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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    MODERN DESTROYER TAKES TO SEA

    MODERN DESTROYER TAKES TO SEA

    Spruance leaves San Diego as first new ship of its kind to be loaded with latest technology


    By Jeanette Steele12:01 A.M.OCT. 17, 2013

    The Navy destroyer Spruance left San Diego on Wednesday morning for its maiden deployment — a bittersweet moment the crew has been working toward for four years.

    They sailed not only on a new ship but one with all the bells and whistles of the most up-to-date technology.

    The U.S. Navy is modernizing its destroyer fleet, and the $1.1 billion Spruance is the first to get the good stuff right from the beginning.

    For the 279-person crew, it means an all-electric galley — or kitchen — for more low-fat cooking. That means French fries are prepared in a convection oven, not a fryer. Sailors bathe in rust-resistant stainless steel showers, and a larger crew lounge has added gym equipment.

    It also means the ship is controlled by touch screens, and sailors look at modern color readouts, not the old gauges of days gone by.

    “I joke that we can drive the ship from an iPad with our fingers,” said the Spruance skipper, Cmdr. George Kessler. “It is a joke. But it is also actually real in that we can do that.”

    Twenty-one-year-old sailor Domonick Lane said his new radar equipment is pretty nice.

    “From what I’ve heard, on the older ships the monitors that I work with were much, much older — less picture, less color. It was pretty much black screen with green radar stuff, like you’d see in old movies,” Lane said.

    The Spruance was commissioned in October 2011. But Kessler and some others in the crew have been with the ship since around the time the keel was laid in May 2009.

    The ship is named for Adm. Raymond A. Spruance, Navy commander at the Battle of the Midway, a pivotal moment for the United States in the Pacific during World War II.

    The destroyer’s motto is “launch the attack.” It’s the second destroyer named for Spruance.

    This deployment is years in the making, following the testing and training required to prepare a new warship for work.

    It’s also two months later than expected, pushed back by the financial juggling the Navy had to do after the federal budget cuts known as sequestration.

    The ship heads to Asia to put its new capabilities to use.

    What technology doesn’t change is saying farewell.

    The Spruance left on a crisp, sunny fall morning. Its journey could last six months, or however long it is called to serve.

    As the ship pulled away from the San Diego Naval Base pier, small children could be heard crying. Stoic sailors in formal white uniforms lined the ship’s edge as the Spruance steamed toward Point Loma.

    “Saying goodbye to my family was hard,” sailor Lane said before he left.

    “But being able to go to Asia — I’ve never been there. And to experience it with friends I’ve known since I joined the Navy is a big plus.”


    http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/...-takes-to-sea/
    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 10-17-2013 at 08:12 PM.
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