Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit
The Northrop B-2 Spirit known as the Stealth Bomber, is an American heavy strategic bomber, featuring low observable stealth technology designed for penetrating dense anti-aircraft defenses. The bomber can deploy both conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as eighty 500-pound class Mk 82 JDAM Global Positioning System-guided bombs, or sixteen 2,400-pound B83 nuclear bombs; the B-2 is the only acknowledged aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration. Development started under the "Advanced Technology Bomber" project during the Carter administration; the ATB project continued during the Reagan administration, but worries about delays in its introduction led to the reinstatement of the B-1 program. Program costs rose throughout development. Designed and manufactured by Northrop Northrop Grumman, the cost of each aircraft averaged US$737 million. Total procurement costs averaged $929 million per aircraft, which includes spare parts, equipment and software support.
The total program cost, which included development and testing, averaged $2.1 billion per aircraft in 1997. Because of its considerable capital and operating costs, the project was controversial in the U. S. Congress; the winding-down of the Cold War in the latter portion of the 1980s reduced the need for the aircraft, designed with the intention of penetrating Soviet airspace and attacking high-value targets. During the late 1980s and 1990s, Congress slashed plans to purchase 132 bombers to 21. In 2008, a B-2 was destroyed in a crash shortly after takeoff. Twenty B-2s are in service with the United States Air Force, which plans to operate them until 2032; the B-2 is capable of all-altitude attack missions up to 50,000 feet, with a range of more than 6,000 nautical miles on internal fuel and over 10,000 nautical miles with one midair refueling. It entered service in 1997 as the second aircraft designed to have advanced stealth technology after the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk attack aircraft. Though designed as a nuclear bomber, the B-2 was first used in combat dropping conventional, non-nuclear ordnance in the Kosovo War in 1999.
It served in Iraq and Libya. By the mid-1970s, military aircraft designers had learned of a new method to avoid missiles and interceptors, known today as "stealth"; the concept was to build an aircraft with an airframe that deflected or absorbed radar signals so that little was reflected back to the radar unit. An aircraft having stealth characteristics would be able to fly nearly undetected and could be attacked only by weapons and systems not relying on radar. Although other detection measures existed, such as human observation, their short detection range allowed most aircraft to fly undetected at night. In 1974, DARPA requested information from U. S. aviation firms about the largest radar cross-section of an aircraft that would remain invisible to radars. Northrop and McDonnell Douglas were selected for further development. Lockheed had experience in this field due to developing the Lockheed A-12 and SR-71, which included a number of stealthy features, notably its canted vertical stabilizers, the use of composite materials in key locations, the overall surface finish in radar-absorbing paint.
A key improvement was the introduction of computer models used to predict the radar reflections from flat surfaces where collected data drove the design of a "faceted" aircraft. Development of the first such designs started in 1975 with "the hopeless diamond", a model Lockheed built to test the concept. Plans were well advanced by the summer of 1975, when DARPA started the Experimental Survivability Testbed project. Northrop and Lockheed were awarded contracts in the first round of testing. Lockheed received the sole award for the second test round in April 1976 leading to the Have Blue program and the F-117 stealth attack aircraft. Northrop had a classified technology demonstration aircraft, the Tacit Blue in development in 1979 at Area 51, it developed stealth technology, LO, fly-by-wire, curved surfaces, composite materials, electronic intelligence, Battlefield Surveillance Aircraft Experimental. "The stealth technology developed from the program was incorporated into other operational aircraft designs, including the B-2 stealth bomber".
By 1976, these programs had progressed to a position in which a long-range strategic stealth bomber appeared viable. President Carter became aware of these developments during 1977, it appears to have been one of the major reasons the B-1 was canceled. Further studies were ordered in early 1978, by which point the Have Blue platform had flown and proven the concepts. During the 1980 presidential election campaign in 1979, Ronald Reagan stated that Carter was weak on defense, used the B-1 as a prime example. In response, on 22 August 1980 the Carter administration publicly disclosed that the United States Department of Defense was working to develop stealth aircraft, including a bomber; the Advanced Technology Bomber program began in 1979. Full development of the black project followed, was funded under the code name "Aurora". After the evaluations of the companies' proposals, the ATB competition was narrowed to the Northrop/Boeing and Lockheed/Rockwell teams with each receiving a study contract for further work.
Both teams used flying wing designs. The Northrop proposal was code named "Seni
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the second-highest officer in the executive branch of the U. S. federal government, after the President of the United States, ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The Vice President is an officer in the legislative branch, as President of the Senate. In this capacity, the Vice President presides over Senate deliberations, but may not vote except to cast a tie-breaking vote; the Vice President presides over joint sessions of Congress. The Vice President is indirectly elected together with the President to a four-year term of office by the people of the United States through the Electoral College. Section 2 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967, created a mechanism for intra-term vice presidential succession, establishing that vice presidential vacancies will be filled by the president and confirmed by both houses of Congress. Whenever a vice president had succeeded to the presidency or had died or resigned from office, the vice presidency remained vacant until the next presidential and vice presidential terms began.
The Vice President is a statutory member of the National Security Council, the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. The Office of the Vice President organises the vice president's official functions; the role of the vice presidency has changed since the office was created during the 1787 constitutional Convention. Over the past 100 years, the vice presidency has evolved into a position of domestic and foreign policy political power, is now seen as an integral part of a president's administration; as the Vice President's role within the executive branch has expanded, his role within the legislative branch has contracted. The Constitution does not expressly assign the vice presidency to any one branch, causing a dispute among scholars about which branch of government the office belongs to: 1) the executive branch; the modern view of the vice president as an officer of the executive branch is due in large part to the assignment of executive authority to the vice president by either the president or Congress.
Mike Pence of Indiana is the current Vice President of the United States. He assumed office on January 20, 2017. No mention of an office of vice president was made at the 1787 Constitutional Convention until near the end, when an 11-member committee on "Leftover Business" proposed a method of electing the chief executive. Delegates had considered the selection of the Senate's presiding officer, deciding that, "The Senate shall choose its own President," and had agreed that this official would be designated the executive's immediate successor, they had considered the mode of election of the executive but had not reached consensus. This all changed on September 4, when the committee recommended that the nation's chief executive be elected by an Electoral College, with each state having a number of presidential electors equal to the sum of that state's allocation of representatives and senators; the proposed presidential election process called for each state to choose members of the electoral college, who would use their discretion to select the candidates they individually viewed as best qualified.
Recognizing that loyalty to one's individual state outweighed loyalty to the new federation, the Constitution's framers assumed that individual electors would be inclined to choose a candidate from their own state over one from another. So they created the office of vice president and required that electors vote for two candidates, requiring that at least one of their votes must be for a candidate from outside the elector's state, believing that this second vote could be cast for a candidate of national character. Additionally, to guard against the possibility that some electors might strategically throw away their second vote in order to bolster their favorite son's chance of winning, it was specified that the first runner-up presidential candidate would become vice president. Creating this new office imposed a political cost on strategically discarded electoral votes, incentivizing electors to make their choices for president without resort to electoral gamesmanship and to cast their second ballot accordingly.
The resultant method of electing the president and vice president, spelled out in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, allocated to each state a number of electors equal to the combined total of its Senate and House of Representatives membership. Each elector was allowed to vote for two people for president, but could not differentiate between their first and second choice for the presidency; the person receiving the greatest number of votes would be president, while the individual who received the next largest number of votes became vice president. If there were a tie for first or for second place, or if no one won a majority of votes, the president and vice president would be selected by means of contingent elections protocols stated in the clause; the emergence of political parties and nationally coordinated election campaigns during the 1790s soon frustrated this original plan. In the election of 1796, Federalist John Adams won the presidency, but his bitter rival, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson came second and became vice president.
Thus, the president and vice president were from opposing parties.
Intercontinental ballistic missile
An intercontinental ballistic missile is a guided ballistic missile with a minimum range of 5,500 kilometres designed for nuclear weapons delivery. Conventional and biological weapons can be delivered with varying effectiveness, but have never been deployed on ICBMs. Most modern designs support multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, allowing a single missile to carry several warheads, each of which can strike a different target. Early ICBMs had limited precision, which made them suitable for use only against the largest targets, such as cities, they were seen as a "safe" basing option, one that would keep the deterrent force close to home where it would be difficult to attack. Attacks against military targets still demanded the use of a more precise, manned bomber. Second- and third-generation designs improved accuracy to the point where the smallest point targets can be attacked. ICBMs are differentiated by having greater range and speed than other ballistic missiles: intermediate-range ballistic missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles, short-range ballistic missiles and tactical ballistic missiles.
Short and medium-range ballistic missiles are known collectively as theatre ballistic missiles. The development of the world's first practical design for an ICBM, A9/10, intended for use in bombing New York and other American cities, was undertaken in Nazi Germany by the team of Wernher von Braun under Projekt Amerika; the ICBM A9/A10 rocket was intended to be guided by radio, but was changed to be a piloted craft after the failure of Operation Elster. The second stage of the A9/A10 rocket was tested a few times in January and February 1945; the progenitor of the A9/A10 was the German V-2 rocket designed by von Braun and used at the end of World War II to bomb British and Belgian cities. All of these rockets used liquid propellants. Following the war, von Braun and other leading German scientists were relocated to the United States to work directly for the US Army through Operation Paperclip, developing the IRBMs, ICBMs, launchers; this technology was predicted by US Army General Hap Arnold, who wrote in 1943: Someday, not too distant, there can come streaking out of somewhere – we won't be able to hear it, it will come so fast – some kind of gadget with an explosive so powerful that one projectile will be able to wipe out this city of Washington.
In the immediate post-war era, the US and USSR both started rocket research programs based on the German wartime designs the V-2. In the US, each branch of the military started its own programs, leading to considerable duplication of effort. In the USSR, rocket research was centrally organized, although several teams worked on different designs. Early designs from both countries were short-range missiles, like the V-2, but improvements followed. In the USSR, early development was focused on missiles able to attack European targets; this changed in 1953 when Sergei Korolyov was directed to start development of a true ICBM able to deliver newly developed hydrogen bombs. Given steady funding throughout, the R-7 developed with some speed; the first launch led to an unintended crash 400 km from the site. The first successful test followed on 21 August 1957; the first strategic-missile unit became operational on 9 February 1959 at Plesetsk in north-west Russia. It was the same R-7 launch vehicle that placed the first artificial satellite in space, Sputnik, on 4 October 1957.
The first human spaceflight in history was accomplished on a derivative of R-7, Vostok, on 12 April 1961, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. A modernized version of the R-7 is still used as the launch vehicle for the Soviet/Russian Soyuz spacecraft, marking more than 60 years of operational history of Sergei Korolyov's original rocket design; the U. S. initiated ICBM research in 1946 with the RTV-A-2 Hiroc project. This was a three-stage effort with the ICBM development not starting until the third stage. However, funding was cut after only three successful launches in 1948 of the second stage design, used to test variations on the V-2 design. With overwhelming air superiority and intercontinental bombers, the newly forming US Air Force did not take the problem of ICBM development seriously. Things changed in 1953 with the Soviet testing of their first thermonuclear weapon, but it was not until 1954 that the Atlas missile program was given the highest national priority; the Atlas A first flew on 11 June 1957.
The first successful flight of an Atlas missile to full range occurred 28 November 1958. The first armed version of the Atlas, the Atlas D, was declared operational in January 1959 at Vandenberg, although it had not yet flown; the first test flight was carried out on 9 July 1959, the missile was accepted for service on 1 September. The R-7 and Atlas each required a large launch facility, making them vulnerable to attack, could not be kept in a ready state. Failure rates were high throughout the early years of ICBM technology. Human spaceflight programs served as a visible means of demonstrating confidence in reliability, with successes translating directly to national defense implications; the US was well behind the Soviet Union in the Space Race, so U. S. President John F. Kennedy increased the stakes with the Apollo program, which used Saturn rocket technology, funded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Japan Self-Defense Forces
The Japan Self-Defense Forces, JSDF referred to as the Self-Defense Forces, Japan Defense Forces, or the Japanese Armed Forces, are the unified military forces of Japan that were established in 1954, are controlled by the Ministry of Defense. The JSDF ranked as the world's fifth most-powerful military in conventional capabilities in a Credit Suisse report in 2015 and it has the world's eighth-largest military budget. In recent years they have been engaged in international peacekeeping operations including UN peacekeeping. Recent tensions with North Korea, have reignited the debate over the status of the JSDF and its relation to Japanese society. New military guidelines, announced in December 2010, will direct the JSDF away from its Cold War focus on the former Soviet Union to a focus on China regarding the territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands, while increasing cooperation with the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea and Australia. Deprived of any military capability after being defeated by the Allies in World War II and signing a surrender agreement presented by General Douglas MacArthur in 1945, Japan had only the U.
S. occupation forces and a minor domestic police force on. Rising Cold War tensions in Europe and Asia, coupled with leftist-inspired strikes and demonstrations in Japan, prompted some conservative leaders to question the unilateral renunciation of all military capabilities; these sentiments were intensified in 1950 as occupation troops began to be moved to the Korean War theater. This left Japan defenseless and much aware of the need to enter into a mutual defense relationship with the United States to guarantee the nation's external security. Encouraged by the American occupation authorities, the Japanese government in July 1950 authorized the establishment of a National Police Reserve, consisting of 75,000 men equipped with light infantry weapons. In 1952, Coastal Safety Force, the waterborne counterpart of NPR, was founded. Under the terms of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, United States forces stationed in Japan were to deal with external aggression against Japan while Japanese ground and maritime forces would deal with internal threats and natural disasters.
Accordingly, in mid-1952, the National Police Reserve was expanded to 110,000 men and named the National Safety Forces. The Coastal Safety Force was transferred with it to the National Safety Agency to constitute an embryonic navy; the trauma of World War II produced strong pacifist sentiments among the nation. In addition, under Article 9 of the United States–written 1947 constitution, Japan forever renounces war as an instrument for settling international disputes and declares that Japan will never again maintain "land, sea, or air forces or other war potential." Cabinets interpreted these provisions as not denying the nation the inherent right to self-defense and, with the encouragement of the United States, developed the JSDF step by step. On July 1, 1954, the National Security Board was reorganized as the Defense Agency, the National Security Force was reorganized afterwards as the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, the Coastal Safety Force was reorganized as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force was established as a new branch of JSDF.
General Keizō Hayashi was appointed as the first Chairman of Joint Staff Council—professional head of the three branches. The enabling legislation for this was the 1954 Self-Defense Forces Act; the Far East Air Force, U. S. Air Force, announced on 6 January 1955, that 85 aircraft would be turned over to the fledgling Japanese air force on about 15 January, the first equipment of the new force. In 1983, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone pledged to make Japan an "unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific", assisting the United States in defending against the threat of Soviet bombers. Although possession of nuclear weapons is not explicitly forbidden in the constitution, Japan, as the only nation to have experienced the devastation of nuclear attacks, expressed early its abhorrence of nuclear arms and its determination never to acquire them; the Atomic Energy Basic Law of 1956 limits research and use of nuclear power to peaceful uses only. Beginning in 1956, national policy embodied "three non-nuclear principles"—forbidding the nation to possess or manufacture nuclear weapons or to allow them to be introduced into its territories.
In 1976 Japan ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and reiterated its intention never to "develop, use, or allow the transportation of nuclear weapons through its territory". Nonetheless, because of its high technology level and large number of operating nuclear power plants, Japan is considered to be "nuclear capable", i.e. it could develop usable nuclear weapons within one year if the political situation changed significantly. Thus many analysts consider Japan a de facto nuclear state. Japan is said to be a "screwdriver's turn" away from possessing nuclear weapons, or to possess a "bomb in the basement". On May 28, 1999, the Regional Affairs Law was enacted, it allows Japan to automatically participate as "rear support" if the United States begins a war under "regional affairs." The Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law was passed on October 29, 2001. It allows the JSDF to contribute by itself to international efforts to the prevention and eradication of terrorism. While on duty the JSDF can use weapons to p
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises. Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System; the U. S. Congress established three key objectives for monetary policy in the Federal Reserve Act: maximizing employment, stabilizing prices, moderating long-term interest rates; the first two objectives are sometimes referred to as the Federal Reserve's dual mandate. Its duties have expanded over the years, also include supervising and regulating banks, maintaining the stability of the financial system, providing financial services to depository institutions, the U. S. government, foreign official institutions.
The Fed conducts research into the economy and provides numerous publications, such as the Beige Book and the FRED database. The Federal Reserve System is composed of several layers, it is governed by the presidentially appointed board of Federal Reserve Board. Twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, located in cities throughout the nation and oversee owned commercial banks. Nationally chartered commercial banks are required to hold stock in, can elect some of the board members of, the Federal Reserve Bank of their region; the Federal Open Market Committee sets monetary policy. It consists of all seven members of the board of governors and the twelve regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents, though only five bank presidents vote at a time. There are various advisory councils. Thus, the Federal Reserve System has both private components, it has a structure unique among central banks, is unusual in that the United States Department of the Treasury, an entity outside of the central bank, prints the currency used.
The federal government sets the salaries of the board's seven governors. The federal government receives all the system's annual profits, after a statutory dividend of 6% on member banks' capital investment is paid, an account surplus is maintained. In 2015, the Federal Reserve earned net income of $100.2 billion and transferred $97.7 billion to the U. S. Treasury. Although an instrument of the US Government, the Federal Reserve System considers itself "an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, the terms of the members of the board of governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms." The primary motivation for creating the Federal Reserve System was to address banking panics. Other purposes are stated in the Federal Reserve Act, such as "to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, for other purposes".
Before the founding of the Federal Reserve System, the United States underwent several financial crises. A severe crisis in 1907 led Congress to enact the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Today the Federal Reserve System has responsibilities in addition to ensuring the stability of the financial system. Current functions of the Federal Reserve System include: To address the problem of banking panics To serve as the central bank for the United States To strike a balance between private interests of banks and the centralized responsibility of government To supervise and regulate banking institutions To protect the credit rights of consumers To manage the nation's money supply through monetary policy to achieve the sometimes-conflicting goals of maximum employment stable prices, including prevention of either inflation or deflation moderate long-term interest rates To maintain the stability of the financial system and contain systemic risk in financial markets To provide financial services to depository institutions, the U.
S. government, foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation's payments system To facilitate the exchange of payments among regions To respond to local liquidity needs To strengthen U. S. standing in the world economy Banking institutions in the United States are required to hold reserves—amounts of currency and deposits in other banks—equal to only a fraction of the amount of the bank's deposit liabilities owed to customers. This practice is called fractional-reserve banking; as a result, banks invest the majority of the funds received from depositors. On rare occasions, too many of the bank's customers will withdraw their savings and the bank will need help from another institution to continue operating. Bank runs can lead to a multitude of economic problems; the Federal Reserve System was designed as an attempt to prevent or minimize the occurrence of bank runs, act as a lender of last resort when a bank run does occur. Many economists, following Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, believe that the Federal Reserve inappropriately refused to lend money to small banks during the bank runs of 1929.
Because some banks refused to clear checks from certain other banks during times of economic uncertainty, a check-clearing system was created in the Federal Reserve System. It is described in
United States Pacific Fleet
The United States Pacific Fleet is a Pacific Ocean theater-level component command of the United States Navy that provides naval forces to the United States Indo-Pacific Command. Fleet headquarters is at Pearl Harbor Naval Station, with large secondary facilities at North Island, San Diego Bay on the Mainland. A Pacific Fleet was created in 1907 when the Asiatic Squadron and the Pacific Squadron were combined. In 1910, the ships of the First Squadron were organized back into a separate Asiatic Fleet; the General Order 94 of 6 December 1922 organized the United States Fleet, with the Battle Fleet as the Pacific presence. Until May 1940, the Battle Fleet was stationed on the west coast of the United States. During the summer of that year, as part of the U. S. response to Japanese expansionism, it was instructed to take an "advanced" position at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Long term basing at Pearl Harbor was so opposed by the commander, Admiral James O. Richardson, that he protested in Washington. Political considerations were thought sufficiently important that he was relieved by Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, in command at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Pacific Fleet was formally recreated on 1 February 1941. On that day General Order 143 split the United States Fleet into separate Atlantic and Asiatic Fleets. On 7 December, the Fleet consisted of the Battle Force, Scouting Force, Base Force, Amphibious Force, Cruiser Force, Destroyer Force, the Submarine Force. In Hawaii was the Fourteenth Naval District, commanded by Rear Admiral Claude C. Bloch; the Battle Force consisted of Battleships, Battle Force, made up of three Battleship Divisions: These nine battleships were intended to counterbalance the ten battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy. At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Pennsylvania was in dry dock undergoing maintenance, Colorado was in the midst of a refit at Bremerton Navy Yard, Washington. Arizona was mated with Oklahoma at that time. Other components of the Battle Force included Aircraft, Battle Force, with Carrier Division One and Carrier Division Two, plus Cruiser Divisions 4, 5, 6, as well as Destroyers, Battle Force.: When the attack took place, all three carriers were absent - Saratoga was in San Diego collecting her air group following a major refit, Enterprise was en route back to Hawaii following a mission to deliver aircraft to Wake Island, while Lexington had just departed on a similar mission to Midway.
The Scouting Force included Cruiser Division Three, Cruiser Division Nine and Submarines, Scouting Force. The Amphibious Force was formally known as Pacific Fleet. On 7 December 1941 the Amphibious Force comprised the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, under Army operational control, the 2nd Marine Division, the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, the 2nd Defense Battalion, a depot. One of PhibPac's subordinate commands during World War II was Transports, Amphibious Force, Pacific Fleet, or TransPhibPac; the commander of TransPhibPac was known as ComTransPhibPac. In December 1941, the fleet consisted of nine battleships, three aircraft carriers, 12 heavy cruisers, eight light cruisers, 50 destroyers, 33 submarines, 100 patrol bombers; this was the fleet's strength at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That day, the Japanese Combined Fleet carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor, drawing the United States into World War II in the Pacific; the Pacific Fleet's Battle Line took the brunt of the attack, with two battleships destroyed, two salvageable but requiring lengthy reconstruction, four more to moderately damaged, forcing the U.
S. Navy to rely on aircraft carriers and submarines for many months afterward. Subsequently Pacific Fleet engagements during World War II included the Battle of Guam, the Marshalls-Gilberts raids, the Doolittle Raid, the Solomon Islands campaign, the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Battle of Okinawa. More minor battles included the Battle of Dutch Harbor; the Submarine Force began a sustained campaign of commerce raiding against Japan's merchant marine, beginning the first day of the war, which claimed 1,314 ships totalling about 5.3 million tons. The West Loch disaster occurred at Pearl Harbor on 21 May 1944; the Pacific Fleet took part in Operation Magic Carpet, the return of U. S. servicemen, after the end of the Second World War. The organization of the Pacific Fleet in January 1947 is shown in Hal M. Friedman's Arguing over the American Lake: Bureaucracy and Rivalry in the U.
S. Pacific, 1945-1947. Since 1950 the Pacific Fleet has been involved in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Taiwan Straits Crises, a number of other operations including the Mayaguez Incident of 1975, as well as post-Vietnam related operations such as Operation New Arrivals; the RIMPAC exercise series began in 1971. On 7 March 1984, the Secretaries of Transportation and Navy signed a Memorandum of Agreement which created the Maritime Defense Zones; the Pacific MDZ is an echelon three Navy command under the Commander U. S. Pacific Fleet; the Pacific MDZ has responsibility for coastal defense up to 200 nautical miles around the U. S. West Coast, Aleutian Islands, Hawaii during times of hostility. On 1 October 1990, Commander U. S. Naval Forces Alaska was established as the Naval Component Commander to Commander, Alask
Airborne early warning and control
An airborne early warning and control system is an airborne radar picket system designed to detect aircraft and vehicles at long ranges and perform command and control of the battlespace in an air engagement by directing fighter and attack aircraft strikes. AEW&C units are used to carry out surveillance, including over ground targets and perform C2BM functions similar to an Air Traffic Controller given military command over other forces; when used at altitude, the radar on the aircraft allows the operators to detect and track targets and distinguish between friendly and hostile aircraft much farther away than a similar ground-based radar. Like a ground-based radar, it can be detected by opposing forces, but because of its mobility, it is much less vulnerable to counter-attack. AEW&C aircraft are used for both defensive and offensive air operations, are to the NATO and US forces trained or integrated Air Forces what the combat information center is to a US Navy warship, plus a mobile and powerful radar platform.
The system is used offensively to direct fighters to their target locations, defensively, directing counterattacks on enemy forces, both air and ground. So useful is the advantage of command and control from a high altitude, the United States Navy operates Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye AEW&C aircraft off its Supercarriers to augment and protect its carrier Command Information Centers; the designation airborne early warning was used for earlier similar aircraft, such as the Fairey Gannet AEW.3 and Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star, continues to be used by the RAF for its Sentry AEW1, while AEW&C emphasizes the command and control capabilities that may not be present on smaller or simpler radar picket aircraft. AWACS is the name of the specific system installed in the E-3 and Japanese Boeing E-767 AEW&C airframes, but is used as a general synonym for AEW&C. Modern AEW&C systems can detect aircraft from up to 400 km away, well out of range of most surface-to-air missiles. One AEW&C aircraft flying at 9,000 m can cover an area of 312,000 km2.
Three such aircraft in overlapping orbits can cover the whole of Central Europe. AEW&C systems communicate with friendly aircraft, vectoring fighters towards bogeys, providing data on threats and targets, help extend their sensor range and make offensive aircraft more difficult to track, since they no longer need to keep their own radar active to detect threats. After having developed Chain Home--the first ground-based early-warning radar detection system--in the 1930s, the British developed a radar set that could be carried on an aircraft for what they termed "Air Controlled Interception"; the intention was to cover the North West approaches where German long range Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor aircraft were threatening shipping. A Vickers Wellington bomber was fitted with a rotating antenna array, it was tested for use against aerial targets and for possible use against German E boats. Another radar equipped Wellington with a different installation was used to direct Bristol Beaufighters toward Heinkel He 111s, which were air-launching V-1 flying bombs.
In February 1944, the U. S. Navy ordered the development of a radar system that could be carried aloft in an aircraft under Project Cadillac. A prototype system was flown in August on a modified TBM Avenger torpedo bomber. Tests proved successful, with the system being able to detect low flying formations at a range in excess of 100 miles; the U. S. Navy ordered production of the TBM-3W, the first production AEW aircraft to enter service. TBM-3Ws fitted with the AN/APS-20 radar entered service in March 1945, with some 36–40 being constructed; the Lockheed WV and EC-121 Warning Star, which first flew in 1949 served with both the US Air Force and US Navy and provided the main AEW coverage for US forces during the Vietnam war. It was to remain operational until replaced with its intended successor. Developed in parallel, N-class blimps were used as AEW aircraft, filling in gaps in radar coverage for the continental US, their tremendous endurance of over 200 hours being a major asset in an AEW aircraft, although lighter than air operations were discontinued in 1962 following a crash.
In 1958, the Soviet Tupolev Design Bureau was ordered to design an AEW aircraft. After determining that the projected radar instrumentation wouldn't fit in a Tupolev Tu-95 or a Tupolev Tu-116, the decision was made to use the more capacious Tupolev Tu-114 instead; this solved the problems with cooling and operator space that existed with the narrower Tu-95 and Tu-116 fuselage. To meet the flight range requirements, production examples were fitted with an air-to-air refueling probe; the resulting system, the Tupolev Tu-126, entered service in 1965 with the Soviet Air Forces and remained in service until replaced by the Beriev A-50 in 1984. Many countries have developed their own AEW&C systems, although the Boeing E-3 Sentry and Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye are the most common systems worldwide; the E-3 Sentry was built by the Boeing Defense and Space Group and was based on the Boeing 707-320 aircraft. Sixty-five E-3s were built and it is operated by the United States, NATO, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia.
The specially designed Grumman E-2 Hawkeye entered service in 1965 and has been operated by eight different nations. Over 168 have been produced so far and new versions continue to be developed, making it the most used AEW system. For the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, the E-3 technology has been fitted into the Boeing E-767. After World War 2, the United Kingdom de
