F6, ic, ouch that could be seen as ominous, thanks, i probably would never have known .. think i read somewhere that will be four in the area .. the first just a bit of history, the 2nd another just found for the 'fourth' ..
USS Stennis in the Persian Gulf
Allied air power has been a continuous presence in the Middle East since the 1990 build-up prior to Operation ‘Desert Storm’. However, US Navy aircraft carriers, and their associated battle groups, were a constant in the region even before ‘Desert Storm’, dating back to the 1980s and the war between Iran and Iraq. After the successful liberation of Kuwait in 1991, the American carriers remained on station to support further operations over Iraq; first Operation ‘Southern Watch’ immediately following ‘Desert Storm’, then Operations ‘Enduring Freedom’ (beginning in 2001) and ‘Iraqi Freedom’ (beginning in 2003 and later renamed Operation ‘New Dawn’) in subsequent years.
The USS John C. Stennis is among the newest carriers; its maiden deployment took place in 1998, when it sailed from the US to patrol the Persian Gulf.
As the Stennis Carrier Strike Group took up position in the Gulf in October 2011, the ship’s crew settled into a routine, perfected by years of operations. Daily missions were launched by the embarked Carrier Air Wing 9 (CVW-9), flying northwards into Iraq and Afghanistan to patrol the areas and offer support for coalition troops on the ground. Only on relatively rare occasions were weapons delivered, and then mostly over Afghanistan, while Iraq remained relatively quiet.
Milestone sortie
As the campaign in Iraq began to wind down, it became apparent that the USS Stennis would make history. Sure enough, on 18 December 2011, an E-2C Hawkeye .. http://www.kamov.net/american-aircraft/e-2-hawkeye/ .., assigned to Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 112 (VAW-112), launched from the ship to fly the US Navy’s final sortie over Iraq, marking an end to Operation ‘New Dawn’ for the US Navy. It also ended a period of over 20 years of daily missions heading into the troubled nation.
Although the US Navy’s air support mission in Iraq has come to a close, air power remains present in the skies over Afghanistan, supporting ‘Enduring Freedom’. Following the final mission to Iraq, the Stennis sailed out of the Persian Gulf and into the North Arabian Sea to move closer to Afghanistan. The move shortened the flight times for the fighters flowing into Afghanistan from the ship, allowing more time in theatre over the combat zone.
As the ship moved out of the Gulf and passed the Strait of Hormuz into the North Arabian Sea, tensions with Iran began to escalate. On 3 January 2012, Iran issued a warning, telling ‘the American warship that passed through the Strait of Hormuz and went to the Gulf of Oman not to return to the Persian Gulf’, and that ‘there is no need for the forces belonging to the countries beyond this region to have a presence in the Persian Gulf’. Another Iranian official added, ‘The Islamic Republic of Iran will not repeat its warning.’
For the most part, the US Navy ignored the warning. The Stennis battle group had no intentions of re-entering the Persian Gulf to begin with, and daily operations remained unaffected. ‘It’s business as usual here’, remarked RADM Faller. Many of the ship’s missions were preoccupied with operations over Afghanistan, where F/A-18s .. http://www.kamov.net/american-aircraft/f-18-hornet/ .. from the Stennis had been busy supporting British troops under enemy fire in Helmand Province.
Simultaneously, Iran staged a large naval exercise, which was closely watched by the battle group. However, the Iranian ships did not approach any American vessel, nor act in an aggressive manner. ‘They [Iranian ships] don’t go out of their way to come and check us out, and we don’t go out of our way to divert from our primary mission. We haven’t seen anything unprofessional’, RADM Faller explained.
Meanwhile, officials in Washington stated that the United States’ ships sailed lawfully in international waters, and they would not tolerate any effort by Iran or any other nation to close the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran had warned of doing in response to tightening sanctions imposed as a result of its nuclear programme.
Anti-piracy action
Another interesting chapter in the Stennis’ deployment relates to the assistance provided to an Iranian vessel on 5 January 2012. An MH-60S .. http://www.kamov.net/more-helicopters/sikorsky/uh-60-blackhawk/ .., assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8 (HSC-8), spotted an Iranian fishing boat with what appeared to be a pirate skiff next to it. At the same time, the USS Kidd, part of the Stennis battle group, received an urgent distress call from the captain of the Iranian ship, saying his 13-man crew was being held captive by 15 Somali pirates. After a team from the Kidd boarded the Iranian boat and successfully freed the sailors, the captured pirates were taken to the carrier for detainment. Ironically, all of this took place only two days after the dark warning from Iran regarding the passage back into the Persian Gulf.
On 19 January, the weary sailors aboard the USS Stennis were joined in the North Arabian Sea by the USS Abraham Lincoln, which replaced the Stennis in the Navy’s Fifth Fleet area of responsibility. As it steamed eastwards towards home, the Stennis conducted several readiness exercises and port calls before returning to the US on 2 March, 2012.
The last time the US navy sent three aircraft carriers into the Arabian Sea/Persian Gulf was just a few short weeks before WTI broke above $110, and aggressive military tensions, coupled with concerns of an imminent invasion of Iran by Israel and/or ‘others’, were running high. Then summer arrived, as did the need to lower the price of gas and crude ahead of a veritable cornucopia of central banks easing into June and July, not to mention the need to keep gas as low as possible into the July 4th holiday. Now that the peak summer months are behind us this is all changing, and 4 months ahead of the presidential election, the need to have the “Wag the Dog” put option to round up the troops, not to mention votes, has arrived, as has the need to return to an outright aggressive military stance where Iran is concerned. Which is why we were not very surprised to learn that that Middle East veteran aircraft carrier, the CVN-74 Stennis, is going right back into Mordor, a few short months after it came back from its long stint in the Fifth Fleet, and will shortly complete the trio of aircraft carriers stationed within miles of Iran.
From Kitsapsun: [continued in the link below the comment mentioned above] [...]
[the comment] .. WADE QUEEN Says:
July 11, 2012 at 7:53 AM
The writer of this article is not completely informed. Counting the Stennis, there will be 4 carriers in the region early/mid Sept. 2012. Besides the USS Enterprise & USS Abraham Lincoln; the USS Eisenhower arrived in the Mediterranean late last week. And there are rumors that the George H.W. Bush may also be deployed soon. Of America’s aircraft carrier fleet; 9 out of the 11 US carriers are currently conducting sea maneuvers. (the other 2, USS Theodore Roosevelt, is undergoing a 3 & 1/2 year nuclear reactor core overhaul since Aug. 29 2009 and won’t be available until late 2013; the USS Ronald Reagan is undergoing Dock-Planned Incremental Availability (DPIA) since Jan 10, 2012 that will take a year to complete, and wont be available until mid 2013. There will be a new carrier launched in 2013 as the beginning of a new class, USS Gerald R. Ford; but it won’t be combat ready until 2015.
As a side note the 2 carriers in the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea area. the USS Enterprise on its final deplyemnt is scheduled to for its Inactivation Ceremony at Norfolk Dec. 1, 2012. A cruiser that is currently deployed with Enterprise, USS Vicksburg is scheduled to decommissioned around the same time. Also a destroyer that is part of the Enterprise battle group, USS Porter, will be getting over a 1 year overhaul to fitted with sea-based ABM capability.
The 2nd carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, departed Everett, Washington Dec 7, 2011 for a nearly year long around-the-world cruise, that will take to new homeport in Norfolk, and is relocating to conduct a scheduled 4-year RCOH at Newport News Shipbuilding.
Along with USS Ponce amphibious carrier that was to be decommisioned now in the Persian Gulf as a commando platform, the US Navy has moved a lot of ships that soon won’t be around to for they are to be be scrapped back home, in essensce, ships that they can afford to lose, (acceptable losses, if you get my drift).
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