THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 13, 1996 TAG: 9609130558
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT AND DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: 114 lines
The aircraft carrier Enterprise and three other Norfolk-based warships are steaming for the Persian Gulf and a rendezvous with an already massive American armada poised to strike Iraq.
A Navy spokesman at the Pentagon confirmed Thursday that the nuclear-powered carrier had been ordered to leave its patrol off the former Yugoslavia, where it had been awaiting Saturday's Bosnian elections, and was bound for the Suez Canal.
The nuclear fast-attack submarine Norfolk and the fast combat support ship Supply, both Norfolk-based and members of the Enterprise's battle group, also were headed for the Persian Gulf from assignments in the Mediterranean.
Another Norfolk-based ship, the destroyer Stump, was headed for the Gulf from the Red Sea.
And three ships based elsewhere - the guided missile cruiser Gettysburg, the guided missile frigate Stephen W. Groves and the supply ship Patuxent - were to join the Bremerton, Wash.-based carrier Carl Vinson, which waits in the Gulf with 16 cruisers, destroyers, frigates, submarines and support ships.
The Enterprise, carrying 80 aircraft and 5,500 men and women, will be in the Red Sea as soon as Sunday, putting it in position to participate in an attack if Saudi Arabia, over whose territory the Navy jets would have to fly en route to Iraq, permits the use of its airspace.
The 1,123-foot ship, on its first deployment in nearly six years, carries an air wing that doubles the Vinson's punch with 13 A-6E Intruder attack jets and 14 F-14 Tomcat fighters, all based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, and 22 Florida-based F/A-18 Hornet fighter-attack jets.
The F/A-18s and A-6s can carry precision-targeted ``smart'' bombs. Nine of the F-14s, members of the Jolly Rogers of Oceana's Fighter Squadron 103, have been fitted with a combat-untested targeting system to do the same. The Gettysburg, Norfolk and Stump, meanwhile, bring 195 additional cruise missile launching tubes to the vast American show of force.
That the Enterprise would make a trip to the Persian Gulf has been part of the Navy's plans since long before the ship left Norfolk on a six-month deployment June 28.
The centerpiece of a 13-ship battle group, the carrier was expected to traverse the Suez Canal in early October, and to steam for the Gulf to relieve the Vinson as a routine part of the Mediterranean fleet's expanded role in the Middle East.
The ship was steaming Wednesday in the mid-Adriatic north of Sannicandro, Italy, - its patrol ``station'' when not crisscrossing the Med on goodwill visits to ports in several countries.
An officer aboard the Enterprise declined to confirm or deny reports of the carrier's movement Thursday afternoon, and Pentagon spokesmen characterized the move as only an option until late in the day.
The Navy acknowledged Thursday night that the ``Big E'' was, in fact, under way, but declined to reveal whether it was still in the Adriatic.
Reaching the Gulf from there could take close to a week, though the carrier is expected in the Suez Canal by Saturday or Sunday.
What happens then depends on the Saudis, who have so far sharply limited their involvement in the latest U.S-Iraq confrontation. If given flyover rights, the Enterprise's jets could begin hammering Iraqi targets far more harshly than cruise missiles did last week.
A second carrier in the region would put a total of more than 70 bomb-ready Navy jets within striking distance of Iraqi targets, along with a total of eight missile-equipped EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare planes and a dozen missile-armed S-3 Vikings.
``To move a second carrier from the Med into the Red Sea, and eventually, perhaps, down into the Gulf, I think reduces the flying time into a target area, number one,'' said retired Navy Vice Adm. Jack Shanahan, director of the private Center for Defense Information in Washington.
``Then, of course, two carriers do help each other. You have two airfields as opposed to one,'' he said. ``You cross-deck a lot of things.
``The other matter here, which I hesitate to get into, is that the Air Force and the Navy are gearing up here in Washington to start battling each other over goals and missions and pieces of the budget.
``I'm disappointed that that's one of the considerations,'' Shanahan said, ``but it's a fact of life.''
The smaller ships now headed to the Gulf will muscle up the armada's ability to rain missiles into Iraq: The Norfolk has 12 tubes capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles; the Stump has 61, and the Gettysburg 122.
Of the 17 ships they join, only five are equipped to launch the weapons. Those five have a total of 381 tubes - among them, 93 aboard the guided missile destroyer Laboon, the only Norfolk-based ship now in the Persian Gulf.
A tangle between Navy and Iraqi jets could witness the debut of the F-14's vaunted LANTIRN system, an upgrade that sharpens its crew's vision of terrain and sky and converts the venerable fighter into a precision bomber.
Squeezed into an electronics-crammed tube slung under the Tomcat's starboard wing, the system is making its first deployment aboard the Enterprise. The ship carries six of the LANTIRN pods, which can be strapped on to any of the nine aircraft modified to use them.
At the same time, any attack on Iraq by manned American aircraft could mark the A-6 Intruder's final scrap.
The rugged, ungainly-looking bomber is carried aboard both the Vinson and Enterprise, but its deployment aboard the Norfolk ship is its last planned before the plane is retired from service. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Graphic
ALREADY IN THE GULF
Aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, based in Bremerton, Wash., carrying
about 81 warplanes and helicopters.
15 other warships and other support vessels.
One attack submarine.
About 15,000 naval personnel on board the ships.
About 130 land-based aircraft.
About 5,000 military personnel in Saudi Arabia.
About 2,000 to 3,000 military personnel in Kuwait.
Several hundred other military personnel based in Bahrain, Qatar,
the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
KEYWORDS: U.S. NAVY PERSIAN GULF IRAQ
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