The ships and aircraft of the USS Eisenhower’s Carrier Strike Group had an eventful deployment with lots of lessons learned that are now being used to inform the U.S. Navy on how to be better prepared against asymmetric threats such as the Houthis’.
The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (or “Ike” as it is affectionately called) Carrier Strike Group’s (CSG) nine-month deployment in the Red Sea to fight the Houthis saw the fleet being subjected to relentless salvos of drones, anti-ship cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and unmanned surface and underwater vehicles.
The war with the non-state actor saw the powerful navy’s crews and pilots destroying hundreds of these systems in a rare instance where the U.S. Navy’s ships were directly fired upon and kept on their toes in one of the most intense sea wars since World War 2. Reports claimed severe “fatigue” among the crew due to the Houthis undertaking attacks in unpredictable patterns of timing and intensity as a part of their ‘asymmetric war’.
The Carrier Air Wing 3 aboard the Ike logged 14,000 sorties, 32,000 flight hours and 15,000 arrested landings during the deployment, while the Super Hornets and one E/A-18G Growler shot more than 60 air-to-air missiles.
At all hours, @TheCVN69 is ready to support maritime security and stability in the Middle East.
📍RED SEA – The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) conducts flight operations in response to increased Iranian-backed Houthi malign behavior in the Red Sea, March 22. pic.twitter.com/5QtIaVEGtT
— U.S. Fleet Forces (@USFleetForces) March 26, 2024
Rear Admiral Marc Miguez, the former commander of the CSG-2 (Carrier Strike Group 2) made interesting revelations in an interview to retired F-14 Tomcat radar intercept officer Ward Carroll. The most stunning of these was the CSG’s destroyers running out of missiles, reflecting the Houthis’ massive asymmetric advantage with a huge stockpile of cheap drones and missiles and fighting from their home front. A similar fate was also experienced by German frigate Hessen, which also expended its armory shooting down the Houthi attacks.
‘Not prepared for all of the Houthi threats’
Miguez responded to Carroll’s question whether the Ike CSG was prepared for everything the Houthis threw at them. RAdm Miguez gave a wide ranging response, encompassing the doctrinal and tactical aspects. “The CWC (Composite Warfare Command) construct was used in combat. Those doctrinal things that we trained (for) did not change. Those TTPs (Tactics Training and Procedures), weapons that we used in a training environment did not change,” Miguez said.
“The one thing [that] we did not…holistically trained for was…just the immense number of UAV interactions. We did some UAV exercises on the east coast. But not at the level at which we encountered in combat,” added Miguez. The Houthi threat was unpredictable and came in many forms, with drones both in the air and on and under the sea, ballistic missiles and small patrol boats.
Footage shows what appears to be the first successful Houthi kamikaze USV strike on Greek-owned cargo ship Tutor while transiting the Red Sea on June 12.
The crew was evacuated by the U.S. Navy.
The ship is sinking. pic.twitter.com/qMBfV00zZp
— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 17, 2024
Measures taken
Given the threat, the CAW flew eight to nine events every day in an hour and a half cycles, not counting the alert missions and alert tankers also involved. “We’d have our helicopter support flying all the time, not only doing logistical support but also ASR,” explained the Admiral. ASR is “a kind of surveillance of the strike group.” The Eisenhower CSG also always had aircraft doing “dynamic targeting.” However, they always also had HVU (High Value Unit) Defense, with “two aircraft always around the carrier,” which was “non-negotiable.”
Miguez also permanently had the destroyer and frigate escorts always around the carrier as a “non-negotiable” practice for force protection. This translated into aircraft always flying DCA (Defense Counter-Air) missions. Even the U.S. Air Force would sometimes send their F-15s and F-16s for the role when the carrier’s jets were not flying.
In the “relatively small body of water” which is the Red Sea, where the Ike is a “big target,” Miguez had to “maneuver the carrier multiple times” to keep its location “unpredictable.” Sometimes the CSG was “close” and at other times it was “further away” to not be “MODLOCed” (Modified Location), and not sail “in the same sea space day after day.” Interestingly, Miguez called this DMO (Distributed Maritime Operations), the CONOPS (Concept of Operations) fielded by former CNO (Chief of Operations) Admiral Mike Gilday.
DMO, evolved for the high-end war in the Pacific, involves spreading out operations from the larger CSGs to friendly controlled islands and USVs to be able to fight China inside its A2/AD (Anti-Access/Area Denial) bubble. “DMO is baked into our culture now,” said the Admiral.
The Ike CSG also accomplished several firsts like supporting missions into Syria and Iraq from the north Red Sea, and use “exquisite” weapons like the AGM-88E AARGM (Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile) and the AGM-154C JSOW (Joint Stand-Off Weapon), which were used in combat for the first time after being employed only for training and testing.
They also flew F/A-18 with configurations that included four AIM-9X short-range AAMs that NAVAIR (Naval Air Systems Command) rapidly approved. Other firsts included the first air-to-air kill by an E/A-18G Growler EW (Electronic Warfare) jet and the first air-to-air kill by a female pilot.
The Aviationist reported this loadout of one F/A-18E Super Hornet from the VFA-105 “Gunslingers” squadron carrying nine air-to-air missiles to shoot down Houthi drones. That loadout in the report, which Miguez referred to, had the four AIM-9Xs on the wingtip and outer pylons and four more AIM-120 AMRAAMs (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles) on two dual-missile racks of the middle hardpoint.
An F/A-18E from VFA-105 “Gunslingers” being inspected by Aviation Ordnancemen aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) in the Red Sea (Circa April 2024). Notice the drone kill marks? Recently, I saw a photo of a VFA-131 F/A-18E armed with 9 AAMs😮 #avgeeks #aviation #USNavy pic.twitter.com/XNfPYdRgns
— Air Power (@RealAirPower1) May 8, 2024
One F/A-18E from the VFA-131 “Wildcats” was adorned with kill markings, including those of two one-way attack drones, as an image taken on Mar. 12, 2024, showed. Subsequent images surfaced on jets from other of the carrier’s squadrons with kill markings. Another image showed an F/A-18E from the VFA-105 “Gunslingers” adorned with similar markings.
As for the AGM-88E AARGM, The War Zone reported that the missile was used to destroy a Mi-24/Mi-35 Hind attack helicopter, as shown by a kill mark on the Growler. The report concluded that the missile was fired onto the helicopter on the ground to hit coordinates and not home in on emissions. This E/A-18G belonged to VAQ-130 “Zappers.”
Asymmetric warfare
These weapons-tactical arrangements were to address the “cost-benefit” of shooting down Houthi UAVs and projectiles using costly Standard Missiles. Whether it meant the CSG initially used the series of Standard Missiles (SM-2, SM-3 or SM-6) to shoot down the Houthi projectiles and then switched to the AIM-9X-armed F/A-18s, is unclear.
Wade Carroll also revealed that the CSG’s destroyers at one point “ran out of missiles.” Miguez said that the CSG usually reloaded their missiles from the stocks at NAVSTA Rota (Naval Station Rota) and the NSA (Naval Support Activity) Bahrain, which “took a week or more, which was way too long.” They thus replenished their stocks from Yanbu in Saudi Arabia, which only took them three days. The US military had revealed it had experimented with using Yanbu four years ago for loading and unloading military cargo at the height of the tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the crisis in Yemen.
Last night US forces launched strikes on 36 Houthi military targets at 13 locations.
RAF Typhoons also flew a 3rd 5,000km round trip from Cyprus to bomb targets in Yemen. pic.twitter.com/pXjgG6N12y
— Navy Lookout (@NavyLookout) February 4, 2024
Miguez also denied claims of the Super Hornets using their guns to shoot down Houthi drones. However, at least on one occasion, one of the warships shot down a Houthi UAV with one of its 5-inch gun. As for the strikes into Yemen, a total of seven “dedicated strikes” were conducted, coordinated with partners, mainly the U.K. and the participation of the USAF.
Miguez did see a “down-tick” in Houthi activity after the strikes that were “degrading” their capability. However, the Houthis continue to attack commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and a complete defeat of the group would require a “whole of government” approach with diplomatic and economic measures, Miguez added.
H/T Ryan Chan for the heads up!
Parth Satam’s career spans a decade and a half between two dailies and two defense publications. He believes war, as a human activity, has causes and results that go far beyond which missile and jet flies the fastest. He therefore loves analyzing military affairs at their intersection with foreign policy, economics, technology, society and history. The body of his work spans the entire breadth from defense aerospace, tactics, military doctrine and theory, personnel issues, West Asian, Eurasian affairs, the energy sector and Space.
