Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

by Tom Clancy

  V-22 Osprey—Even though this is technically a Marine Corps airplane with Marine 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 with fewer people, each of whom will have to do more. Tell us about the young people you want in the Navy of the future, and what you expect from them?

  Admiral Johnson: People are our Navy. But the Navy is going to have to become leaner and more capable. The Navy has very high recruiting standards. As we mentioned earlier, we have a “crossbar” of ninety-five percent high school graduates and sixty-five percent in the upper mental group as recruiting standards. We believe that gives us the quality of sailor that we need to operate our new systems and take us into the next century. I don’t see that changing.

  Admiral Jay Johnson speaking to officers in the Middle East.

  OFFICIAL. U.S. NAVY PHOTO

  But the competition for those young men and women is
very intense. It’s the same corner of the personnel market that private industry, my Joint Chiefs brethren, and everyone else is going for these days. So far, we’ve been holding our own in the recruiting process. We will build from that pool of great young men and women a Navy that is reshaped into the proper size and structure for the future. We will give them the best tools for their jobs and the quality of life that they deserve.

  We accept the reality that says the Navy must get smaller. The caution in all of that is that if the Navy gets smaller and our requirements don’t change, we run the risk of having to ask our people to do more with less. I’ve told my Navy that right now, we’re out of the “do more with less” business. We don’t do that anymore. What we’re going to do is reshape ourselves in such a way that we’ll be sized for tomorrow, and then do the missions that we are called to do while maintaining a proper optempo, so we don’t operate on the backs of our sailors.

  Let me tell you, that’s a very tough thing to do. That’s what I tell my sailors. It’s a much easier thing to say than to do. Our policy of six months deployment portal to portal, two-to-one turnaround ratio, and fifty-percent minimum in-port time over a five-year period, gives us a set of standards and policies that I think the Navy can live with. The CNO is the only one who can waive that policy, and we’ve only done it a total of five times in the last year. I might add that four of those five waivers were written for ships in out-of-home-port maintenance. So we’re holding well to that policy.

  Tom Clancy: You’ve been saying all along that you’re going to be trying to man your new generation of ships with fewer sailors doing more jobs than on older vessels. This means that you’re probably going to have to raise the crossbar when it comes to getting new sailors trained. Chuck Krulak has much the same plans for his Marines, and has instituted the Crucible program to help form and toughen his recruits. Are you going to do something similar for Navy recruits?

  Admiral Johnson: It’s a work in progress. We have upped our own crossbar. Let me give you a couple of quick examples. I talked earlier about the young men and women who come into the Navy from the upper parts of the demographic profile. These are really smart, well-schooled young folks. What we do with them then is send them into a recruit training experience that is a very different, very positive, and very challenging experience.

  Now, I’m not too proud to admit that we have liked what we have seen of the programs that you have mentioned from General Krulak, including the Crucible. We now have a “final battle problem” exercise evaluation instituted at Great Lakes Training Center. This is a Navy version of a Crucible-like evolution. We call it “Battle Stations,” and it’s a very arduous, physically demanding fourteen-hour damage-control problem/scenario requiring stamina, ingenuity, and teamwork from the recruits to pass.

  We just came back from Great Lakes, where we observed pieces of the pilot version. We think that this is an extremely good and powerful program. The way that we treat our recruits and the things that we indoctrinate them with—heritage, core values, tradition, and pride—lets us groom them into very strong sailors when they leave Great Lakes.

  Then we have what we call the Basic Military Training Continuum, which takes them into the fleet and builds on what they have learned in boot camp. We also have embedded throughout the Navy something we call the Leadership Training Continuum. Now, I’m only the implementer of this program, not the inventor. The program was Admiral Frank Kelso’s idea. Kelso was CNO before Admiral Boorda, who also worked on it.

  It’s powerful! It consists of four two-week training blocks for officers and enlisted personnel, and provides formalized leadership training throughout their careers. That’s the basic framework, and we’ll build on that later.

  Right now I’m interested in getting these four basic blocks instituted throughout the Navy. And mark my words: If you plan on being in the Navy as a career and want to advance, you will take these training blocks! The Navy has made an institutional investment in formalized leadership training. I’m convinced, based on just the early feedback training and what I’ve seen thus far, that when you and 1 are gone from this world, this Navy will be a stronger at all levels because of it.

  Tom Clancy: Obviously, the Navy has had a rough and rocky time integrating women into the force. Yet, one gets the feeling that the Navy is farther through the process than perhaps the other services and that you’ve paid a high price to reach that goal. Is it your opinion that the first-stage initiatives for fully integrating women into the combat force have been successfully completed?

  Admiral Johnson: Absolutely. We’re through that. As a good example, the CVWs and carriers are already fully integrated. CVW-11 just came back off deployment on the Kitty Hawk [CV-63] fully integrated, and it was a marvelous deployment for them. Our surface combatant integration program is going well, though the pacing item is that we want the ships to be properly built or modified so that the habitability standards we have established for the Women at Sea Program are followed. In addition, the crew must be shaped the right way, so that the proper critical mass and makeup of female personnel is maintained. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do that, and we’ve learned how to do that. We’re a little over halfway through that initiative right now, and it’s going well.

  Keep in mind though that Women at Sea issues are not the only things that drive our overhauls. Environmental “Green” upgrades, as well as improvements to combat, habitability, and other systems are just as important. Our ship overhauls are the ultimate fifty thousand-mile checkup, and happen every five years that a ship is in the fleet.

  Tom Clancy: As you go out into the fleet today, are the sailors having fun doing their jobs?

  Admiral Johnson: I think that, overall, the forward-deployed forces are having fun. They’re working hard, making a contribution; they’re at the tip of the spear executing their missions, and they’re doing the things that they came into the Navy to do. On the non-deployed side, we’re doing pretty well, but we’ve got some work to do, some taking care of business. We owe those personnel a reasonable pace when they’re not deployed and we owe them ships and airplanes that are properly maintained. Those are the challenges that I’m working on right now. The “tip of the spear” is doing great. The non-deployed part of the force is doing well too, but I think that I owe them a bit more than they’re getting right now.

  Tom Clancy: Obviously, the last ten years have been a roller-coaster ride for senior leaders in the services. Could you look into your crystal ball, and tell us what new roles and missions that you see the Navy taking on as it moves into the 21st century?

  Admiral Johnson: Well, to start with, I don’t want to lose any of the core skills that we have right now. I think that we would be very shortsighted to lose any of those capabilities. ASW is a classic example. A lot of people think that you can “take your pack off” now and not worry about it. I do not concur! We’re putting great focus and effort into undersea warfare and specifically ASW. We’re the only ones in the world who can do that. That’s Navy stuff! That gets back to my operational primacy guidestar: “We can never take our eyes off of that ball.” The truth of it is, those core combat skills are things that we need to maintain. You’ve asked what is new. I give you one word: TBMD. That’s something fundamentally new and different from what we are doing now. It’s a brand-new capability that will reside in our fleet.

  Tom Clancy: To wrap things up, I’d like to give you the opportunity to speak your mind about your vision for the Navy. What would you like to say to the readers, sir?

  Admiral Johnson: I think that we’ve touched on the big things already in this interview. One point that I would hope to make is that the capability that CVBGs and the Navy in general give to the country and the world is vital. We’ve talked a lot about the equipment, and that is vital. But I think more than anything, we’ve got to really represent all the people in the Navy. That’s the story. When you go out and “tie on” with one of those groups, you’ll see that people are
the magic that makes it all happen.

  I’d also like to say that we need to make the American people see the need for maintaining the greatest Navy in the world. There still is a need. The lessons of history tell us that. So our commitment to them is that we will never “take our packs off.” Operational primacy will stay as one of our guiding stars as we head into the new century, and we’ll do it with leadership, teamwork, and pride.

  For the first time in almost a decade, the Navy seems to be on a steady course, with a plan, and with stable leadership to guide it through the uncertain waters between the 20th and 21st centuries. Like the early mariners who navigated from star to star, Admiral Johnson has found a constellation for the Navy to follow to the future. Along the way, he has proven himself a quiet but effective warrior. In a time when the Navy needed a champion and hero for the wars on the banks of the Potomac River, they seem to have found a winner—a steady hand on the helm, to guide the Navy into a new millennium.

  Wings of Gold : A Naval Aviator’s Life

  “Why is America lucky enough to have such men? They leave this tiny ship and fly against the enemy. Then they must seek the ship, lost somewhere on the sea. And when they find it, they have to land on its pitching deck. Where do we get such men?”