NAVAL AIR STATION OCEANA, Va. – After almost nine months of high-tempo combat against Houthi missiles and drones in the Red Sea, the nine squadrons attached to USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) returned home on Friday.
Flying low over this southeastern Virginia base 12 F/A-18E Super Hornets attached to the “Rampagers” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 83 touched down one by one and taxied to nearby hangars. For the families waiting close by, it was a couple more minutes in what was already a longer-than-expected wait.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin extended the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group twice, making the total deployment almost nine months only two chances for liberty. Pilots likened the tour’s intensity to campaigns in World War II.
The strike group deployed on Oct. 14, seven days after Hamas attacked Israel and the subsequent bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces. Approximately a month and a half later, the Houthis began their attacks on commercial shipping. Ike sailed to the Red Sea, where it participated in Operation Prosperity Guardian. Austin ordered the first extension in late April and the second one in June.
The Navy was on hand to maintain freedom of navigation through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a tough nut that a carrier strike group was ideally suited to crack, said Capt. Marvin Scott, commander of Carrier Air Wing-3.
“When the Houthis started to escalate the conflict, Carrier Strike Group 2, Carrier Air Wing 3 … we were ready to respond,” Scott told reporters on the flight line at Oceana during their homecoming Friday. “We responded precisely and, when required, violently, to defend the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and that’s what we did.”
Houthi rebels have regularly fired anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles at merchant vessels and U.S. Navy vessels in the Red Sea, Scott said. Aircraft from the strike group spent their deployment on constant alert from incoming “one-way munitions” like low-tech drones and cruise missiles fired from shore.
“It was something we really haven’t seen, for a carrier strike group to be close to that kind of fight, really since World War II,” Scott said. “It’s been a constant evolution when they started escalating, when they started shooting at American forces on Dec. 31. And then when they massed their forces for an attack on Jan. 19. We responded precisely, violently to degrade their capability, destroying their methods to wage war, essentially, they’re one-way attack UAVs, their anti-ship ballistic missiles, their anti-ship cruise missiles. That’s what we’ve been targeting to get them to stop targeting merchant vessels and the Red Sea.”
While deployed with the Eisenhower, CVW-3 flew more than 13,800 sorties for more than 31,000 total flight hours and completed more than 10,000 aircraft launches and recoveries, according to the Navy.
Several pilots from the air wing described the anxiety fueled by high operational tempo and a threat environment that extended to their base of operations aboard the Eisenhower between combat missions.
Cmdr. Benjamin Orloff, commander of the Rampagers, said that for seven of the eight months, the squadron was deployed it was under constant threat of Houthi airborne and seaborne attack at short range. For reasons of operational security, he would not say at what ranges the F-18 squadrons engaged incoming munitions.
“It was very close quarters, engagements we haven’t seen, in terms of the carrier, dating all the way back to World War II,” Orloff siad, again likening combat over the Red Sea to the War in the Pacific against Imperial Japan. “It required an incredible amount of collaboration, required an incredible amount of innovation, ingenuity across warfare areas plus workgroups, commanders, and integrating back here with our support staff, both industry and now their navy partners to come up with new tactics, to tweak systems that we already have, in order to optimize our employments. We learned an awful lot. We developed an awful lot from this fight that I think has an incredible amount of applicability to current and future conflicts around the globe.”
Lt. Cmdr. Keith Jeronimus said the Houthis were constantly trying to outsmart coalition forces with newly devised weapons and tactics, including unmanned aerial systems, small unmanned boats and missiles. He said the deployment with VFA-83 to ensure freedom of navigation in and around the Red Sea was a highlight of his career.
“They’re trying new things every day out there, which is challenging. We were flying around the clock,” he said. “At one point we were flying all day. They were launching alerts overnight. For a period, they’re almost every night. It’s crazy.”
Fighting that sort of amorphous threat from afar involved “a lot of dropping bombs, shooting drones down with missiles” and guns.
“You name it,” he said. “Stuff I’ve never gotten the chance to do in my career.”
Despite a heightened threat environment, the air wing’s complement of Super Hornets performed admirably, said Cmdr. Sean Reed, commander of the “Wildcats” VFA-131 and deputy commander of the air wing.
“The Navy was very proactive, with parts supply, things like that,” Cmdr. Andrew Stoner, VFA-131’s executive officer, said. “Readiness was never an issue for us. We had a pretty high op tempo, but these jets are built very well. The Navy […] supply chain was very supportive.”
Stoner said for the final five months of the deployment, agreed. His squadron enjoyed sortie completion rates above 90 percent throughout the extended deployment, he said. Stoner’s F/A-18E jet sported 11 Joint Direct Attack Munition kill markings on the fuselage below the cockpit and two denoting enemy drones.
With the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) in the Middle East as of Friday to continue thwarting Houthi efforts to impede commercial traffic in the Red Sea, Scott and Orloff said their experience could help solidify the aircraft carrier’s place in modern naval warfare. Naysayers have long argued that the huge floating warships are juicy targets for enemy anti-ship missiles. At least in the sort of asymmetric combat encountered offshore of Yemen, the carrier strike group is an ideal weapon at sea, Scott said.
“The carrier strike group is the answer to these kinds of problems,” Scott said. “This is very much a Navy fight.”
From the air, the Super Hornet, which eventually will replaced with the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, still has a potent sting, Orloff said
“I think the F-18 is the apex predator at this point, okay,” he said. “It is at the top of its game.”
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