US Admiral Recounts USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group’s Nine-Month Deployment Fighting the Houthis | Aviation

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.

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