Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

that looked a lot like Kuwait, and the opposing forces were structured much like the Iraqis. The critics who were complaining that USACOM was preparing to 'fight the last war' were making a good point. Today there'd be no justice in that criticism. Now, each JTFEX is made a bit different from the last one, or for that matter from any other. For one thing, USACOM has gotten into the habit of making the JTFEXs truly 'joint,' by spreading out the command responsibilities. By way of example, a JTF headquarters based at 8th Air Force headquarters at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, controlled JTFEX 97-2 (run in the spring of 1997), while the first of the FY-1998 JTFEXs will be an Army-run exercise, controlled by XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Now that each of the services has opportunities each year to be the JTFEX 'top dog,' the scenarios have tended to become not only more fresh and innovative, but also more fair in the distribution of training responsibilities and opportunities.

The quality of JTFEX exercises has also been improved by means of what is called a 'flexible' training scenario-that is, a scenario without highly structured schedules and situations. In more structured scenarios, for example, participants knew exactly when and how the exercise would transition to 'hot war' status. In current JTFEXs, there is much more uncertainty. Furthermore, the actions of the participants can affect the 'flexible' elements of the scenario, and these actions can be scored positively or negatively. It is even possible that participants might contain a JTFEX 'crisis situation' so well that a transition to a 'hot' war situation might never occur. But creative work by the USACOM J-7 staff makes this unlikely. Thus when a commander or unit does well, 'friction' and challenges are added so no participant gets a chance to 'break' the scenario. On the other hand, if a unit has itself been 'broken' by the situations it faces, the exercise staff may choose to give it additional support or opportunities to 'get well enough to go back into the game,' as it were. You have to remember that exercises like the JTFEXs are designed to build units up, not break them down.

For the GW group, the focus in the late summer of 1997 was getting ready for their particular 'final exam,' JTFEX 97-3 (the third East Coast JTFEX of FY-97). With their deployment date scheduled for early October 1997, every person in the battle group was eager to get through the exercise and move on to the Mediterranean. But the USACOM J-7 training staff wasn't going to make that easy. To that end, several new elements were being added to the scenario in anticipation of new capabilities soon coming on-line. Within a couple of years, for example, the entire force of Ticonderoga-class (CG-47) cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class (DDG-51) destroyers will be receiving software and new Standard SAMs capable of providing the first theater-wide defense against ballistic missiles. Thus in JTFEX 97-3, the opposing forces were assumed to have a small force of SCUD-type theater ballistic missiles, some possibly armed with chemical warheads. The U.S. forces were not only expected to hunt these down, but to 'shoot' them down with Patriot SAMs or with the Aegis systems on board several of the escorting vessels. The group's abilities in this area would be closely watched by USACOM.

^{The activities of JTFEX 97-3 in August and September 1997.}

^{JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD., BY LAURA DENINNO}

In addition, CVW-1 was testing procedures for generating more sorties from the GW. This effort was based on a demonstration called a 'SURGEX'-or Surge Exercise-run the previous July off the Pacific coast by the Nimitz battle group. SURGEX attempted to discover how many sorties a single carrier/air wing team could generate over a four-day period. By augmenting the air wing and ship's company with additional air crews and flight deck/maintenance personnel, and by adding the services of a number of land-based USAF tankers to support the effort, the Nimitz and her embarked air wing were able to generate 1,025 sorties in just ninety-six hours. This was almost 50 % better than had been planned (though flight and deck crews wore out rather quickly). By the late summer of 1997, the GW/CVW-1 team was already implementing these lessons. Though they wouldn't have the additional flight personnel used by Nimitz, the flying day would be extended, USAF tankers would be made available, and some new procedures for monitoring crew fatigue would be tried. By doing things smarter, it was hoped that the average of around one hundred sorties a day might be increased by as much as half.

JTFEX 97-3: Players, Places, and Plans

The scenario for this JTFEX 97-3 was inspired by the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, with the coastal waters of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina providing the primary battle arena. But thanks to the magic of today's electronics and GPS satellite technology, USACOM has been able to dispense with the actual geography of these littoral spaces and invent 'synthetic' terrain for this and other recent exercises. Specifically, the USACOM staff created a series of 'no-sail' zones off the East Coast that formed a simulated battlespace that looks a great deal like the Persian Gulf or Red Sea-long and narrow, with only a limited number of entrances and exits. It was into this arena that the GW battle group would sail during JTFEX 97-3.

For JTFEX 97-3 the opposing players would be known as Koronans, and the neutral victims of Koronan aggression would be Kartunans. Kartuna's homeland would be the center of the scenario's crisis. The Koronan forces would be played by various elements of the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, 2nd Fleet at Norfolk, Virginia, and some Marine aviation units from the Marine Corps Air Stations at Cherry Point and New River, North Carolina and Beaufort, South Carolina.

While the simulated Koronan military would be nowhere as large as that of Iraq prior to the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, it would nevertheless have some distinct similarities. For example, Marine F/A-18 Hornet fighter/bombers from MCAS Beaufort would simulate Mirage F-1Cs armed with Exocet antishipping missiles and MiG-29 Fulcrums equipped with advanced air-to-air missiles (AAMs). Several Spruance- class (DD-963) destroyers and Oliver Hazard Perry-class (FFG-7) frigates would simulate Russian Kashin-class missile destroyers and Chinese missile corvettes. Finally, Marines based at Camp Lejeune would play Kartunan ground units, while Lejeune itself would play the part of the Kartunan homeland.

The forces of the Allied coalition would, of course, be played by the GW battle group and CVW-1, as well as their attached Guam ARG and the embarked 24th MEU (SOC). Though a battalion of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and a number of USAF KC-135 aerial tanker aircraft based at Langley AFB, Virginia, would also play, the focus of this particular exercise was naval and expeditionary. This meant that if combat units could not fly or float into the JTFEX 97-3 scenario, they would not participate.

One of the largest (and most interesting) of the participants was Standing Naval Force Atlantic (STANAFORLANT). STANAFORLANT, established in 1967, was the Cold War equivalent of a World War II Hunter- Killer (HUK) ASW group-but with a unique twist. Each NATO nation involved was to assign a destroyer or frigate from their Navy to STANAFORLANT, and then the total force was placed under a single joint NATO commander. This arrangement has the advantage of providing the STANAFORLANT commander with an eclectic mix of weapons and sensors, and with personnel whose training, talents, and experiences are widely varied. Ships from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America form the permanent membership of STANAFORLANT (there are usually a half-dozen ships operating in it at any given time); but they are joined periodically by Naval units from Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and Portugal.

STANAFORLANT carries out a program of exercises, maneuvers, and port visits, and can be rapidly deployed to a threatened area in times of crisis or tension. Throughout the Cold War, STANAFORLANT provided a rapid- response escort group for NATO naval commanders, in case of a sudden 'surge' by the submarine and naval forces of the former Soviet Union. Today, STANAFORLANT's mission has broadened from this Cold War mission. Now STANAFORLANT is one of several NATO ready-reserve naval units that provide sea control services to the alliance (another of these units is in the Mediterranean supporting operations around Bosnia); and it could easily be found enforcing a maritime embargo or providing disaster/ humanitarian relief. During JTFEX 97-3, it would practice all of these missions, and some others that would have been hard to imagine as little as ten years ago.

While STANAFORLANT would not technically be part of the GW battle group, it