Welcome to the CavasShips Podcast with Christopher P. Cavas and Chris Servello…a weekly podcast looking at naval and maritime events and issues of the day – in the US, across the seas and around the world. This week…attracting and keeping officers and sailors to the US Navy’s surface fleet is a never-ending challenge. New executive director Christopher Bushnell of the Surface Navy Association is with us to talk about the challenges and promises on the eve of a career at sea.
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This Week’s Naval Round Up:
Houthi missile attacks on shipping continued throughout the past week both in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and US forces with those of the United Kingdom conducted several strikes at Houthi missile launching sites in Yemen, destroying a number of missiles that, according to US Central Command, were on launch rails preparing to fire. The anti-missile strikes were conducted both by aircraft and by Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from warships. Destroyer USS GRAVELY on January 24 shot down two anti-ship ballistic missiles over the Gulf of Aden, while on January 26 destroyer USS CARNEY downed another missile, also over the Gulf of Aden.
Carrier USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT was reported by USNI News to be operating in the western Pacific by January 21. The carrier and her strike group made an unannounced deployment from San Diego on January 10 and 11. Carrier Air Wing Eleven is aboard the LINCOLN, and the carrier is accompanied by cruiser USS LAKE ERIE and destroyers USS HALSEY and DANIEL INOUYE. TR joins the CARL VINSON Carrier Strike Group already operating in the western Pacific.
Japan-based US destroyer JOHN FINN carried out a Taiwan Strait transit on January 24, the first US Navy surface transit since November 1. The US and partner nations maintain a roughly once-per-month pace for the transits; the last two were undertaken by a US Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft in early December, and before that the Australian frigate TOOWOOMBA in mid-November.
USS ANTIETAM CG 54 left Yokosuka for the last time January 26 to transfer to Pearl Harbor; she’d been based in Japan since February 2013. The US Navy plans to decommission the ANTIETAM during fiscal 2024. Along with sistership USS SHILOH’s departure last September this leaves only USS ROBERT M SMALLS CG 62 as a Japan-based US cruiser. ANTIETAM is being replaced in Forward-Deployed Naval Forces-Japan by the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS McCAMPBELL DDG 86, currently homeported at Everett, Washington. McCAMPBELL was previously based in Japan from 2007 to 2020.
Several heads of Navy attended the annual Paris Naval Conference in the French Capital January 25, including US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Chief of the French Navy Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, United Kingdom chief of the naval staff Admiral Sir Ben Key, Chief of the Italian Navy Admiral Enrico Credendino and the Indian Navy’s flag officer commanding the Eastern Naval Command, Vice Admiral Rajesh Pendharkar. The conference addressed multiple interoperability issues, asymmetrical threat and gray zone conflict responses and the continuing effectiveness of aircraft carrier strike groups.
Vladimir Putin attended the keel ceremony January 26 in Saint Petersburg for the new nuclear-powered icebreaker LENINGRAD. The sixth Project 22220 Arktika-class icebreaker – at more than 33,000 tons displacement the world’s largest — will be able to break ice up to 13 feet thick in winter. Russia is the world’s only country to field nucelar-powered icebreakers. A seventh Project 22220 icebreaker is also planned.
The amphibious ship USS GUNSTON HALL left Norfolk January 24 to take place in Exercise Steadfast Defender 2024, billed as the largest NATO exercise, quote, “in decades.” The exercise features the reinforcement by sea of Europe during wartime, a classic Cold War scenario. More than 90,000 personnel from more than 31 countries are taking part, according to NATO, with exercises continuing through May. For her part, GUNSTON HALL is expected to embark a contingent of foreign marines during the exercise.
And Marine Corps Assistant Commandant General Christopher Mahoney confirmed January 25 that the Marine Expeditionary Unit to deploy will be equipped with the Amphibious Combat Vehicle, or ACV, the first time the new vehicles will be sent into forward operating areas. The ACVs are equipping the 15th MEU, now training with the ships of the BOXER Amphibious Ready Group. Fielding of the ACV has been protracted due to several material and operating issues – including vehicles rolling over in heavy surf and a fatal accident in December when another ACV rolled over at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, killing one Marine and injuring 14 others. The BOXER group with the 15th MEU, Mahoney said, currently planned to deploy quote, “in the early spring.”
