USS Hopper

Two U.S. Navy vessels — a submarine and an amphibious ship — collided early Friday in the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the Arabian peninsula, the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet reported. The military said in a statement that the collision occurred around 1:00 a.m. local time on Friday (5 p.m. EDT, Thursday). The USS Hartford, a submarine, collided with an amphibious ship, the USS New Orleans. According to the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, 15 soldiers aboard the Hartford were slightly injured but able to return to duty. No injuries were reported aboard the New Orleans. The New Orleans suffered a ruptured fuel tank, resulting ... Read Full Story

  POLITICS-US: Official Version of Naval Incident Starts to Unravel Analysis by Gareth Porter* Credit:Press-TV Image from Iranian video depicting the Jan. 7 encounter with U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz. WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (IPS) - Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to U.S. ships from Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a "battle at sea", new information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no U.S. commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats. ... Read Full Story

Riki Ellison, Chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, MDAA, reports that the United States Navy independently validates its Aegis Ship based missile defense capability. Details of the event follow. "This past Saturday, off the coast of Hawaii, the United States Navy conducted their own live test of their ballistic missile defense systems with full operating crews of U.S. sailors on the USS Paul Hamilton (DDG -60) and USS Hopper (DDG-70). The Japanese ship JS CHOKAI (DDG-176), who later this month will be outfitted with defensive SM-3 ballistic missiles observed, tracked and simulated a defensive engagement with the target missiles. Read more Read Full Story

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (1906 - 1992) was a US naval officer and mathematician who invented the computer compiler in 1952. Her compiler revolutionized computer programming, making computers easier to understand. Hopper and a team developed the first user-friendly business programming language, COBOL . There is an unconfirmed story that Hopper determined than an error in the early Mark II computer was caused by a moth that was trapped in it; she then coined the term “computer bug.” Because of the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as “Amazing Grace”. Just some of her honours are: ... Read Full Story

LibNOT.com believes that the Iranian “speedboat boys” didn’t think they were at the Hamptons and late for a “cafe latte” party. These guys were looking for a fight! The question remains, “why now?” Was the Iranian Revolutionary Guard hoping that a confrontation would end in the destruction of the speedboats and the death of it’s occupants? Is it because President Bush is in route to the Middle East and anything that could embarrass the USA would be a good thing? Could a confrontation with the 5th Fleet that resulted in gunfire help take some of the pressure off Ahmadinejad and his failed economic and ... Read Full Story