USN Fleet Challenge 2014 - the winners are...
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USN Fleet Challenge 2014 - the winners are...
......... the Royal Air Force!
Rumour has it that the USN's 2014 Fleet Challenge ASW Competition has been won by a scratch crew from VP-30 made up from the RAF's MPA "Seedcorn" personnel. I believe that this is a similar competition to the RAF's Aird-Whyte trophy for those that remember it.
Looking forward to the RAF News and DefenceWeb coverage!
Well done team
Rumour has it that the USN's 2014 Fleet Challenge ASW Competition has been won by a scratch crew from VP-30 made up from the RAF's MPA "Seedcorn" personnel. I believe that this is a similar competition to the RAF's Aird-Whyte trophy for those that remember it.
Looking forward to the RAF News and DefenceWeb coverage!
Well done team
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http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=80308
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (NNS) -- Fleet Challenge 2014 wrapped up its annual anti-submarine warfare competition April 10 at Naval Air Station Jacksonville.
This year's winners were the allied P-8A Poseidon aircrew from the Pro's Nest of Patrol Squadron (VP) 30, followed closely in second place by VP-4 Skinny Dragons flying the P-3C, and third place taken by a VP-5 Mad Fox crew in a P-8A.
"Fleet Challenge was a great, challenging experience and a superb opportunity to fly together as a British crew on a real submarine target," said Royal Air Force Master Aircrewman Mark Utting from VP-30. "As with all anti-submarine warfare flights you have to remain flexible, and the submarine never does what you think it will. That being said, we had planned for all eventualities and the sortie went well."
Fleet Challenge 2014, also known as the "ASW rodeo," saw seven aircrews from the three maritime patrol and reconnaissance wings, a fleet replacement squadron and the allied aircrew attached to VP-30 compete against each other in the seven-day event. This year's competition marked the first time the P-8A Poseidon flew along with the P-3C Orion.
"Any time we have our foreign partners able to compete with us, we learn something. They do things maybe a little bit differently," said Cmdr. Mike Granger, the officer in charge of the Navy's Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Weapons School. "From maybe just the way that they coordinate a crew, to the way they mission plan or actual procedures for tracking the submarine - that is the biggest thing we learn with having them with us, and we throw in the camaraderie and the ability to talk across the water, if you will, with our partners. It builds those bonds that we can go and continue to learn from."
"Our allied crews often bring years of continuous ASW experience to the training equation, in the classroom and in the air," said Capt. Curt Phillips, the commanding officer of VP-30. "This is precisely why we have them embedded in our Fleet Replacement Squadron, training our newest operators in the art of ASW, which is a perishable skill without continuous honing in both simulators and on actual live targets."
Fleet Challenge 2014 tested aircrews on mission planning, optimized tactics, crew training as well as implementation of past lessons learned in determining the most effective maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircrew.
"We've had the individual wings compete, so they hold their own local ASW 'rodeo' against all their home squadrons and they take their best crew and they send them here," said Granger. "The wings in Hawaii, Whidbey Island and Jacksonville picked their best crew and they brought them here."
The competition tested crews in a simulator scenario and actual flight operations against USS Springfield (SSN 761), which acted as an opposing force.
"What we try to incorporate are things that we've seen, things that have challenged our actual crews deployed around the world and we incorporate those into the scenarios," said Granger. "We have the simulator scenarios built around recent world events. We have the submarine challenge them in ways that we've seen actual submarines on deployment behave, and we're able to put those together for these crews to experience, bring back to their home squadrons, their wings and spread that training out.
"Obviously, finding out we had won was just fantastic, but credit should be given to all the crews on all of the squadrons," said Utting. "I hope we get to take part in the challenge next year."
The Navy's ASW Fleet Challenge exercise has been held every year since 2007, with the exception of 2013, when it was cancelled due to budgetary restraints.
This year's winners were the allied P-8A Poseidon aircrew from the Pro's Nest of Patrol Squadron (VP) 30, followed closely in second place by VP-4 Skinny Dragons flying the P-3C, and third place taken by a VP-5 Mad Fox crew in a P-8A.
"Fleet Challenge was a great, challenging experience and a superb opportunity to fly together as a British crew on a real submarine target," said Royal Air Force Master Aircrewman Mark Utting from VP-30. "As with all anti-submarine warfare flights you have to remain flexible, and the submarine never does what you think it will. That being said, we had planned for all eventualities and the sortie went well."
Fleet Challenge 2014, also known as the "ASW rodeo," saw seven aircrews from the three maritime patrol and reconnaissance wings, a fleet replacement squadron and the allied aircrew attached to VP-30 compete against each other in the seven-day event. This year's competition marked the first time the P-8A Poseidon flew along with the P-3C Orion.
"Any time we have our foreign partners able to compete with us, we learn something. They do things maybe a little bit differently," said Cmdr. Mike Granger, the officer in charge of the Navy's Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Weapons School. "From maybe just the way that they coordinate a crew, to the way they mission plan or actual procedures for tracking the submarine - that is the biggest thing we learn with having them with us, and we throw in the camaraderie and the ability to talk across the water, if you will, with our partners. It builds those bonds that we can go and continue to learn from."
"Our allied crews often bring years of continuous ASW experience to the training equation, in the classroom and in the air," said Capt. Curt Phillips, the commanding officer of VP-30. "This is precisely why we have them embedded in our Fleet Replacement Squadron, training our newest operators in the art of ASW, which is a perishable skill without continuous honing in both simulators and on actual live targets."
Fleet Challenge 2014 tested aircrews on mission planning, optimized tactics, crew training as well as implementation of past lessons learned in determining the most effective maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircrew.
"We've had the individual wings compete, so they hold their own local ASW 'rodeo' against all their home squadrons and they take their best crew and they send them here," said Granger. "The wings in Hawaii, Whidbey Island and Jacksonville picked their best crew and they brought them here."
The competition tested crews in a simulator scenario and actual flight operations against USS Springfield (SSN 761), which acted as an opposing force.
"What we try to incorporate are things that we've seen, things that have challenged our actual crews deployed around the world and we incorporate those into the scenarios," said Granger. "We have the simulator scenarios built around recent world events. We have the submarine challenge them in ways that we've seen actual submarines on deployment behave, and we're able to put those together for these crews to experience, bring back to their home squadrons, their wings and spread that training out.
"Obviously, finding out we had won was just fantastic, but credit should be given to all the crews on all of the squadrons," said Utting. "I hope we get to take part in the challenge next year."
The Navy's ASW Fleet Challenge exercise has been held every year since 2007, with the exception of 2013, when it was cancelled due to budgetary restraints.
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Bloody SUPERB ... nice one, folks. 
I wonder how long that skill-set will survive?
I wonder how long that skill-set will survive?
Maybe this is the crew we should have sent to the west coast of Australia? So far the MPAs have seen and heard nothing - only the ships have managed to locate a pinging sub-surface target! 
Leon said "Maybe this is the crew we should have sent to the west coast of Australia? So far the MPAs have seen and heard nothing - only the ships have managed to locate a pinging sub-surface target! "
The "pinger" transmits at 37.5 KHz + 1 KHz which is just slightly outside the frequency range of even the most modern airborne acoustic systems and sonobuoys. (And most ship systems as well - hence the specialist equipment brought in on only a couple of platforms)
"The "pinger" transmits at 37.5 KHz + 1 KHz which is just slightly outside the frequency range of even the most modern airborne acoustic systems and sonobuoys. (And most ship systems as well - hence the specialist equipment brought in on only a couple of platforms)
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The B Word
At the risk of diverting this topic off track I think you are missing the point as well. The black box locator is not designed as or for a SAR beacon, it's there to identify and recover the black box. We are long past the SAR phase of his operation!!
No back on topic; it's good to see that the UK's operators can still produce the goods in the ASW arena, even if we don't have our own MPA anymore. If the USN and Boeing were smart they would lend an aircraft to the seedcorn team for Fincastle 14, even if they could only really enter as a guest crew.
At the risk of diverting this topic off track I think you are missing the point as well. The black box locator is not designed as or for a SAR beacon, it's there to identify and recover the black box. We are long past the SAR phase of his operation!!
No back on topic; it's good to see that the UK's operators can still produce the goods in the ASW arena, even if we don't have our own MPA anymore. If the USN and Boeing were smart they would lend an aircraft to the seedcorn team for Fincastle 14, even if they could only really enter as a guest crew.
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I genuinely believed the seedcorn thing was a total waste of time; happily this proves me wrong. Congratulations to the crew.
Now when do we get to see that capability flying in UK colours?
Now when do we get to see that capability flying in UK colours?
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It's not a very good advert for the so-called Long Range SAR when MPAs can't detect one of the primary location signals from airliners, is it?
Sun.
So Sun, it does beg the question, why have they spent so long doing it and been throwing buoys out of the back pf their aircraft then?
A fifth ping, detected Thursday by a sonobuoy dropped by an airplane, is "unlikely to be related to the aircraft black boxes," Australian chief search coordinator Angus Houston said Friday.
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So Sun, it does beg the question, why have they spent so long doing it and been throwing buoys out of the back pf their aircraft then?
I'm not arguing against them being used, I'm saying they have a very difficult task in this instance because it's not what MPA were designed of bought for. They do not have equipment designed to find sunken civilian aircraft (or military ones for that matter).
As always, the boys and girls will do what they can with what they have, and as a result of skill, and not a little luck, they might find something.
Sun.
Champagne anyone...?
Good stuff! Was this a completely RAF crew do you know? It would be interesting to know if the USN had handed over one of their aircraft to a complete non-USA crew. I assume there were US "judges" on board?