Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

SEA OF SHADOWS 129
years. But, despite its impressive track record, the screen concept was not
flawless. To provide effective protection, a screen formation required
seven or eight escort ships per carrier. Anything less left gaps in the
screen, exposing the carrier to attack. But the U.S. Navy no longer had
enough ships to provide that kind of coverage.
Kitty Hawk was making do with five escorts, and at that was better off
than half the carriers in the Navy. Admiral Joiner’s tactical staff used
aircraft to plug the holes in the screen, a common tactic in an era of few
ships and numerous taskings.
MH-60R Seahawk helicopters played leapfrog with the screening ships,
hovering low over the wave tops at strategic moments to lower sonar
transducers into the water and ping for enemy submarines. For now, the
dipping sonars were especially important because the ships’ sonars were
virtually deaf when they were moving at high speed.
Thousands of feet above, maintaining careful vertical separation from
the helos, the carrier’s F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter/attack jets patrolled
the sky. The twin-tailed Super Hornets were multi-role aircraft, and their
flexibility saddled them with two missions: CAP (Combat Air Patrol) and
SUCAP (Surface Combat Air Patrol). Any ship or aircraft close enough to
threaten the carrier strike group had to get past the missiles and guns of the
Hornets first.
Flying well in front of the formation, E-2C Hawkeyes scanned the sea
and sky for potentially hostile radar contacts. The disk-shaped radome
mounted on the back of each Hawkeye was so hugely out of proportion to
the rest of the aircraft that a running Navy joke accused its designers of
trying to mate a twin-engine commuter plane with a flying saucer. The
sensitivity and power of the strange-looking radar dish were no joke,
though. The Hawkeyes really were the eyes of the fleet.
In Flag Plot, aboard the carrier, Admiral Joiner stared up at the largescreen
tactical displays, evaluating the positioning of the colored symbols
that marked the ships and aircraft under his command. Between them, the
aircraft he had deployed extended the carrier strike group’s sensor and
weapons ranges well beyond the coverage envelopes of the ships. But he
would have gladly traded one of the stars on his collar for another pair of
frigates or destroyers.