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<ul class="summary-list"><li>When <keyword id="10102672" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="uss-stout">USS Stout</keyword> left Virginia's Naval Station Norfolk in January, masks and social distancing were not part of everyday life.</li><li>Nine months later, Stout returned after a record-long <keyword id="187630" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="DEPLOYMENT">deployment</keyword>, during which the crew grappled with the monotony and tension of being at sea during a pandemic.</li></ul><p>Extremely boring.</p><p>Long, exhausting hours.</p><p>It sucked.</p><p>That's how one crew member from <keyword id="2546896" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="guided-missile-destroyer">guided-missile destroyer</keyword> USS Stout described the ship's record-breaking 215 days at sea during a deployment punctuated by COVID-19.</p><p>When Stout left Virginia's Naval Station Norfolk in January, masks and social distancing were not part of everyday life. But as COVID-19 has upended most things, it wasn't long until it affected Stout, nixing port calls that break up long periods underway and isolating its crew.</p><p>The Navy announced Stout's record <a href="https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/display-news/Article/2364390/uss-stout-breaks-record-as-it-departs-us-5th-fleet/">in late September</a>, topping records set only weeks earlier by the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and guided-missile cruiser San Jacinto, also at sea longer because of COVID-19.</p><p>Stout initially left Norfolk as part of the Eisenhower, or "Ike," Strike Group for pre-deployment certification. The Navy announced in February that rather than return home the Ike and its escorts were immediately crossing the Atlantic Ocean for a routine deployment. Those ships began returning home in August, but Stout stayed in the Middle East, where it protected merchant ships and completed other security operations.</p><h2>Extremely stressed out</h2><div type="image" title="Navy destroyer Stout" height="1664" width="2500" msid="79115701" hostid="261"></div><p>Dozens of supporters congratulated the crew and wished them a safe return in posts on Stout's official Facebook page, but one commenter broke up the celebratory feel.</p><p>"Not something to be proud of," the person wrote.</p><p>A Stout sailor, speaking to Insider on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about the deployment without retribution from the Navy, said crew members were not allowed to leave Naval Station Rota, in Spain, when they arrived in March.</p><p>When they returned to Rota in early October, they got a party confined to the pier with alcoholic drinks and pizza. No outsiders were allowed. The following day, sailors were allowed to visit the Naval Exchange.</p><p>"It was kind of refreshing, I guess, to see something other than, you know, haze gray and the ocean," the sailor said in a phone interview.</p><div type="image" title="Navy destroyer Stout" height="1667" width="2500" msid="79115702" hostid="261"></div><p>Throughout the deployment, news about the virus' spread — including <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/aircraft-carrier-uss-theodore-roosevelt-sees-new-covid-19-cases-2020-10" target="_blank" rel="noopener">aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt</a> in March and April — trickled through the crew when they could search for it online, the sailor said. Some news was shared through the command.</p><p>"A lot of the time we were kind of in the dark about stuff unless we really wanted to know," the sailor said.</p><p>Morale hit a low point during the second half of the deployment, the sailor said, even as the command attempted to keep spirits up with "steel beach" picnics on the ship's deck, karaoke, and video-game tournaments. A Navy <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/news/380731/uss-stout-returns-deployment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">news release</a> also said the crew was treated to swim calls, but the only times the Stout sailor remembered anyone going into the water were brief trainings for search-and-rescue swimmers.</p><p>"Most people were, like, extremely stressed out about it all the time," the sailor said. "Some people were kind of agitated a lot."</p><p>Homecomings at Norfolk tend to be heartfelt and festive affairs with families crowding piers. That's another casualty of COVID-19. To prepare for their return stateside, the Stout's crew was given masks, hand sanitizer, and practiced social-distancing, including sitting 6 feet apart during meals, the sailor said.</p><p>When <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/navy-destroyer-stout-returns-from-record-215-days-at-sea-2020-10" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stout arrived home</a> in mid-October, the public noted how rusty it was. The Navy quickly removed the rust.</p><h2>The needs of the Navy</h2><div type="image" title="Navy sailors crew destroyer Stout" height="1664" width="2500" msid="79115707" hostid="261"></div><p>While the Stout sailor was disappointed by the deployment, they realized the command was limited by the pandemic.</p><p>Stout's commanding officer, Cmdr. Rich Eytel, said the command had to get "creative" to maintain morale amid the ship's high operational tempo.</p><p>"I truly could not be more proud of the toughness displayed by my crew," Eytel wrote in response to questions from Insider sent through the Navy's 2nd Fleet.</p><p>"Through it all, the men and women onboard Stout stood the watch, corrected critical casualties, and answered the call from a nation who depended on her to be a mission-ready ship with a combat-minded crew, while isolated and alone six thousand nautical miles from home in the time of a global pandemic," Eytel added.</p><p>While underway, the crew spent a week completing maintenance that typically would be done in port, Eytel wrote.</p><p>How well the crew documented that work and the ship's other mechanical needs will matter when it's time for Stout's maintenance period, said retired Navy Capt. Bill Crow, president of the Virginia Ship Repair Association.</p><p>While a record deployment may not have been what the Stout's sailors had in mind, all that time together can help solidify a crew and make it more self-sufficient, said Crow, whose own Navy experiences include several weeks spent off the coast of Lebanon following the 1983 attack on a US Marine compound that killed more than 200.</p><p>"They can sit their grandson on their knee when they're old and tell them, 'Hey, I served my country and I did it like this,'" Crow said.</p><div type="image" title="Navy sailors crew destroyer Stout" height="1664" width="2500" msid="79115711" hostid="261"></div><p>While the long-term effects of multiple combat deployments on service members and their families have been studied, RAND Corp. sociologist Sarah Meadows said it's hard to say what long-term toll a protracted deployment during a pandemic might have on service members who are likely to be worried about events back home and the loved ones there.</p><p>"We haven't done any research on what that's like during a, you know, a global pandemic," Meadows said of reintegration. "So it might be a little bit like coming back from being on the moon."</p><p>Responses could depend on a sailor's expectations of the deployment as well as the experience itself, including the ability to communicate with family while they were gone and decompress from work, Meadows added.</p><p>"Maybe the Navy should think about how long the particular sailors on this ship should be at home before they are eligible to get on another ship again," Meadows said. "I wouldn't send them out in December, right? But it's always the needs of the Navy."</p>

What it's really like aboard a US Navy destroyer on a record-breaking, 215-day deployment at sea

<ul class="summary-list"><li>US Navy <keyword id="2546896" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="guided-missile-destroyer">guided-missile destroyer</keyword> <keyword id="10102672" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="uss-stout">USS Stout</keyword> returned to homeport in Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday, after spending a record 215 days at sea.</li><li>During its deployment, the Stout sailed across the Atlantic, around Europe, and through the Middle East, </li></ul><p>The Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Stout (DDG 55) returned to Naval Station Norfolk on Sunday, marking the end of a nine-month deployment to US 2nd, 5th, and 6th Fleet areas of operation.</p><p>In mid-January Stout's crew departed Norfolk and operated under US 2nd Fleet, taking part in the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) Carrier Strike Group's (CSG) Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMPTUEX), the final certification exercise prior to deployment. Upon successful completion and certification, Stout and the rest of the IKECSG immediately crossed the Atlantic to execute missions as assigned.</p><p>"Welcome home to USS Stout Sailors, and job well done," said Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, commander US 2nd Fleet. "Sailors are our Navy's asymmetric advantage. As our world has faced a global health crisis, Stout has been at sea ensuring the safety and stability of key chokepoints and waterways, and has remained vigilant."</p><div type="image" title="Navy destroyer Stout" height="1667" width="2500" msid="78650603" hostid="261"></div><p>While in US 5th Fleet, Stout operated under the Eisenhower and Nimitz carrier strike groups, Bataan amphibious readiness group and Coalition Task Force Sentinel.</p><p>Stout participated in the International Maritime Security Construct's operational arm, CTF Sentinel, ensuring safe passage in international waters throughout the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman.</p><p>As a Sentinel ship, Stout spent 139 days in direct or associated support of the task force to ensure the free flow of commerce.</p><p>Stout provided overwatch for more than 550 vessels as they transited critical chokepoints and delivered 1,500 maritime awareness calls to regional commercial shipping.</p><div type="image" title="Navy destroyer Stout" height="1664" width="2500" msid="78650610" hostid="261"></div><p>"I don't have the words to describe how immensely proud I am of this crew," said Rich Eytel, commanding officer, USS Stout. "This crew defined what it means to be self-sufficient and resilient. We've gone for significant lengths of time without new parts, stretched our food and fuel limits, and they continued to give 110% every day. They faced our challenges head on, which allowed us to continue to meet all operational tasking."</p><p>While in US 6th Fleet Stout conducted two port visits in Rota, Spain, bookending their record-breaking 215 days at sea. Both port visits in Spain enabled the ship to take on fuel and fulfill other logistical requirements before continuing their mission at sea.</p><p>As COVID-19 made frequent port visits unsafe, Stout competed the first modern Mid-Deployment Voyage Repair (MDVR) period at sea, spending a week executing scheduled maintenance and preservation to maintain mission readiness while deployed.</p><p>Throughout deployment, Stout's technicians executed depot level repairs on vital engineering and combat systems equipment.</p><div type="image" title="Navy destroyer Stout helicopter" height="1664" width="2500" msid="78650612" hostid="261"></div><p>During that period the ship conducted morale events, like swim calls and steel beach picnics. Stout conducted nearly 40 replenishments-at-sea enabling their continuous support to the mission. To allow the crew time to relax and reenergize, they had a "rest &amp; reset" period at sea.</p><p>Stout navigated more than 60,000 nautical miles and completed multiple strait and choke-point transits, to include the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Bab-el Mandeb Strait and Strait of Hormuz. A member of Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) Two Six, Stout is homeported in Norfolk, Virginia.</p><p>C2F exercises operational authorities over assigned ships, aircraft, and landing forces on the East Coast and the Atlantic.</p>

A Navy destroyer just got back from a record-breaking 215 days at sea

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A Norwegian fisherman caught a US submarine in his nets this week.</li><li>The USS Virginia's propellers got tangled in the nets, reports said, dragging them out to sea.</li></ul><p>A Norwegian fisherman made a surprising catch on Monday in the form of a US submarine.</p><p>Harald Engen was delivering a catch of halibut to the village of Malangen, on Norway's west coast, when he got an unusual message, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.nrk.no/tromsogfinnmark/harald-fra-sommaroya-fikk-atomubat-i-kveitegarnene-1.17123634">Norwegian broadcaster NRK News reported</a>.</p><p>He was told that the propellers of a submarine had become tangled in his nets and had dragged them two nautical miles — about 2.3 miles — out to sea, NRK reported.</p><p>The 377-foot, nuclear-powered USS Virginia had been on its way from the port of Tromsø, the outlet reported, adding that a Norwegian Coast Guard vessel escorting it had to help cut it loose from the nets.</p><p>"I know about other vessels that have sailed over fishing nets, but no one out here have ever heard about a submarine doing so," Engen said, per <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/security/norwegian-fishermen-snagged-us-nuclearpowered-submarine/420357">the Barents Observer</a>.</p><p>He told the outlet that he wasn't angry, and that the coast guard had been in touch about possible replacements.</p><p>Lt. Pierson Hawkins, a spokesperson for the US 6th Fleet, confirmed basic details of the incident to BI but declined to confirm the name of the vessel.</p><p>Nobody was hurt in the incident, he said, adding: "The investigation into the cause of the incident is still ongoing."</p><p>Speaking on the matter of compensation, Hawkins said: "In general, when the US is responsible for damage to civilian equipment, there is a claims process to reimburse the expense."</p><p>Norway's Armed Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p><p>Hawkins didn't outline what the submarine was doing off the coast of Norway, beyond the fact that it was leaving Tromsø.</p><p>"The US is an Arctic nation and has enduring security interest in the region," he said, adding that the 6th Fleet appreciates Norway's support to US submarine deployments "to deter and defend the increasingly complex security environment of the High North."</p><p>There have been multiple US naval deployments in the waters in recent months amid increased cooperation between Norway and the US.</p><p>In June, the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Tennessee and the cruiser USS Normandy were deployed to the Norwegian Sea in response to Russian maneuvers, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://armyrecognition.com/news/navy-news/2024/us-navy-strategic-deployment-in-norwegian-sea-counters-russian-military-maneuvers">defense news site Army Recognition reported</a>.</p><p>More recently, in October, Norway's armed forces <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.forsvaret.no/en/news/articles/truman-nor-forces">announced</a> joint naval exercises running through to November with the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group.</p><p>The British aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales was also set to join, the announcement said.</p><p>Two guided-missile destroyers from the group, the USS Jason Dunham and USS Stout, were sent on "routine maritime operations" to international waters in the Barents Sea, US Naval Forces Europe and Africa <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.c6f.navy.mil/Press-Room/News/News-Display/Article/3943702/truman-strike-group-destroyers-conduct-barents-sea-operations/">announced.</a></p><p>The Barents Sea, which is bordered by northern Norway and Russia, is considered <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/hot-water-arctic-fisheries-proxy-geopolitical-tensions#:~:text=The%20Arctic%20today%20is%20playing,security%20relations%20in%20the%20Arctic.">a sensitive zone</a> for Russia.</p><p>In September, US lawmakers expressed concerns about <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-submarines-17-billion-over-budget-in-crisis-lawmaker-2024-9">delays and soaring costs</a> in building new vessels, including Virginia-class submarines, particularly in light of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-senators-express-concern-over-low-attack-submarine-procurement-plan-2024-3">China's recent naval expansions</a>.</p><p>The US Navy's Virginia-class submarine program is projected to run $17 billion over budget through 2030, Rep. Ken Calvert, chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, said.</p>

A Norwegian fisherman accidentally caught a US submarine in his nets

<p class="drop-cap">I made my stand in the gas-stove culture war at Ikea. Well, not <em>at</em> Ikea per se, but on the Ikea website — where I purchased the Tillreda, a single-burner induction cooktop, for $69.99. It's a hot plate, basically, the size of two laptops stacked on top of each other, with the glossy black aesthetic of a control panel on the USS Enterprise. Its sleek glass top, I hoped, would offer me a glimpse of our electric-stove future.</p><p>As you've no doubt heard, politically speaking, gas stoves are hot right now. Democrats want to ban them to limit carbon emissions and childhood asthma; Republicans are defending them on behalf of the Founding Fathers, whose wives and chattel slaves all cooked with fire. Never mind that <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=53439" target="_blank" rel="noopener">most Americans already cook with electricity</a>. New York is considering a ban on gas stoves; the town where I live has already banned gas lines in new construction. Like it or not, induction is coming to a stovetop near you.</p><p>But the key to winning any war is logistics. In this case, that means answering one simple question: How well does induction actually cook? Is it better than gas? Or is this going to be like when everyone had to buy low-flow showerheads, and then secretly swapped them out because they sucked? I bought the Tillreda to find out. But I'm a competent cook at best. So I also called a couple of experts in the science of getting dinner on the table.</p><h2>Now you're not cooking with gas!</h2><p>There are plenty of <a href="https://www.dl.begellhouse.com/references/5756967540dd1b03,6d280f305cda5f5e,1343ae6a1d424eb6.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ways to heat food</a>. You can burn wood or charcoal, as humans have for most of our history. You can ignite a flammable, oil-derived gas like propane or methane. You can push electrons through a metal coil, where resistance to the passage of electricity gets converted into heat. Or — and this is the new thing — you can push electrons through a tightly wrapped spiral of copper wire to create an oscillating magnetic field, which then heats up the metal atop it. That's induction.</p><p>In the interests of cost and speed, you want as much energy as possible to get into the food instead of the air around it. The <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2015.10.061" target="_blank" rel="noopener">efficiency</a> of a gas stove is about 28% — meaning less than a third of the energy in the burning methane actually heats the food. Classic electric stoves, the much-derided ones with the glowing superhot coil, come in at 39%. But on an induction cooktop, it's a blazing 70%, which is part of what's driving the push to switch from gas to electric. But once that heat is in there? From a cooking perspective, it doesn't really matter where it came from.</p><p>"Heat is heat," says Harold McGee, the author of the invaluable book "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen." "We have various ways of heating up a cooking vessel in order to heat the contents of that vessel. But once the vessel itself is hot, everything else is pretty much the same."</p><p>After unboxing my induction plate I went to check my pots and pans. I got a magnet; if it doesn't stick to a pot, the pot won't work on an induction plate. This went badly for me. The only winners in my kitchen were the 50-year-old cast-iron pans and two nonstick skillets. That meant I couldn't do stuff on the Tillreda like boiling soup and pasta, things that require a long time on an inefficient gas flame. "In cases like that, the heat losses for a gas flame really add up," McGee says. "If you're sautéing something really quickly, that's not a big deal. If you're simmering something for hours, you're losing a lot of energy."</p><p>I started cooking stuff with what I had. My first impressions were mixed. Just finding a place to store the cooktop when I wasn't using it turned into an unplanned, multiday epic reorganization of our tiny kitchen, which had negative consequences on household harmony. Balancing pans on the little glass plate was tricky. Controlling the heat level with a bleep-bloop digital interface felt distant and unintuitive compared with mechanically turning a flame up or down. Also, the Tillreda whines a little bit, and it runs a fan to keep its circuits from overheating. It was loud — like, "Is your laptop broken?" loud.</p><p>The genuinely strange part was the difference in <em>where</em> my pans got hot. Induction <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2013.01.012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tends to heat the bottom of pans evenly</a> but not heat the sides as much as gas stoves do. You can see it in thermal imaging. And every cookware maker layers aluminum, steel, and even copper alloys differently in their products, so the individual pot or pan makes a big difference. In 2016, a couple of food scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Stout <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2015.10.061" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tested</a> a bunch of pans on gas, electric coil, and induction cooktops. On the whole, induction was faster and more uniform. But the variations in where and how they heated up were wild. Some of the pots took two minutes to reach their maximum temperatures on induction; others took six. Without nerding out on your cookware you have, you can't know how they're going to behave until you mess with them.</p><p>My limited selection of pans, and the different distribution of heat, made my attempts at induction cooking a bit hard to gauge, but I got used to it. The bacon I panfried for breakfast browned faster than over gas, but the eggs seemed to cook a bit slower. Smashed-style burgers didn't get that nice sear they do over gas, but maybe I should have squashed 'em harder, or clicked the induction plate to a higher setting. Korean-seasoned beef heated up and cooled off with lightning speed. Sausages browned faster; a big pile of veggies sautéed evenly and easily. I even bought an induction-ready stock pot. If induction is the future, then after a week of basic, household cooking, I'm all fired up.</p><h2>On my signal, open fire</h2><p>Cooking pros, of course, aren't using a tiny burner from Ikea like the one I got. "Most cheap induction units are huge liars," says Dave Arnold, a famed food-tech nerd who hosts the "Cooking Issues" podcast. "They give you that wattage for a little bit of time, and then the internal circuitry gets too hot and they throttle the power down. Ask any caterer. For some reason, they crap out on you."</p><p>Arnold uses an induction cookplate called a Breville Control Freak. It's twice as big as my Ikea, and it runs about $1,500. He calls it the "gold standard" for induction cooktops: "It'll pull 1,700 watts out of the wall with an efficiency that all but the most screaming home gas burners can't compete with." But it doesn't take a Control Freak to make induction work. In general, he says, induction is way better than hard-to-control old-style electric, and it beats gas, too. "Nine times out of 10, induction is a dream. The fact I can go from full power and then throttle all the way down and not have to worry about it? With gas, when you throttle really low, you have to worry the flame is going to blow out."</p><p>And that other one time out of 10? Those are cases that require an open flame. That's where induction just can't give you the results that gas does.</p><p>Take wok hei, the charred-smoke flavor you get from a superhot stir-fry. It comes, in part, from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/dining/stir-fry-recipe-wok-hei.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">aerosolized droplets of oil</a> getting ignited by the open flame and then mixing back into the food, which is hard to do if you don't have a blisteringly hot fire. "The people who do a lot of stir-fry, either with jumping-pan motion or woks — those are the people I feel the worst for," Arnold says. There's a solution to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/j-kenji-lopez-alt-induction-gas-stove-electric-coil/672897/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stir-frying with induction</a>, though. Use a blowtorch over the top of the food — an auxiliary fire, in other words.</p><p>And then there are tortillas. They're a significant part of meals in my house, and we heat them by putting them directly atop a gas flame until they puff and char a bit. I tried one in a cast-iron pan on the induction plate. I got only a little char, localized to one poker-chip-size spot, and no real puff or crisping.</p><p>Arnold offers a kludgy fix: Cook one side of the tortilla over an induction burner, flip it, cook the other side, and then flip it again — this time pressing down with a towel "to get better thermal contact." It gets you the puff.</p><div type="image" title="A wok full of veggies sits atop a glossy black rectangular surface on a kitchen counter" height="900" width="900" msid="97623317" hostid="261" sizebytes="50882"></div><p>McGee, the author of "On Food and Cooking," is getting ready to move to an induction cooktop at home, except for two things. "One is tortillas," he says, "and the other is blistering peppers and tomatoes." For dishes that require a flame, he plans to supplement his induction stovetop with a propane- or butane-fueled picnic burner. He'll be all-electric in the kitchen, with a little gas burner on the side. </p><p>But for most of us, that's not really an option in the short term. Like most American homes, mine doesn't have an electrical panel equipped to deliver the 220 volts that induction requires. That's the same reason I don't have an electric clothes dryer or a heat pump, or any of the other electrified technologies that might make a real difference in my home's carbon-emission footprint. And even though the Biden administration is trying to incentivize all those things via the Inflation Reduction Act, I'm <a href="https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/01/12/to-get-off-fossil-fuels-berkeley-is-going-to-need-a-lot-more-electricians" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unlikely to get a panel upgrade</a> anytime soon.</p><p>Still, it's only a matter of time before we're all cooking with induction. Arnold says he figures high-heat, open-flame techniques will just become part of outside cooking, the way most folks think about grilling. And my brief time with my Ikea cooktop has helped me make my peace with that. People tend to meet any change to the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crhy.2018.03.001" target="_blank" rel="noopener">technology of our homes</a> with suspicion — until the next change, when the old one becomes a beloved tradition that we mourn the loss of, whether it's wood-burning stoves or gas lamps. Technology moves on. It's what technology does.</p><p>Arnold, for his part, is ready — or maybe just resigned — to home cooking's postwar era. "There will be 1,000 TikToks and a subreddit, and people will figure out new cooking techniques, and older folks like me will grouse about it until the day we die," he says. "But we will die — and so will gas."</p><p style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/adam-rogers"><em>Adam Rogers</em></a> <em>is a senior correspondent at Insider.</em></p>

I settled the gas stove debate with a $69.99 induction cooktop from Ikea

<ul class="summary-list"><li>With massive guns and stout armor, battleships were the centerpiece of any major navy for decades before World War II.</li><li>The US Navy sent its battleships into combat from the 1890s until the Gulf War. Here's how they were used during that century of warfare.</li></ul><p>For nearly a century, battleships were the preeminent symbol of naval dominance, commanding the seas until the use of carriers became widespread during World War II.</p><p>Armed with massive guns and a host of secondary armaments, battleships were originally the centerpiece of any major fleet. They would deliver knockout blows in massive engagements and bring lesser powers to heel.</p><p>At least 21 different classes of battleships were built for the US Navy between 1888 to 1947, and they played decisive roles in projecting American power.</p><h2>The pre-dreadnoughts</h2><div type="image" title="USS Texas navy battleship" height="771" width="1024" msid="79783809" hostid="261"></div><p>By the 1880s, all-metal ships had only recently become popular. The performance of ironclads in the American Civil War and the Third Italian war of independence - particularly at the <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/hampton-roads" target="_top">Battle of Hampton Roads</a> and the <a href="https://www.naval-encyclopedia.com/the-battle-of-lissa-1866/" target="_top">Battle of Lissa</a> - showed that the future of naval warfare was armored vessels with large guns.</p><p>The first American <keyword id="389983" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Battleship">battleship</keyword>, <a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/t/texas-i.html" target="_top">USS Texas</a>, was the US's attempt to catch up to European powers that were fitting their metal ships with rotating turrets. Texas was actually ordered in response to the purchase of European-made ships by South American countries, which briefly made Brazil the strongest naval power in the Western Hemisphere.</p><p>Texas featured two turrets with a single 12-inch gun in each. It also had six other 12-inch guns in different mounts throughout the ship, as turrets were still relatively new and secondary armaments were considered equally important.</p><p>Though Texas was a new design, the fast-paced shipbuilding environment made it largely obsolete by the time it was commissioned no less than eight other classes of battleships between 1895 and 1908, as well as a number of protected cruisers.</p><p>Dominance in the Spanish-American War in 1898, as well as the Great White Fleet's voyage around the world between 1907 and 1909, proved American naval power, but the ships themselves were still considered wanting compared to those of the major sea powers - namely Britain.</p><h2>Dreadnought battleships</h2><div type="image" title="USS New York navy battleship" height="1585" width="2000" msid="79783811" hostid="261"></div><p>Battleship design entered a new phase in 1906 when the Royal Navy commissioned HMS Dreadnought.</p><p>Dreadnought was the first warship to feature a uniform main battery with large guns in multiple turrets instead of a few large guns with a sizable complement of secondary guns. Dreadnought's general layout became the model for all future battleships, and it sparked a naval arms race around the world.</p><p>By the time of World War I, the US Navy had at least 16 battleships from eight Dreadnought-inspired classes in service.</p><p>Ships in four of those classes had 12-inch guns, while ships of the other four had 14-inch guns. The number of turrets varied, as did their number of guns: The Wyoming-class had as many as six twin turrets, while the Pennsylvania-class had four triple turrets.</p><p>Although World War I saw a number of major ship-to-ship engagements - most notably the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Jutland" target="_top">Battle of Jutland</a> - the US entered the war too late to join any major naval battles, though some of its battleships did fire on German vessels while on patrol or escort duty.</p><h2>The Washington and London Naval Treaties</h2><div type="image" title="USS Colorado navy battleship" height="1421" width="1894" msid="79783813" hostid="261"></div><p>Two more classes of battleships, the Tennessee and Colorado classes, were completed after the war ended.</p><p>The Colorados featured an upgraded armament of eight 16-inch guns in four twin turrets. The developments proved that the US had caught up and was now a major naval power.</p><p>But worries of another naval arms race sparking a second major war lead the US, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan to sign the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Five-Power-Naval-Limitation-Treaty" target="_top">Washington Naval Treaty</a> in 1922, putting strict limits on new capital ships, their total tonnage, and the size of their guns.</p><p>In the US, this resulted in the canceling of all six vessels of the planned South Dakota-class, as well as one incomplete Colorado-class battleship. No new American battleships would be under construction again until 1937.</p><p>In 1930, the London Naval Treaty extended the restrictions to submarines and cruisers, but by 1936, Japan and Italy had both renounced the treaty, and Germany had withdrawn from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference.</p><p>France, Britain, and the US also signed the Second London Naval Treaty that year, in an attempt to keep the limitations alive.</p><h2>World War II</h2><div type="image" title="USS West Virginia pearl harbor" height="900" width="1123" msid="79783816" hostid="261"></div><p>All eight Battleships of the US Navy's Pacific Fleet were sunk or damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The newest battleships of the North Carolina-class were in the Atlantic and had to support operations against Germany.</p><p>But the war would be entirely different than what the Navy envisioned. The Navy's aircraft carriers, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-us-navy-aircraft-carriers-avoided-destruction-at-pearl-harbor-2020-12" target="_blank" rel="noopener">all of which survived the Pearl Harbor attack unscathed</a>, became the prime weapon against Japan's formidable navy, dealing decisive blows at the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and Eastern Solomons.</p><p>American battleships were instead mostly used to escort aircraft carriers and provide shore bombardment for amphibious landings. They engaged Axis powers' battleships only three times during the war: the Battle of Casablanca, the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, and the Battle of the Surigao Strait.</p><p>Surigao Strait, part of the larger <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/leyte-gulf-biggest-naval-battle-ever-last-time-battleships-fought-2020-10" target="_top">Battle of Leyte Gulf</a>, was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/leyte-gulf-biggest-naval-battle-ever-last-time-battleships-fought-2020-10" target="_top">the last battle between battleships</a> in history.</p><h2>The Cold War</h2><div type="image" title="USS Missouri Tomahawk 1991" height="606" width="900" msid="79783818" hostid="261"></div><p>By 1947, the US had decommissioned all its battleships except the four vessels of the Iowa-class. In addition, all five of the planned 48,000-ton Montana-class ships were canceled.</p><p>While World War II had proved that carriers were the kings of the seas, battleships were still extremely useful for shore bombardment and were still a symbol of naval supremacy.</p><p>The four Iowa-class battleships were held in such high regard that they were brought in and out of service multiple times during the Cold War. They provided naval gunfire support for UN forces during the Korean War and shelled Vietcong positions during the Vietnam War.</p><p>In response to the arrival of the Soviet navy's Kirov-class battlecruisers in the 1980s, the Iowas were modernized. They were given launchers for land-attack and anti-ship missiles, four Phalanx Close-in Weapon Systems, and the ability to launch unmanned aerial vehicles.</p><p>US battleships saw combat for the last time during the Gulf War in early 1991. USS Missouri and USS Wisconsin <a href="https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/battleships-pulled-off-the-biggest-ruse-of-operation-de-1754104974" target="_top">fired</a> 1,078 16-inch shells and launched 52 cruise missiles at Iraqi targets - a show of force <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/video-of-us-navy-battleships-firing-guns-2019-1" target="_top">meant to deceive Iraqi commanders</a> about the US-led coalition's real plans.</p><p>The end of the Cold War, the break-up of the Soviet Union, and advances in missile technology all made it harder to justify keeping such large and expensive vessels. The four Iowa-class battleships were finally decommissioned between 1990 and 1992 and are now all museum ships.</p>

US battleships fired their guns for the last time 30 years ago. Here's how they dominated the seas for nearly a century.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>US Navy/Mass Comm. Specialist 3rd Class Jonathan Clay</span></p><p class="caption">A US sailor loads sonobuoys into an MH-60R Seahawk helicopter aboard guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham in the Mediterranean Sea, June 16, 2018.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>The US government has awarded a billion-dollar contract for the production of sonobuoys, which are used to hunt submarines.</li><li>Demand for sonobuoys is only expected to grow, and the contract comes as the Pentagon seeks to shore up its supply.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>ERAPSCO, a joint venture between US company Sparton Corp. and a subsidiary of British firm Ultra Electronics, was awarded a US <keyword id="6354810" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="defense">defense</keyword> contract worth $1.041 billion on July 18 to produce sonobuoys used in anti-submarine warfare.</p><p><span>"Sonobuoys are air-launched, expendable, electro-mechanical, anti-submarine warfare acoustic sensors designed to relay underwater sounds associated with ships and submarines," the Pentagon <a href="https://dod.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1909668/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in the contract listing.</span></p><p>The<span> $1,041,042,690 award was for the manufacture and delivery of a maximum of 37,500 AN/SSQ-36B, 685,000 AN/SSQ-53G, 120,000 AN/SSQ-62F, and 90,000 AN/SSQ-101B sonobuoys for fiscal years 2019-2023.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>US Navy/Petty Officer 2nd Class Julian R. Moorefield</span></p><p class="caption">Aviation ordnancemen load sonobuoys on a P-3C Orion before flight operations in Okinawa, Japan, August 27, 2011.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>The <a href="https://www.businessdefense.gov/News/News-Display/Article/1783491/defense-production-act-title-iii-presidential-determination-for-sonobuoys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AN/SSQ series</a> of sonobuoys are the principal sensors used by the US Navy to detect, classify, and localize adversary subs during peacetime and combat operations.</span></p><p><span>Active sonobuoys send pings through the water to bounce off potential targets. Passive sonobuoys just listen for subs or other vessels. There are also special-purpose sonobuoys that collect other data for radar and intelligence analysts.</span></p><p><span>Sonobuoys are limited by their battery life, and, if tracking a moving target, can become useless soon after being dropped. They're mainly launched from MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopters and P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, and when hunting without a target in its sights, the P-8A can <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-is-at-risk-of-not-making-enough-sonobuoys-to-hunt-submarines-2019-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">expend</a> its full supply in one mission.</span></p><h2><span>More subs means more buoys</span></h2><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>US Navy/Petty Officer 3rd Class Bill Dodge</span></p><p class="caption">A US sailor launches a sonobuoy into the Atlantic Ocean from guided-missile destroyer USS Stout, October 27, 2016.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>Increasing submarine activity around the world has led to more interest in anti-submarine warfare, especially among the US and its partners, which are concerned <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-submarine-warfare-increasing-focus-2018-4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">about Russian</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-growing-submarine-force-worrying-pacific-us-2018-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chinese submarines</a>.</span></p><p><span>In a July 2018 funding request, the Pentagon asked Congress <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-requests-more-sonobuoys-amid-concerns-about-russian-subs-2018-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">to reprogram $20 million</a> to buy more air-dropped sonobuoys, saying that "unexpected high anti-submarine warfare operational tempo in 2017 ... resulted in unexpected high expenditure rate of all type/model/series."</span></p><p><span>A 2015 study predicted global demand for sonobuoys would <a href="https://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2015/12/global-sonobuoy-market.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">grow by 40%</a> through 2020, with most of the interest in passive sonobuoys.</span></p><p><span>The Navy's sonobuoy <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-is-at-risk-of-not-making-enough-sonobuoys-to-hunt-submarines-2019-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">budget grew</a> from $174 million in 2018 to $216 million in 2019 to $264 million in the 2020 budget, which asked for 204,000 of the devices. </span><span>But there is concern about the Navy's ability replenish its supply in the future.</span></p><p><span>The Pentagon believes it may no longer have a reliable supplier without government investment in the sonobuoy market, officials <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-is-at-risk-of-not-making-enough-sonobuoys-to-hunt-submarines-2019-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Defense News</a> in March.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>US Navy/Chief Mass Comm. Specialist Keith DeVinney</span></p><p class="caption">A US sailor unloads a sonobuoy on a P-8A Poseidon to prepare it for use, April 10, 2014.</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p>Right now, the Pentagon has just one supplier: ERAPSCO, a joint venture between the Illinois-based Sparton Corp. and the UK firm Ultra Electronics. But ERAPSCO will dissolve by 2024, and there's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-is-at-risk-of-not-making-enough-sonobuoys-to-hunt-submarines-2019-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">no assurance</a> either company can make the necessary investments to produce them independently.</p><p>The US is not the only buyer, but it is one of the largest, and the loss of US domestic production could lead to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-is-at-risk-of-not-making-enough-sonobuoys-to-hunt-submarines-2019-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sonobuoy shortages</a> around the world.</p><p>In March, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-memorandum-secretary-defense-11/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signed a memo</a> declaring that "<span>domestic production capability for AN/SSQ series sonobuoys is essential to the national defense" and authorizing the Defense Department to pursue increased production.</span></p><p><span>Without action under the Defense Production Act, the memo said, "United States industry cannot reasonably be expected to provide the production capability for AN/SSQ series sonobuoys adequately and in a timely manner."</span></p><p><span>Trump, the Pentagon, and the Navy believe money from the Defense Production Act and industry investment "</span><span>to be the most cost-effective, expedient, and practical approach to meet critical AN/SSQ-series sonobuoy capability requirements," a Defense Department spokesman <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-is-at-risk-of-not-making-enough-sonobuoys-to-hunt-submarines-2019-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Defense News</a> earlier this year.</span></p><p>(Reporting for Reuters by David Alexander; editing by Eric Beech)</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/life-us-navy-submarine-military-training-armed-forces-2016-9">Everything you've ever wanted to know about life on a US Navy submarine</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

The US just awarded a billion-dollar contract for a critical anti-submarine tool that may soon be in short supply

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File</span></p><p class="caption">Musk in the good old days, before Uber took off.</p></div><p></p></div></div>If you haven't been paying careful attention, you might have missed that Tesla has been eclipsed by Uber as the most interesting company in the world.</p><p>Don't get me wrong: Tesla is still <em>very, very</em> interesting.</p><p>But Uber has captured the startup Zeitgeist in the same way that Tesla did a decade ago and ridden that wave to a $60 billion-plus valuation, while Tesla has to content itself with a mere $30 billion market cap.</p><p>Electric cars are just so 2010. In 2016, ride-sharing is the New New Thing, and everyone in the <keyword id="34991" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="transportation">transportation</keyword> business is trying to figure out if Uber can combine ride-hailing with the <em>New</em> New Things - self-driving cars - and establish a mind-warping paradigm shift.</p><p>This is why Uber's debut of an experimental self-driving fleet of cars in Pittsburgh was such a big deal. If Uber can scale that idea, it would have the potential to monopolize on how billions of people worldwide get from point A to point B for next hundred years. Travis Kalanick's startup would rapidly advance beyond being just a tech'd-up taxi service.</p><p>There would suddenly be far fewer justifications for owning a vehicle.</p><h2>A Muskian mood swing</h2><p>Tesla CEO Elon Musk formerly was not all that hot on the whole de-ownership concept for two reasons.</p><p>First, it didn't make intellectual sense to him - he saw people sharing their living spaces through Airbnb, but like a lot of people in the car business, he didn't think that widespread car-sharing was going to displace the conventional ownership model.</p><p>Second, Tesla is deeply invested in the ownership model. It needs customers to be willing to go into debt to finance its expensive electric vehicles. Even a cheaper mass-market EV such as the Model 3 will require a car loan or some type of lease - customers simply aren't going to have $35,000 in cash lying around.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui</span></p><p class="caption">Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>But Musk is nothing if not adaptable, and he knows that Tesla's decade of mindshare dominance could be coming to an end. Tesla has 500,000 vehicles to build in 2018, and Musk understands that it's not possible to shift away from the premise that Tesla would produce EVs and then sell them - the business model wouldn't tolerate it.</p><p>I think he's probably been losing a bit of sleep over Uber's ascent and its recent, rather stunning self-driving rollout. So he and his team have had to come up with a way to diversify Tesla into some sort of quasi-de-ownership business to avoid being steamrolled.</p><p>In this context it's worth noting that Uber is unencumbered by Tesla's commitment to EVs - Uber vehicles could be powered by <em>anything.</em> So Kalanick has flexibility where Musk doesn't.</p><h2>The Tesla Network</h2><p>The solution for Tesla is economic, and it's called the Tesla Network.</p><p>After Tesla reported third-quarter earnings and its first profit in three years this week, Musk was asked during the company's earnings call about the Network, which is what the company will likely call a car-sharing network for owners.</p><p><a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/4015537-tesla-motors-tsla-q3-2016-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single">Here's the exchange</a> between Musk and Dougherty analyst Charlie Anderson (emphasis added):</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>Anderson:</strong> "Is it something that will generate income for Tesla? Does it help develop future products, etc., at a reasonable gross margin? Or is it something that you'll use more for market share gain, help people offset the price of the car long term?"</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>Musk:</strong> "I think it's a bit of both, really. This would be something that would be a significant offset on the cost of ownership of a car and then a revenue generator for Tesla as well. Obviously, the majority of the economics would go to the owner of the car. Sometimes it's been characterized as Tesla versus Uber or Lyft or something like that. It's not Tesla versus Uber; <strong>it's the people versus Uber."</strong></p><p>That last bit has been, I think, erroneously characterized as fighting words - a verbal salvo fired from the cannons of that stout old battleship the USS Elon Musk across the pirate bow of the upstart privateer Travis Kalanick.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/USS_Missouri_%28BB-63%29_RIMPAC-90.jpg">PH1 Terry Cosgrove</a></span></p><p class="caption">BOOM!</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>That's a misinterpretation of Musk's thinking, if you ask me.</p><p>What Musk was really getting at was the lost value that almost all car owners endure because their vehicles sit idle most of the time. If you buy a $100,000 Tesla Model S, you make payments on the car but might use it for only an hour or two per day. All it does it lose you money.</p><p>The Tesla Network would enable you to use Tesla's forthcoming advanced Autopilot features to permit someone else to "rent" your car while you're aren't driving it. An unproductive - and depreciating - asset could become a productive one.</p><p>You would have to deal with additional wear and tear, not to mention the sanitary habits of borrowers - and, of course, a lot of people who spend a hundred grand on a high-tech luxury car are going to have no interest in letting someone borrow it. But you'd be a leg up on how Uber wants you to operate, without even an idle asset to monetize.</p><h2>A necessary compromise</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>AP Photo/Justin Pritchard</span></p><p class="caption">Willing to network.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>That's what I believe Musk meant by his "the people versus Uber" comment. (I reached out to Tesla for clarification, but it's busy right now, so I'll update this post if and when I hear back.) The people are Tesla customers who could own a car that they could use on the Tesla Network - Tesla would make them economic players in a way that using Uber wouldn't.</p><p>It's obvious that Musk has been grappling with a way to change his mind on ride-sharing/ride-hailing/de-ownership as the market shifts around him. The Tesla Network sounds like a reasonable way to get in on the new action without ruining Tesla's bread and butter, now and for the future: selling cars, and lots of them.</p><p>Because the solution is a compromise, I would hesitate to label it brilliant. But as our most recent Nobel laureate in literature once put it, the times, they are a-changin'.</p><p>And Musk is no enemy of change.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/kid-car-enthusiast-uk-reviews-tesla-model-s-2016-9">A 13-year-old kid explains why Tesla is the best car</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="FxeGF1NTE6G-Fu2c2rgCh9j1kvA6VXES" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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What it's really like aboard a US Navy destroyer on a record-breaking, 215-day deployment at sea

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US battleships fired their guns for the last time 30 years ago. Here's how they dominated the seas for nearly a century.

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The US just awarded a billion-dollar contract for a critical anti-submarine tool that may soon be in short supply

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