Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville) June 03, 2004
Kennedy deployment part of Navy's new flexibility plan
Schedule expected to meet wartime demand, make Navy a tougher target for terrorists.
By Rachel Davis
When the USS John F. Kennedy pulls out of its home port Monday, it won't return for a while.
The Mayport Naval Station-based aircraft carrier and its strike group will participate in a weeklong pre-deployment exercise and immediately head overseas "where and when the president directs," according to a statement released Wednesday by the carrier's public affairs office.
The exercise -- just off the East Coast -- will simulate a battle in which all branches of service and military units from other countries fight in a joint environment. Aircraft aboard the carrier will use bombing ranges in Florida and North Carolina. It is the final phase in the strike group's pre-deployment training cycle.
The Navy won't release when the carrier will leave for overseas or its destination. This is a scheduled overseas deployment for the strike group.
It also is part of the Navy's new plan to deploy seven aircraft carrier strike groups simultaneously. This summer the Navy will send seven carriers to five theaters across the globe to demonstrate a new way of increasing force readiness. It's a plan to deploy troops more quickly and in bulk in a national emergency, according to Navy officials at U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.
"It's the Great White Fleet," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va., research center on security studies. "This is part of the big push."
Aircraft carriers generally operate on a two-year rotational basis and are available for deployment only six or seven months out of the rotation.
"Essentially what this does is it makes the carrier ready for more of that cycle," said Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown, spokesman for Fleet Forces Command. Before, only two aircraft carriers were deployed at any given time. Under the new plan, six carrier strike groups will be ready to go within 30 days and another two in three months.
At the peak of the war in Iraq, the Navy had six aircraft carriers on station.
"They really just drove the Navy into a ditch a year ago," Pike said. "It was a peacetime Navy at war, and the Navy has decided that we're at war and we need a wartime Navy.
"It's going to be good for the sailors because they're going to get to spend more time at home and good for the admirals because they're going to have more carriers to play with."
While the plan for the war in Iraq wasn't sustainable for the Navy, Brown said, "the Fleet Response Plan allows us to have that same capability in a sustainable way."
The Kennedy will participate in the summer surge alongside the Norfolk-based George Washington, Harry S. Truman and Enterprise, as well as West Coast carriers John C. Stennis, Kitty Hawk and Ronald Reagan. The surge exercise is expected to end in August.
The plan also makes deployment schedules less predictable, a change necessary in a post-9/11 world, said the Truman's commander, Capt. Michael R. Groothousen.
"Terrorists love predictability," he said by telephone. "If we can start putting some unpredictably into our schedule, it makes it more difficult for any threat out there to determine when to strike."
Sailors will be at sea no more than they were before, Brown said, and they still will get the same amount of training, albeit in a compressed time period.
The last time the Kennedy deployed overseas was in support of the war on terrorism in February 2002. The carrier and air wing were stationed off the coast of Pakistan for much of the deployment and its jets provided close air support to soldiers on the ground.
Some ships in the strike group performed maritime interdiction operations in which they boarded other ships in search of terrorists or illegal goods.
Other Mayport ships leaving Monday include guided-missile cruiser Vicksburg, guided missile destroyer Roosevelt and destroyer Spruance. Sea Control Squadron 30 DiamondCutters and Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 15 Red Lions, based at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, are attached to the Kennedy's air wing. Norfolk-based combat logistics ship Seattle also will accompany the strike group.
This report contains material from the Associated Press.
HITTING HOME
BY THE NUMBERS
About 4,300 sailors and airmen at Mayport Naval Station will deploy Monday with the Kennedy Strike Group, according to information about the group from Globalsecurity.org. Two squadrons from Jacksonville Naval Air Station also will be aboard.
© Copyright 2004, The Florida Times-Union
