Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

Corps painted on the side if it, it's part of our budget, and a part of the Navy/Marine Corps forward-presence force. So it's as important to us as it is to Chuck Krulak. Whether it has a role in the U.S. Navy, I'm frankly not smart enough to answer that at this time. If I had to give you an answer, I'd probably have to say yes. Right now, though, those V-22 derivatives are not what I'm focusing on. That's only because the total focus of our effort for V-22 must be to get them into service to replace those H-46's that are older than the men and women who are flying them.

Helicopter Programs — We're necking down into just the H-60 series. The H-60R airframe is going to be what we use for everything within the battle groups, from ASW [with the SH-60R] to logistics and vertical replenishment [VERTREP with the CH-60R].

Tom Clancy: Could you summarize the major focus of the Naval aircraft procurement for the next few years?

Admiral Johnson: Right now, our focus and effort within Naval aviation is clearly with the Super Hornet and what that takes us to with JSF. Those are the two main tactical aircraft programs. The EA-6B Prowler and E-2C Hawkeye are also important to us. The F-14's are vital to us surely, but we are anxious to get the Super Hornets into the fleet to replace the Tomcats in an orderly flow and fashion. Over the next fifteen years or so, if everything goes as planned, what you will see is Super Hornet replacing Tomcats as well as some of the oldest regular F/A-18 Hornets; then JSF will come in and replace the rest of the F/A-18Cs. So, by around 2015, the combat 'punch' on carrier flight decks is going to be filling up with Super Hornets and JSFs. That's the vision that we have.

Tom Clancy: Does this mean that you are going to be leveraging the remaining life in existing airframes like the F-14 Tomcat, EA-6B Prowler, and S-3 Viking, to buy time to get those new airframes into service?

Admiral Johnson: Yes. The S-3's are integral to the CVWs right now, and their replacement is part of the CSA program that we discussed earlier. The S-3's, the ES-3's, and EA-6B's are all part of that effort. The Prowlers are of particular value to us, since they are now national assets, due to an understanding with the Marine Corps and Air Force.[15] We're completing the buy of Prowlers right now at 125 aircraft. When we're finished filling out that force, they will be well employed until we decide exactly what the Prowler follow-on will be. If you had to ask me today what that will be, I'd have some expectation of a two-seat variant of the Super Hornet with an automated jamming system. The Wild Weasels may rise again.

Tom Clancy: Over the last fifty years, one of the most important parts of Naval aviation has been the medium-attack squadrons, which used to fly the A-6. With the retirement of the last of the Intruders, has that community more or less died?

Admiral Johnson: Well, I guess because the A-6 is gone that you can say that, but their people and missions have been integrated into other com-munities.Places like the Hornet and Tomcat communities as well as other places. Even the EA-6B Prowler and S-3B Viking squadrons are gaining the experience of former Intruder crews and personnel. The name per se may be gone, but the people and mission live on.I might add that the new Super Hornet is going to be taking on a lot of the jobs that the Intruder used to do for us. In fact, not too long ago the test crews at NAS Patuxent River [the Navy's test facility in Maryland] launched a Super Hornet loaded up at over 65,000 pounds, which is a thousand pounds more than the Intruder used to fly at. The Super Hornet flies with a full kit of precision guided munitions [PGMs], including the new GBU-29/30/32/32 JDAMS, AGM-154 JSOW, and AGM-88E SLAMER.

Tom Clancy: You just talked about the kinds of weapons that you're going to be carrying and dropping from the Super Hornet and JSF. Is it a safe statement to make that if a target is valuable enough for a carrier-based aircraft to hit it, then that aircraft will use some kind of precision or other tailored munitions to do the job?

Admiral Johnson: I guess my answer to that would be that it would depend on the target set. Generally, I would say yes, that's a fair thing to say. The new things that we're developing in JDAMS and JSOW are really going to help us with our combat punch.

Tom Clancy: You also have strike weapons that aren't launched from aircraft, like Tomahawk and a future series of standoff battlefield support munitions on the horizon. Could you tell us more about them?

Admiral Johnson: We're going to embed some quite remarkable combat power in the CVBG of tomorrow. For example, look at our new SC-21 escort design, which we mentioned earlier. The first variant of that is a land-attack destroyer that will have vertically loading guns and vertical missile launchers loaded with all of the new and improved land-attack missiles that you mentioned.

Tom Clancy: Isn't the Navy about to deploy the first TBMD [Theater Ballistic Missile Defense] system aboard the Aegis ships, even ahead of the Army and Air Force?

Admiral Johnson: Yes, but keep in mind that I am really in competition with time. I'm not in competition with the Army and Air Force. I firmly believe that the fleet of Aegis cruisers and destroyers that we have out there is absolutely the optimum place to embed that capability, because of the mobility and flexibility that it gives to the National Command Authorities. So we're full speed ahead on our area-wide, lower-tier system, as well as the theater-wide, upper-tier system. It's going to be an awesome capability.As you know, the top priority of the Department of Defense [DoD] is to get the various area systems on line as quickly as possible. Those are the Army Patriot PAC-3 and the Navy Aegis Area systems. It's looking good right now, and we're planning to have it shipborne in just a few years. That's really a lot of what we're trying to do Navy-wide these days. Doing things 'leaner,' but more effectively. That's what we need to do to 'punch through' into the 21st century.

Tom Clancy: Would it be a fair statement, based upon what you just said, that you're trying to get more out of existing systems and people, rather than start from scratch on new systems?

Admiral Johnson: Yes. We want to harness and focus the technologies that are out there, and embed them in these new systems in ways that give us maximum combat power and flexibility in new and exciting ways. We also want to have the ships and systems manned by fewer people. I believe that, with the right equipment, we can do that and still maintain our effectiveness.

We have to be careful how we flow into all that. But you know about our 'Smart Ship' program, which is teaching us a lot about how to do these things. We're learning a lot, really focusing on what makes sense for us on a combat platform in terms of downsizing the number of people we need aboard. For instance, the 'mark on the wall' that we have for the SC-21 land-attack destroyer is that we want that ship to be manned by ninety-five people or less. That's a ship the size of an Arleigh Burke-class [DDG-51] guided-missile destroyer, but with a crew about one-third the size. That's where we are going.

Tom Clancy: We talked a lot about the ships, aircraft, and things that you have to buy to give the Navy power. But people make those things work. Obviously, just like the rest of the services, you've had to draw down the size of your personnel pool. You're saying that in the future you want to be able to man your ships