Category Archives: Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Group

Original Article: Fate of Silicon Valley icon hangs in limbo – Therese Polettis Tech Tales – MarketWatch.

By Therese Poletti, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Anyone who has driven through Silicon Valley has seen the strange concrete and steel hangar that looms just off Highway 101 like an above-ground bunker.

Hangar One, on the former Moffett Field military base adjacent to Mountain View, is large in every sense of the word: it is nearly two hundred feet high, longer than the length of three football fields and 308 feet wide. See slideshow of vintage Hangar One images.

To a few it is an eyesore. But to many, the 79-year-old icon represents what helped create Silicon Valley — engineering and technological prowess, important moments in aeronautics and defense history, marred by the vestiges of an environmental mess.

Built to house Navy dirigibles in 1933, Hangar One is endangered again. An ongoing cleanup to remove the hangar’s toxic siding and save it from demolition lacks funding to finish the job properly. In September, the founders of Google Inc.GOOG -0.30%  offered to foot the bill of $33 million or more, through a company that runs their fleet of private planes.

But NASA Ames Research, which owns the hangar and the former military base, has let their offer to pay for the cost to “reskin” the hangar dangle like a moored airship, hovering in the wind.

“We are going to have to reconsider our proposal,” said Ken Ambrose, director of operations for H211, which operates the fleet of seven planes owned by Google Chief Executive Larry Page, co-founder Sergey Brin and chairman Eric Schmidt. “I guess trying to be efficient is out of the federal government’s lexicon.”

The caveat of the offer is that the Google founders want to store their fleet in Hangar One, a 10-minute drive from the Googleplex. The fleet includes a Boeing 767-200 jet airliner; the rest are smaller planes. The H211 company is among a small number of companies and federal agencies with permission to use the former naval airfield. Moffett Field is also where Air Force One lands on President Obama’s Bay Area visits.

Chas. Dye

Air Force One on one of the two airstrips at Moffett Field, with a partially unskinned Hangar One in the background, on Sept. 25, 2011.

A spokesman for NASA Ames said the discussions about the hangar’s future “are being worked at the top levels of government,” perhaps meaning that the White House is involved. “We are optimistic we are heading in the right direction and doing what’s best for the local community,” said spokesman Michael Mewhinney. “We hope to reach a decision later this year.”

Both Ambrose of H211 and locals trying to preserve Hangar One, which is part of an historic district on the National Register and a California civil engineering landmark, said a decision needs to happen soon. The Navy, the hangar’s former owners, has contractors now working on a massive cleanup and removal of the old siding to remove asbestos, PCBs, and other toxic contaminants. The job is about half finished. But the Navy doesn’t have to invest in and install a new skin back on the hangar after the removal is finished, which could expose or damage the steel skeleton.

“The fear is that if the building remains uncovered, it will deteriorate,” said Lenny Siegel, who founded the Save Hangar One committee and is a local environmental advocate. “It’s my belief, but I can’t prove it, that the H211 proposal is snagged in bureaucracy. It’s the larger question of the future of Moffett Field as part of NASA. D.C. thinks of Moffett as a nuisance and not part of their mission. It’s useful, but not a necessity.”

On Monday, NASA’s budget for fiscal 2013 was announced. NASA Ames was spared any cuts. In fact, its budget got a slight increase to $711 million from $690 million in 2012, in part due to the costs to maintain its older buildings. The NASA Ames spokesman declined to comment further on Hangar One and said the decision is being made in Washington.

In addition to potential deterioration if the famous hangar is left uncovered with only a coat of paint, another more ominous problem is at stake. “That is only a temporary measure,” Ambrose said. “As the elements wear on the paint, all those contaminants get into the groundwater again.”

The Navy has also set up a multi-million dollar scaffolding system around the giant structure for the removal project that could be efficiently used again to install new, non-toxic siding on the hangar.

A storied past

Hangar One was initially built to house the USS Macon, one of the largest rigid dirigibles, or airships, that used non-flammable helium to keep afloat. Germany’s successful reconnaissance missions with the rigid airships — called Zeppelins after their inventor — during World War I spurred their adoption in the U.S., England, France and Italy in the 1920s. Dirigibles were valued for their speed and ability to travel long distances without refueling.

The Macon arrived at Hangar One in 1933 and was used for surveillance missions until it crashed into the ocean in a storm off the coast of Point Sur in 1935. All but two of its crew were saved.

Two years later, in 1937, the young airship industry, which by then was exploring Zeppelins for passenger travel, would collapse completely with the disastrous explosion of the hydrogen-filled Hindenberg. Today, new designs of safer airships are undergoing something of a revival for alternative transport of goods, terrain exploration, and again, for military reconnaissance.

Moffett Field Historical Society

In this 1934 U.S. Navy photo, the USS Macon arrives at Hangar One.

“It’s an asset that can not be easily re-created,” said Brian Hall, CEO of Airship Ventures, which uses Hangar Two on Moffett Field, for its Eureka airship. His company, which also offers passenger Zeppelin rides, had its airship built in Germany. See previous column on Airship Ventures

If Hangar One is properly restored it could also be used to build, test or maintain other airships in this burgeoning “airship village,” Hall noted, because of its size and steel frame. In 2010, Northrop Grumman NOC +0.59%   won a $517 million contract to build three airships for the U.S. Army. “Why is all this business going to the East Coast?” Hall said.

The USS Macon and Hangar One put Moffett Field on the map, the first inklings of the local defense industry that helped create Silicon Valley.

“It’s an imposing structure,” said Bill Stubkjaer, curator at the Moffett Field Historical Society. “This is almost the beginning of Silicon Valley….If Moffett wasn’t here, I don’t think NASA would have been here and if NASA wasn’t here, I don’t think Lockheed would have been here. This has really led the transformation of Mountain View and Sunnyvale from farming communities to a center of high tech.”

As NASA dawdles, the locals stew, and time passes. And who knows how long H211’s offer will last?

“This is a situation that needs a decision,” Ambrose said.

Therese Poletti is a senior columnist for MarketWatch in San Francisco.

Naval Air: Not Fading Away Without A Struggle.

November 11, 2011: The U.S. Navy is upgrading 55 of its 157 P-3C maritime reconnaissance aircraft with new computers, communications and integrated flat-screen displays. More importantly, structural components that are weakened because of old age will be replaced or reinforced. The upgrades will enable the P-3Cs to quickly share data with other aircraft, ships and ground stations. This is considered an upgrade that will prepare crews for the transition, starting in two years, to the new P-8A.

Even as the P-8A is about to arrive, the P-3C remains in great demand. For example, during the last decade, over 60 P-3Cs have also been upgraded to turn them into land reconnaissance aircraft. The P-3Cs are particularly useful for patrolling over Iraq and Afghanistan, looking, and listening, for enemy activity.

Despite all this popularity, the elderly P-3Cs are falling apart. This year, the navy spent nearly $10 million per aircraft to refurbish the wings of 14 P-3Cs. This was part of an effort to keep enough P-3Cs flying until the new P-8A enters service. The wing fatigue is a symptom of age. The P-3 was originally designed to spend 7,500 hours in the air before retirement. But the average of the navy P-3s is 30 years, and, because of lots of refurbishment and diligent maintenance, the average air time is 16,000 hours.

Keeping the elderly P-3Cs flying has not been easy. Four years ago, the navy grounded a quarter of its P-3Cst because of age related metal fatigue in the wings. This sort of thing is common with older aircraft, especially those that spend most of their time flying over salt water. The navy believes that it would have all, or most, of the grounded aircraft back in service by now. But not all the work was done, and about a third of P-3Cs still in service are unavailable because of these age-related repairs. The aircraft have to be partially disassembled for replacement parts or reinforcing elements to be installed, and the process can take nearly a year per aircraft.

The P-3 entered service in 1962. The current version (the P-3C) has a cruise speed of 610 kilometers per hour, endurance of up to 13 hours and a crew of eleven. The 37.4 meter (116 foot) long, propeller driven aircraft has a wingspan of nearly 33 meters (100 feet). The P-3C can carry about ten tons of weapons (torpedoes, mines, or missiles like Harpoon and Maverick).

The 63 ton aircraft is based on the 1950s era Lockheed Electra airliner (which first flew in 1954). Only 170 Electras were built, plus 600 P-3s. About 40 Electras are still in service. The last P-3 was built in 1990. Likely replacements for these elderly search planes, are UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), like Global Hawk or smaller aircraft like Predator. These UAVs typically stay in the air for 24 hours, or more, at a time. What maritime reconnaissance aircraft need, more than anything else, is endurance or, as the professionals like to put it, “persistence.”

But before the UAVs take over, there is the new P-8A Poseidon. About a hundred of these aircraft will replace the P-3C. The P-8A is based on the widely used Boeing 737 airliner. Although the Boeing 737 based P-8A is a two engine jet, compared to the four engine turboprop P-3, it is a more capable plane. The P-8A has 23 percent more floor space than the P-3, and is larger (118 foot wingspan, versus 100 foot) and heavier (83 tons versus 61). Most other characteristics are the same. Both can stay in the air about ten hours per sortie. Speed is different. Cruise speed for the 737 is 910 kilometers an hour, versus 590 for the P-3. This makes it possible for the P-8A to get to a patrol area faster, which is a major advantage when chasing down subs first spotted by sonar arrays or satellites. However, the P-3 can carry more weapons (9 tons, versus 5.6.) This is less of a factor as the weapons (torpedoes, missiles, mines, sonobouys) are pound for pound, more effective today and that trend continues. Both carry the same size crew, of 10-11 pilots and equipment operators. Both aircraft carry search radar and various other sensors.

The 737 has, like the P-3, been equipped with hard points on the wings for torpedoes or missiles. The B-737 is a more modern design, and has been used successfully since the 1960s by commercial aviation. Navy aviators are confident that it will be as reliable as the P-3. The Boeing 737 first flew in 1965, and over 5,000 have been built. The P-8A will be the first 737 designed with a bomb bay and four wing racks for weapons. The P-8 costs about $275 million each.