“Maritime Partners in cooperation with Elliott Bay Design Group, e1 Marine, and ABB, today announces that the M/V Hydrogen One, the world’s first methanol-fuelled towboat, will join Maritime Partners’ fleet and become available for charter in 2023 to meet the pressing demand for sustainable towboat operations.”
I have been hearing more lately about use of Methanol as a source for hydrogen to be used in fuel cells. If this works economically in a commercial setting like a tow boat, we are going to see a lot more of this. Including perhaps on future Coast Guard vessels. Sounds like it may make air independent submarines a lot easier as well.
CSIS and the United States Naval Institute (USNI) conduct an interview with Admiral Karl L. Schultz, the 26th Commandant of the United States Coast Guard, conducted 1 August, 2018.
Below I will attempt to outline the conversation, noting the topics and in some cases providing a comment.
The first question is about immigration. Coast Guard is the “away game.” minimizing the factors that push immigration to the US.
The Commandant does not expect a substantial increase in help from the Navy, because they are already heavily tasked, but would welcome any additional help.
06:30 Talk about Inland fleet. Congressional support is evident. $25M provided so far.
9:20 House Appropriations Committee decision to divert $750M from the icebreaker program to fund “the Wall” in their markup of the FY2019 budget bill. The Commandant is “guardedly optimistic”
11:30 Human capital readiness? Operating account has been flat and effectively we have lost 10% in purchasing power. Want to increase leadership training.
16:30 Support for combatant commanders.
18:00 Capacity building and partnering. Detachments working on host nation platforms.
21:00 Defense Force planning–Not going back to the MARDEZ model.
22:30 Situation in Venezuela/Preparation for dealing with mass migration.
24:30 Arctic forums–Need to project our sovereignty
29:00 UNCLOS
30:00 Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA)
32:30 Tracking cargo as an element of MDA
34:00 Cyber
36:15 High Latitude engagement/partnerships.
39:30 Perhaps the icebreaker should be the “Polar Security Cutter?”
40:00 International ice patrol, still an important mission.
41:00 CG role in response to Chinese aggressiveness in the South China Sea. In discussion with Indo-Pacific Command. Will see more CG presence there.
44:00 Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC)–on track
46:30 Border issue — passed on that
48:00 Small satellites–we are looking at them
49:00 African Capacity building/cooperation. May send an MEC.
51:30 Tech modernization. Looking at it more holistically.
Other Coverage:
This interview prompted a couple of notable posts.
Military.com reported on the possibility of a greater Coast Guard role in South East Asia and capacity building in Africa. It probably should be noted that the title, “Coast Guard Could Send Ship to Pacific to ‘Temper Chinese Influence’,”is a bit deceptive in that the Commandant’s remark about tempering Chinese Influence was in regard to Oceania, the islands of the Central and Western Pacific. The Commandant was quoted in the Seapower post, “In the Oceania region, there are places where helping them protect their interests, tempering that Chinese influence, is absolutely essential.”
Members of the Coast Guard Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Program (CG-926) and the Research and Development Center are in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to test usage of unmanned systems in the Arctic in Arctic Technology Evaluation 2018. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Alexandra Swan.
Coast Guard Kicks Off Arctic Technology Evaluation 2018
July 25, 2018
The Coast Guard is conducting its 2018 Arctic Technology Evaluation July 21-Aug. 3, 2018, in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
This year’s Arctic research will focus on evaluating how unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), unmanned surface vehicles (USV) and an aerostat balloon can work together as a network. The Coast Guard’s Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) Program and Research and Development Center (RDC) are partnering with Alaska Clean Seas for this year’s activities.
The research team will conduct a number of search and rescue and environmental testing scenarios, including using the unmanned systems to detect a life raft and evaluating capabilities to detect and sample a simulated oil spill. The unmanned systems will be integrated with Persistent Systems Man Pack Unit 5 radios (MPU5) to test the potential communication relay. The research team will also compare UAS sensor performance at high latitudes with data gathered through the RDT&E Program’s Robotic Aircraft Sensor Program for Maritime.
The Navy has already chose Joint Precision Approach & Landing Systems (JPALS) and BreakingDefense reports Raytheon is offering it to the Air Force and Army. Perhaps the Coast Guard should take a look. Like the Navy, the Coast Guard operates aircraft from moving ships, with perhaps even more “pitch, roll, surge, sway, heave, yaw, and translation”
JPALS fills the role of a TACAN, giving bearing and range to the landing area, but does it with much greater accuracy, directing the aircraft to a 20 cm (7.8″) square area, using differential GPS. It does it all in any weather and zero visibility with very low probability of intercept and in an encrypted format by data link, minimizing the need for radio communications.
Every time we turn on TACAN we broadcast the position of ship.
Potentially it can provide a autonomous recovery for aircraft and UAVs.
“What’s more, Raytheon is finishing development of a capability for JPALS to take over the flight controls and bring the aircraft in for an automated landing with no input from the pilot – or potentially with no pilot on board at all. That is why the Navy has contracted with Raytheon to put JPALS on its future MQ-25 carrier-based drone.”
Maybe our over-the-horizon boats could use it too.
Although I have a hard time seeing it in the photos, this shape is similar in concept to the upturned wing tips that now common on commercial aircraft. Propellers are after all, really just wings that rotate around a central hub. Having seen this, I now wonder why we haven’t seen this before.
Diagrams of fluid flow over a airfloil section usually show a linear flow from the leading edge to the trailing edge, but actually there is also a span-wise flow that spills off the tips and creates vortices. They add drag and increase noise.
Photo: The air flow from the wing of this crop duster is made visible by a technique that uses colored smoke rising from the ground
Of course the reason the airlines use these devices is to improve fuel economy. The principle also works for propellers.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 