Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

Meanwhile, even as CARGRU Four personnel were deep into the training of the John F. Kennedy (CV-67) CVBG (which would proceed the GW group to the Mediterranean in the spring of 1997), the CARGRU staff had already begun to assign personnel to the GW group to start the workup process. At the same time, the various squadrons of Carrier Air Wing One (CVW-1) began to come to life at Naval Air Stations (NASs) from Whidbey Island, Washington, to Jacksonville, Florida. About half of these squadrons would also be breaking in a new commanding officer, normally a freshly frocked commander (O-5) who had just 'fleeted up' from the executive officer's job in the unit. Along with the command changes came in-squadron training. A lot of it!

Getting a squadron ready to deploy starts with refresher/upgrade training for all the flying personnel in the unit. This brings everyone in the unit up to a common level of proficiency across a range of skills and missions. As they do this, the squadron maintenance chiefs begin to bring the squadron's aircraft up to standard. This is not to say that the aircraft have been allowed to go to seed. But since the squadron is not a 'deployed' unit, and personnel were away on leave and at service schools, keeping every aircraft fully mission-capable has not been a priority. Deployed units get the pick of the 'good' airplanes, as well as first priority on training ammunition and spare parts.

While the air units were starting on their road to deployment, so too were the crews of the ships of the battle group. And the officers and enlisted personnel were re-learning the details of their trade on short training cruises out of their home ports. During these cruises, the crews powered up all the ship's systems to find out the new capabilities and liabilities the yard workers had installed. Also, during these cruises the new crew members began the bonding process with their shipmates. This is especially important in the escorts (known as 'small boys'), which will do so much of the work supporting and protecting the carrier and ARG.

For the men and women of the GW battle group, their final run to deployment started in May of 1997, with the departure of the John F. Kennedy battle group. Now that that group was on its way, the CARGRU Four staff could devote their full attention to making the GW group ready for their early October deployment. Several key training events, whose dates had been previously been set by the USACOM J-7 staff, began to have immediate importance. These included:

• Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center Rotation- Since 'Boomer' Stufflebeem, the commander of CVW-1, had units spread over five bases in four different states on two coasts, the rare opportunities for getting his units together were more precious than gold. One of these golden opportunities happened at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center (NSAWC) at NAS Fallon near Reno, Nevada. For over three decades, it has been Navy policy that every CVW preparing to deploy do a rotation at the NSAWC. Over a period of three and a half weeks, the various CVW components are based at NAS Fallon, where they can practice the art of composite warfare together. While there, they undertake a series of air strikes against the target arrays up on the Fallon bombing range. Supervised by the Center Staff, and assisted by aggressor aircraft and ground units acting as surrogate enemies, the wing works up through a number of phases, culminating with the three-day Advanced Training Phase (ATP).[76] During ATP, the wing must conduct a series of large 'Alpha' strikes (usually involving between two and three dozen aircraft) against targets up on the Fallon ranges. All of this training brings the entire wing, from pilots and planners to maintenance personnel and photo interpreters, up to combat standards. With the air wing now molded into a unified fighting unit, it was time to merge it with the GW and her battle group. The USACOM Category I training now completed, the GW group was ready to move onto the challenges of Category II.

• Capabilities Exercise (CAPEX)-In mid-June of 1997, after CVW-1 had returned from NAS Fallon, the ships of the GW battle group met off the Virginia capes to conduct what is called a CAPEX. This exercise, which was run over two weeks, was designed to integrate CVW-1 into the rest of the battle group's operations. This meant doing a number of things in a very short time. Once the battle group had assembled, the CVW-1 aircraft and crews flew aboard from staging bases along the Atlantic coast. What followed were several days of carrier requalification for everyone in the wing, including Captain Stufflebeem. With qualifications completed, the wing and battle group began a series of training exercises, designed to show the CARGRU Four staff that they could safely and effectively conduct strike operations. During this time, the rest of the battle group practiced various skills, such as simulated Tomahawk cruise-missile strikes, and combat search-and- rescue (CSAR) training. The CAPEX was a test of skill and endurance, designed to stress everyone in the GW battle group from Admiral Mullen down to the chiefs of the various ships' laundries. Again, all went well, and its end had melded the assorted parts of the battle group into a fighting unit. Next came the final part of the GW group's Category II training, the JTFEX.

• Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) 97-3-Run over three weeks in late August and early September of 1997, JTFEX 97-3 was a 'final exam' for the combined GW CVBG/CVW/ARG/MEU (SOC) team. JTFEXs-the crown jewels of USACOM exercises-are the largest and most complex series of exercises regularly run by USACOM. Even as the sea services are using them as benchmark exercises for Navy groups, the other services are utilizing them in the same way: to test their own fast-reaction units (such as the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or the 2nd Bombardment Wing based at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana).

With the Category II training completed, the ships and aircraft of the battle group headed home for a final leave period. During this time, the Category III training and briefings for the battle group staff and leaders took place around Washington, D.C. While their actual sequence and locations are classified, the briefings and war games were conducted by a variety of military and intelligence agencies, with the goal of sharpening the minds of the CVBG/CVW/ARG/MEU (SOC) leadership. When these exercises were finished, the CARGRU Four staff started preparing for the next group, which was based around the new Nimitz-class carrier John Stennis (CVN-74).

JTFEX 97-3

In the confusing (maybe anarchic is a better word) post-Cold War world of joint and coalition warfare, the USACOM staff must package and deliver to the unified/regional CinCs units that are ready to 'plug in' to a joint/ multinational JTF. The JTF must start combat operations on almost no notice, and function in an environment where the ROE can change on a moment's notice. That means the units assigned to the JTF must be trained with an eye to functioning in a variety of scenarios that were unimaginable as recently as a decade ago. Some of these may even involve situations where conflict may be avoided (if a show of force is sufficiently effective), or where conflict may not be an option (in what are called Operations Short of War).

Training units for situations like these requires more than the simple force-on-force training that was good enough for the military services during the Cold War. Exercises like Red Flag (at Nellis AFB, Nevada) and those at training facilities like the Army's National Training Center (at Fort Irwin, California) were always based upon assumptions that a 'hot' war was already happening. Because of this, the engaged forces' only requirement was to fight that conflict in the most effective manner possible. While the services teach combat skills quite well, teaching 'short-of-war' training is a much more complicated and difficult undertaking. Only in the last few years (after high- cost lessons learned in Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia) has progress been made on this daunting training challenge.

So far, the leader in this new kind of 'real world' force-on-force training has been the Army's Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana.[77] The JRTC staff, for example, was among the first to insert into traditional force-on-force training what the military calls 'friction' elements and non-traditional ideas like 'neutral' role-players on the simulated battlefield, and to include a greater emphasis on logistics and casualty evacuation. JRTC's focus on these kinds of layered issues have made it a model for other joint training operations run by USACOM (such as the JTFEX-SERIES exercises, which are run approximately six times a year-three on each coast).

The result of all this thinking has been a gradual evolution in the scenarios presented to participants in the JTFEXs. As little as three years ago, every JTFEX was essentially a forced-entry scenario into an occupied country