Carrier (1999) (54 page)

Once the C-2A reached 10,000 feet/3,048 meters, the ride became more comfortable. The fog from the air-conditioning vents had become a flow of fresh air, and except for the constant rumble of the twin turboprops, everything was pleasant. As the aircraft turned southwest, we crossed over the coast and went “feet wet.” From my small window, I could see the four amphibious ships of the
Guam
ARG loading up the elements of the 24th MEU (SOC). When they finished this task, they would join up with the rest of the battle group, now operating approximately 200 nm/370 km offshore.

It took us just under an hour to reach the battle group’s operating area, at which point we were put into a wide port turn to hold for landing. Since qualifying pilots is considered more important than landing VIPs, we circled the battle group for almost a half hour before the command came from the
GW
’s air traffic control center to get into the landing pattern. Soon after the Greyhound broke into the landing pattern, the flight crew gunned the engines and headed onto the final approach to the carrier.

Back in the passenger/cargo compartment, the crew chiefs ordered all of us to brace ourselves. After a big “thump” when the wheels touched down, I was jammed back into my seat as the tailhook snagged one of the arresting wires. Once the aircraft was stopped, the deck crews quickly disengaged the hook and began to fold the wings. The flight crew then taxied forward to a parking space ahead of the island, where the deck crews immediately began to chain the bird down.

Moments later, I was following the other passengers to a hatch in the island structure, and then down a ladder to the
GW
’s Air Transport Office (ATO) on the O-2 level. There we checked in with the ATO watch officer, handed in our survival gear, and picked up our bags. By this time, John Gresham and Lieutenant Navritril had arrived to escort me to my stateroom on the O-2 level. After a shower and a quiet dinner in Wardroom 3 with John and Lieutenant Navritril, I went to bed. Even the pounding noise of aircraft launching and landing one deck above did not keep me from sleeping.

 

I awoke at 0600, showered, and headed down the ladders to Wardroom 3 for breakfast. There I met John and Lieutenant Navritril. As we finished breakfast, Lieutenant Navritril informed us that we would be meeting with Admiral Mullen later that morning to discuss his plans for the upcoming exercise and his philosophy of running a carrier battle group.

Promptly at 1000, we arrived in the flag officers quarters in “Blue Tile” land on the O-2 level, and soon after that we headed into the admiral’s sitting room. There Rear Admiral Mike Mullen, the commander of Cruiser-Destroyer Group Two (CRUDESGRU 2) and the GW battle group, warmly greeted us. Admiral Mullen is a surface line officer, one of the new generation of battle group commanders now sharing command opportunities with naval aviators. He is a handsome man, cool and intellectual; it’s no surprise that he has a Harvard master’s degree. At the moment, he was clearly preoccupied with getting the battle group set up for the coming JTFEX 97-3 exercise.

Spacing his remarks between the metallic roars of Catapult Number One (located directly above his stateroom), he discussed his vision of CVBG operations. Back in the Cold War, he explained, the Navy feared that the Soviet Union would try to eliminate the U.S. naval presence by sending multiple regiments of Tu-22M Backfire and Tu-16 Badger bombers armed with huge air-to-surface missiles (ASMs). The idea was to kill the CVBGs, after which Soviet submarines and surface groups would clean up the survivors with their own SSMs. It was against this threat that systems like the F-14 Tomcat fighter and Aegis were developed; their function was to shield the CVBG from waves of incoming missiles.

Today the world has greatly changed. With the bomber regiments of the Soviet Union a thing of the past, the threat of air attack on a CVBG has been so reduced that it is no longer necessary to maintain standing combat air patrols (CAPs) of airborne fighters. At the same time, the once-formidable fleet of Soviet submarines and missile ships is now either rusting at anchor, or else has been cut up into scrap metal. At this point the new CVBG tactics now practiced by Admiral Mullen and his contemporaries take the stage.

Today’s CVBG tactics revolve around the reality that in the post-Cold War world very little threatens U.S. naval forces. The only navies in any way capable of hurting us are not likely to do that, since they are already friends like our NATO allies and Japan. Even if the friendship were somehow to cease, we could probably beat all of them together in a fair fight. All of this means practically that we can greatly reduce our commitment of aircraft and vessels to self-protection, and their resources can now be dedicated to the projection of offensive power. Now that they are relatively unconcerned about the military threat from other nations, CVBG commanders like Admiral Mullen want to be the military threat in a theater of operations. Obviously, Admiral Mullen does not plan to ignore enemy threats. To do that would be both foolish and irresponsible. Rather, he plans to leverage his best systems so as to defend the fleet with the greatest possible efficiency and effectiveness.

The practical consequences of all this doctrinal thinking is that the “Outer Air Battle” concept that drove fleet air defense tactics in the 1980’s is dead and gone. Instead of massed CAPs of F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornet fighters, backed by a wall of SAM-armed escorts directed by the Aegis cruisers and destroyers, a more modest defense plan has been adopted. To that end Admiral Mullen now planned to depend on the SM-2 Standard SAMs aboard the
Normandy, South Carolina,
and
Carney
to project an air defense “bubble” over the battle group and ARG, while continuing their other jobs of keeping naval and submarine threats at bay. This would allow him to reserve the sorties of his Tomcats and Hornets for the job of delivering ordnance onto land and naval targets. In other words, the escorts would be doing a kind of “double duty” so as to allow the rest of the force to project offensive power into the littoral regions that would be their operating areas. Tomahawk and Harpoon cruise-missile strikes would be used wherever possible on fixed or naval targets, so that manned aircraft sorties would be saved for more mobile or more difficult missions.

For JTFEX 97-3, he would take the fullest possible advantage of both STANAFORLANT and the USAF KC-135 tankers he was being supplied with. Also, wherever possible, he would make use of special operations forces (from his own onboard SEAL (Sea-Air-Land) team and the 24th MEU (SOC) as force-multipliers and reconnaissance assets. Finally, though he was discreet in his references to them, Admiral Mullen planned to make full use of the two available SSNs, the
Toledo
and
Annapolis.
Both represented immensely capable platforms for a number of missions (such as intelligence-gathering, ASW, and Tomahawk cruise-missile attacks), and he clearly had big ideas for their use.

Just before our visit came to an end and we headed back down to Wardroom 3 for lunch, Admiral Mullen told us what he would stress the most in the coming exercise: safety. He had good reason to be concerned. There had been numerous deaths during the previous three East Coast JTFEXs. In JTFEX 96-2, for example, which was run in May of 1996 by XVIII Airborne Corps, thirteen deaths had resulted from the collision and crash of two USMC helicopters at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. For the JTFEX about to begin, Admiral Mullen had just one simple objective: to bring every one of the participants home alive with all the important parts attached and in working order! He planned to accomplish this objective by a variety of means, ranging from “buddy system” checks of deck crews for fatigue, to regular drills for damage control and battle stations. As John and I left, we could only pray that these plans would work.

 

This morning John and I were extremely busy, as we were about to move from the
GW
to the Aegis cruiser
Normandy,
where we would spend time with the “small boy” sailors of the GW battle group. As luck would have it, our rushing around turned out to be unnecessary. A heavy squall line had moved through overnight, leaving behind rough seas, high winds, and heavy patches of rain—and delaying our departure. Meanwhile, the high summer heat continued, with peak temperatures over 90° F/32 C°. All of this meant that flight operations around the battle group and ARG were extremely dicey.

Before our departure, we had a scheduled meeting with three of the CVW-1 squadron commanders down in the air wing ready room. Joining us for coffee and a chat in the comfortable, leather-covered ready room chairs were Commander Curt Daill of VF-102 (flying F-14B upgrades), Commander Robert M. Harrington of VFA-86 (flying the Block 10 F/A-18C Hornet), and Commander Michael Mulcahy of HS-11 (flying SH-60F and HH-60H Seahawk). The three men’s comments about the aircraft they flew and the units they commanded turned out to be both candid and informative.

Curt Daill is every inch the classic F-14 Tomcat driver, with all the ego and ambition that go with the job. As commander of VF-102, he headed a squadron that was rapidly acquiring new and useful capabilities. Already flying one of the most powerful warplanes in the world with its F-110 engines and AWG-9/AIM-54 Phoenix weapons system, the “Diamondbacks” had recently added two new systems to their aircraft. These are the new Digital Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System (D/TARPS) and the AAQ-14 Low Altitude Navigation (LANTIRN) pod. The four D/TARPS pods assigned to VF-102 allowed them to take and transmit near-“real-time” targeting images while still over the target. This capability would allow Admiral Mullen to plan a strike on target just minutes after the D/TARPS-equipped F-14 locates it. The AAQ-14 LANTIRN pod (which has a built-in GPS/INS system) gives the F-14 community the ability to conduct day and night precision strikes with Paveway LGBs, as well as accomplishing wide-area reconnaissance with GPS positional accuracy. Both of these new capabilities made VF-102 one of the most desirable air units that a CinC might be assigned in a time of crisis.

Commander Bob Harrington, a quiet, intense man, who lets his squadron’s actions speak for him, heads VFA-86. Another long-time Naval aviator who has seen his chosen flying community move in surprising directions, Commander Harrington has gone from operating A-7 Corsairs armed with “iron” bombs to taking up the F/A-18C armed with the most advanced PGMs.

Our third squadron leader, Commander Michael Mulcahy of HS-11, arrived just a little late. Though he didn’t tell us then, we later learned that the skipper of the “Dragon Slayers” had just flown one of the first missions of the UN-mandated maritime embargo of the Koronan forces. Flying an HH-60H loaded with a SEAL team, he had swooped down on the fleet oiler
Merrimack
(AO-179), which was being used by USACOM to simulate a merchant ship transporting concealed arms and other sensitive cargo to Korona. Hovering over the oiler’s deck, the SEAL team had “fast roped” down to the ship and conducted a simulated “takedown” of the suspected weapons cache that intelligence sources had reported there. After seizing the ship, the SEAL team had called for a prize crew from one the battle group escorts and turned the ship over to them.

“I haven’t really been up to anything important this morning,” Commander Mulcahy remarked as he coolly joined us in the ready room.

HS-11 is one of the few carrier aviation units that fly two different aircraft. In addition to the SH-60F variant used for submarine hunting, they also fly the HH-60H search and rescue (SAR)/special operations version. This means that in addition to helping protect the GW from submarines that might penetrate the so-called “inner zone,” inside the protective ring of escort vessels, they also provide the battle group with the ability both to rescue downed air crews and to deliver and retrieve special operations teams. This is a wide range of roles and missions for a unit with only six aircraft (four SH-60Fs and two HH-60Hs), and it means that they almost always have a bird or two in the air somewhere.

Following our chat with the squadron leaders, John and I returned to our quarters to pick up our bags, and then we headed up to the ATO office with Lieutenant Navritril. There we checked in with the ATO watch officer, gathered our float coats and cranial helmets, and tagged our bags. Once we had taken care of these details, Lieutenant Navritril introduced us to Captain James F. Deppe, the CO of the
Normandy.
Jim Deppe, a tall, slim, handsome, native Texan, is a 1974 Naval Academy graduate who has spent his career in the surface warfare community. After serving most of his sea time on frigates (he commanded the USS
Kauffman
(FFG-59) from 1992 to 1994), he was selected to take over command of the
Normandy
in early 1997.

As we began talking with him, the ATO watch officer announced that it was time to head up to the flight deck and board an HS-11 SH-60F for the flight over to the
Normandy.
Grabbing our bags and other gear, we followed a yellow-shirted flight deck handler up a ladder, exited the island, and walked into a full-blown squall, complete with forty knot winds over the bow, blasting horizontal raindrops (heated to over 80° F/27° C by the local weather) into our faces! Leaning into the storm, we struggled across the deck between other aircraft preparing to take off. The Seahawk was parked on a spot over one of the waist catapults with its engines already turning.