kind of impact a port disaster can have on a city and its inhabitants. Lessons must be learned to make sure a tragedy like this does not happen again.
Scott Edwards is Research Associate at University of Bristol. Christian Bueger is Professor of International Relations at University of Copenhagen. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Carnival Fantasy ends final voyage, July 2020
In the video, the Carnival Fantasy is being beached at the Aliaga scrapyard in Turkey. Next to it are two other cruise ships, the Sovereign and the Monarch, which had been operated by Pullmantur Cruises, a joint venture controlled by Royal Caribbean. The three ships waiting to be scrapped are among the first “mega” cruise ships, which had a huge impact on the cruise industry.
The Sovereign and the Monarch were originally the Sovereign of the Seas and the Monarch of the Seas, the first of a new generation of “mega” cruise ships built by Royal Caribbean. When the Sovereign of the Seas was launched in 1988, it was the largest cruise ship in the world, at 74,000 GT, more than twice as large as the next largest ship in the Royal Caribbean fleet. It featured a five-story internal atrium with glass elevators, a first in cruise ships.
The Monarch of the Seas, a near sister ship to the Sovereign of the Seas, was launched in 1991. In 2007, Monarch of the Seas became the first major cruise liner in the world to be captained by a woman, Karin Stahre Janson.
The third ship on the beach at Aliaga, the Carnival Fantasy was launched in 1990. At just over 70,000 GT and featuring a multi-story atrium, the ship was built as a direct response to Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas. Other cruise lines would follow suit and build ever-larger ships to compete with the new “mega” ships.
The more than 70,000 GRT ships triggered an “arms race” in cruise ship construction. Soon the Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Sea class and Carnival’s Fantasy class ships were themselves out-classed by the newer and larger ships that they inspired. Today, the largest cruise ship in the world is Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas, which at 228,081 GT, is three times larger than any of the three ships about to the scrapped in Turkey.
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