Tag: usn

Trump’s Pentagon keeps sending destroyers that fought in the Red Sea to the US southern border — a fourth one is on its way

A fourth US Navy destroyer that participated in the Red Sea conflict is on its way to support President Donald Trump’s southern border mission, bringing a range of advanced naval combat capabilities to a very different operating environment.

The Navy announced Friday that the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Cole had left its homeport in Florida to support US Northern Command’s “border security objectives.”

The Trump administration has made cracking down on maritime-related criminal activity, including weapons smuggling, drug trafficking, and illegal immigration, a top priority, and the Defense Department has sent military assets to the US-Mexico border. Among these assets are five destroyers and a littoral combat ship on staggered deployments.

Cole, like the other warships, is set to be accompanied by a US Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment. They specialize in military operations at sea, such as counterterrorism, counterpiracy, and anti-immigration missions.

Arleigh Burke-class destroyers like the Cole are advanced naval surface ships with robust communications and sensor suites and are suited for long-endurance missions. These vessels can be armed with surface-to-air and land-attack missiles. Other armaments include the ship’s five-inch deck gun, machine guns, and a Phalanx Close-In Weapons System.

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Media, Democrats Breathlessly Defend Having Naval Ship Named After Gay Pederast

The Democrats and the corporate media came out guns blazing with a temper tantrum about how a U.S. Navy vessel may no longer be named after gay pedophile Harvey Milk.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly told the Office of the Secretary of the Navy to make plans for renaming the ship USNS Harvey Milk, according to Military.com, to come into “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.”

The left considers Milk a “gay rights icon” for being the first openly homosexual elected official in California. Milk was serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when he was murdered in 1978.

Milk, however, was a predator of young boys, as The Federalist reported. Milk’s biographer wrote that the then-33-year-old pursued a 16-year-old boy who was apparently in a vulnerable place and “looking for some kind of father figure.”

The pedophile, who was dishonorably discharged from the Navy after being questioned about his sexual activities in 1955, would also use alcohol and drugs to subdue underage boys and young men and manipulate them into perverse sexual activity.

He also had an affinity for infamous cult leader Jim Jones, a fellow sexual predator and architect of the mass murder-suicide of his followers in Jonestown, Guyana. Jones funded Milk’s political career, and Milk praised Jones’s cult, telling him, “Rev. Jim, it may take me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today. I found something dear today. … I found a sense of being that makes up for all the hours and energy placed in a fight. I found what you wanted me to find. I shall be back. For I can never leave.”

In the wake of the murder-suicide claiming the lives of more than 900 people, Milk flippantly called it “a great experiment that didn’t work. I don’t know, maybe it did.”

Milk was not exactly the person anyone would have expected to be honored with being the namesake of a U.S. Navy vessel — an idea first floated by the Obama administration. But at the news of the potential renaming, Democrats and their bootlickers in the corporate media immediately fell into a frenzy.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the renaming is a “surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country” and that it was “a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”

Apparently for Pelosi, being a pedophile is part of building a “better country” and the “American Dream.”

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PETA thanks Trump for ending Navy experiments on cats and dogs, calls for broader ban

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has thanked the Trump administration for banning Navy-funded experiments on dogs and cats.

On Thursday, PETA wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan, thanking the administration for the new ban and requesting a broader ban on all animal testing in all military branches.

Phelan announced on Tuesday that all Department of the Navy testing on cats and dogs would be banned.

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Retired 4-star Navy admiral found guilty in bribery case

The Navy’s former No. 2 officer on Monday was found guilty of bribery and other counts related to steering work to a company in exchange for a job after leaving the service, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Retired Adm. Robert Burke, former Navy vice chief of naval operations, was convicted of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, performing acts affecting a personal financial interest and concealing material facts. His conviction makes him the senior-most member of the U.S. military ever found guilty of committing a federal crime while serving on active duty.

“When you abuse your position and betray the public trust to line your own pockets, it undermines the confidence in the government you represent,” interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a statement. “Our office, with our law enforcement partners, will root out corruption — be it bribes or illegal contracts — and hold accountable the perpetrators, no matter what title or rank they hold.”

Burke, 63, of Coconut Creek, Fla., was arrested last year and charged with the crimes along with the co-CEOs of technology services firm Next Jump — the company he joined after retirement — Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger. 

Kim and Messenger, both of New York, were each charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, according to the case’s unsealed indictment. They face trial in August, which is when Burke will be sentenced. 

The saga marks a devastating blow to the Navy, which in the past several years has struggled with a loss of confidence in numerous top officers, command failures and bribery scandals. 

Burke, who served aboard attack and ballistic missile submarines, rose through the ranks to eventually become chief of naval personnel in 2016 followed by vice chief of naval operations in June 2019. He then took command of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and Allied Joint Forces Command in June 2020 before retiring in summer 2022.

Kim and Messenger, meanwhile, via their company Next Jump, provided a workforce training pilot program to a small component of the Navy from August 2018 through July 2019. The deal appeared to turn sour, however, and the Navy terminated a contract with the company in late 2019 and directed it not to contact Burke.

But in summer 2021, Messenger and Kim met with Burke in Washington, D.C., to reestablish their company’s business relationship with the Navy. While at the meeting, the two “agreed that Burke would use his position as a Navy Admiral to steer a contract” to their firm — as well as influence other Navy officers to award another contract to the company — in exchange for his future employment there, according to the Justice Department. 

Burke in December 2021 then ordered his staff to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump to train personnel under Burke’s command in Italy and Spain, which the company performed in January 2022. 

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Navy Scraps Biden-Era ‘Climate Action’ Plan, Returns Focus To Warfighting

The U.S. Navy officially scrapped a Biden-era “climate action” plan for the force on Tuesday, signifying the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to refocus the military towards warfighting.

“Today, I’m focusing on the warfighters first, and I’m rescinding the Biden administration’s climate action program. Our focus needs to be on lethality and our warfighters,” Navy Secretary John Phelan announced in a video message.

Released in May 2022, the Climate Action 2030 program contained a series of actions and goals the Department of the Navy (DON) has taken or planned to undertake to tackle what Biden Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro characterized as the “urgency of the climate crisis.” In the document’s opening foreword, Del Toro claimed the Navy and Marine Corps “are in the crosshairs of the climate crisis,” and that “[c]limate change is one of the most destabilizing forces of our time, exacerbating other national security concerns and posing serious readiness challenges.”

The action plan identified two “performance goals,” one of which included the DON’s stated aim of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions and draw[ing] greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to stabilize ecosystems, and achieve, as an enterprise, [President Biden’s] commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, as well as other targets.”

In order to achieve these objectives and comply with a 2021 climate-related executive order by Biden, the DON laid out a series of targets for the branch to work towards in the years ahead. This included commitments to “[a]cquiring 100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035, including 100 percent zero-emission light-duty vehicle acquisitions by 2027” and “[a]chieving a 50 percent reduction in emissions from buildings by 2032.”

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New footage shows the mystery Tic Tac UFOs that rise from the Pacific Ocean and photographed by the Navy

When a UFO expert released a new video showing the infamous Tic Tac aircraft, it revealed bombshell theories about the phenomena.

Jeremy Corbell, an investigative journalist and filmmaker, has once again ignited public debate over UFOs since footage captured aboard the USS Jackson in 2023.

The video released on April 8, after a multi-year verification process, shows what Corbell and military witnesses describe as a ‘self-luminous, wingless, tailless’ craft rising from the Pacific Ocean.

But Corbell insists the new footage is far from an isolated event and says it fits a broader and increasingly alarming pattern: repeated sightings of intelligently controlled craft that defy known aerodynamics, appear regularly in the same offshore military training zone, and may originate from below the ocean’s surface.

According to the expert , the 2023 incident echoes two other major military encounters: the 2004 Nimitz sighting and a lesser-known but well-documented 2019 event in which a swarm of UAPs surrounded ten Navy warships over multiple nights.

The new footage, Corbell argues, is not a standalone revelation but part of a growing body of evidence pointing to intelligently controlled craft – capable of transmedian travel (moving seamlessly through space, air, and water) – that have repeatedly appeared over decades in the same region, warning Area 291, off the coast of Southern California. 

The 2023 release was supported by a new military witness: an active-duty U.S. Navy combat information center operator who claims to have seen the object rise from the ocean with his own eyes. 

Corbell and paranormal journalist George Knapp, known for handling sensitive testimonies, vetted the witness and aligned his account with radar data and forward-looking infrared (FLIR) imagery.

The Navy vet tracked the object using the ship’s high-powered Sapphire FLIR thermal-targeting system. Radar detected four unknown targets in the area, though two were captured on video. 

According to the witness, all four UAPs performed an instantaneous, synchronized maneuver – shooting off simultaneously without visible propulsion, suggesting intelligent coordination.

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Trump Considering Buying Foreign Ships To Make Up Gap With China

Upset by the pace of domestic shipbuilding, President Donald Trump said he may look to foreign companies to produce vessels for the U.S. His comments came after his sweeping executive order seeking to revamp the American shipbuilding industry that pales in comparison to China’s, which has been assessed to have a whopping 200-times larger capacity than the United States. Trump didn’t spell out whether he was talking about commercial ships, naval vessels or both. However, this makes particular sense for expanding the U.S. Navy and is an option we have repeatedly highlighted in the past, given the litany of issues the service is facing.

“We may order, would have to go to Congress for this, but we may buy some ships from other countries that we’re close to and do great jobs with ships,” Trump told reporters on Thursday.  “But we’re going to start the process of rebuilding. We don’t really essentially build ships anymore, which is ridiculous. It’s going to be very big business for us in the not-too-distant future. But in the meantime, we have countries that do very well at building ships, and we’ll be dealing with those countries. So we may be ordering top-of-the-line ships from those countries. And within a fairly short period of time, we’ll be building our own ships. So we’ll probably have to go to Congress for that, but we’re not going to have a problem.”

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Navy crew reports dramatic encounter eerily similar to iconic ‘Tic Tac’ incident

Sailors aboard a U.S. Navy warship off the coast of Southern California reported having a dramatic encounter with four unknown objects that seemingly flew away in a synchronized formation.

That formation seemed eerily similar to the now-famous “Tic Tac” object seen in those same waters in 2004 and investigated by a secret government program based in Las Vegas.

It appears the “Tic Tac” is back, or maybe never left, as the crew members aboard the USS Jackson said that they saw four of the oddly shaped craft, one of which emerged from the ocean.

The sailors were able to record video of two of the “Tic Tacs” as they appeared on a thermal sensor in the ship’s command center. That video was made public Tuesday in a podcast that 8 News Now Investigator George Knapp co-hosts and is likely to rekindle questions about who is piloting these objects.

When Navy aviators first encountered a “Tic Tac” shaped object off the coast of Southern California in 2004, it was largely ignored until 2008 when a new UFO program based in Las Vegas learned about the incident.

The program, dubbed AAWSAP, was launched by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), with support from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Bigelow Aerospace as the contractor.

As it turns out, the 2004 “Tic Tac” is pretty much identical to the 2023 model. In February 2023, crew members aboard the Navy’s USS Jackson saw an illuminated object emerge from the ocean off the coast of Southern California — in the same general area where the original “Tic Tac” was seen.

Inside the ship’s command center, the sailors saw a familiar shape on the thermal sensor. The thermal system, known as Safire, is a heat sensor, not a camera. A closer look showed that there were two of the objects, not just one. The witness said they saw four “Tic Tacs” in formation.

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Why US shipbuilding is the worst and more money won’t save it

“We are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding,” President Trump said during his March 6 joint address to Congress.

The president did not break new ground with the announcement. Virtually every year, Navy and industry leaders complain that the United States does not invest enough in the nation’s shipbuilding facilities. Yet according to the Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers have appropriated more shipbuilding funds than the president requested for at least 17 of the past 20 years. Even with the extra funds, the Navy’s major shipbuilding programs have consistently fallen behind schedule and over budget.

Over the next three years, the Navy plans on retiring 13 more ships than it will commission, shrinking the fleet to 283 ships by 2027. According to the Navy’s current plan, the fleet will grow to 515 crewed and uncrewed vessels by 2054. To reach that goal, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Navy will spend more than $1 trillion, nearly $36 billion each year for the next three decades on shipbuilding alone.

It remains unclear if the Navy can realize its plan, even if Congress provides the funds. Ramping up naval construction is not simply a matter of resources. The Navy spent $2.3 billion between 2018 and 2023 to increase the capacity of the submarine shipyards. Despite this investment, the production rate for Virginia-class attack submarines decreased from around two boats per year to 1.2.

In just 10 years after the end of the Cold War, the number of skilled shipyard workers shrank from 62,000 to 21,000. The number of workers has increased since 2001, but shortages remain. During a 2024 symposium, the director of the Navy’s Submarine Industrial Base Program said the United States needs to hire 140,000 workers just to meet the needs of the current submarine building program.

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US Naval Academy Will No Longer Use Affirmative Action for Admission Decisions

The U.S. Naval Academy has announced it will no longer use affirmative action in its admissions process — ceasing to consider race, ethnicity, or sex as factors for entry.

This decision was explained in a federal court filing made public on Friday.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the elimination of federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and ending affirmative action in hiring and admissions.

The Associated Press reports:

The change in policy was made in February by Vice Adm. Yvette Davids, the academy’s superintendent, in response to an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in January, according to a court filing by the U.S. Justice Department in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The president’s order on Jan. 27 said that “every element of the Armed Forces should operate free from any preference based on race or sex.” It also directed the secretary of defense to conduct an internal review with respect to all “activities designed to promote a race- or sex-based preferences system,” including reviews at the service academies.

“Under revised internal guidance issued by the Superintendent on Feb. 14, 2025, neither race, ethnicity, nor sex can be considered as a factor for admission at any point during the admissions process, including qualification and acceptance,” according to the court filing made public Friday.

The policy change comes amid an ongoing legal challenge from Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a conservative group that successfully overturned affirmative action at civilian universities in a 2023 Supreme Court ruling against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

Although that decision included a footnote exempting military academies due to their “potentially distinct interests,” SFFA sought to extend the ban to the Naval Academy and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

In October 2023, SFFA sued the Naval Academy, arguing that its admissions process unfairly discriminated against white and Asian applicants by prioritizing racial diversity.

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