Welcome to the 54Net FORUM
The FORUM is provided for Classmates and their families to present information of interest to the Class.
Posted on 10/1/2020 at 18:34:15 by Will Croom
The guided missile destroyer USS Stout just finished a record 208 continuous days at sea.
The Navy kept the ship at sea due to the global coronavirus pandemic.
The record is impressive, but it wouldn't have been necessary if the Navy had enough ships to take its place at sea.
A U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer now holds the service record for the most continuous days at sea. The USS Stout spent close to seven months in the Middle East, watching over commercial shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz opposite Iran. Navy brass kept the ship at sea due to the coronavirus outbreak, but the fact that sailors had to endure such a long patrol points to a broader problem: a major shortage of Navy warships.
As of September 28, the USS Stout, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, spent 208 straight days at sea. The ship deployed as part of the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group in early 2020 to the 5th Fleet area of operations. Headquartered in Bahrain, 5th Fleet’s area of operations includes the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, North Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, and the Red Sea.
The Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group departed the Middle East earlier this summer, but the USS Stout stayed on. The Navy says the USS Stout spent 139 days as part of Combined Task Force Sentinel, whose mission is to overwatch commercial ships as they pass through Strait of Hormuz.
The Strait is dominated on the northern side by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has made threats to commercial shipping in the past. “Stout,” the Navy explained, “provided overwatch for more than 550 vessels as they transited critical chokepoints and delivered 1,500 maritime awareness calls to regional commercial shipping.”
The USS Stout also served under the Navy’s Task Force 50, patrolling the Bab el Mandeb and Strait of Hormuz, and served alongside the USS Bataan’s Amphibious Ready Group practicing amphibious assaults.
While it’s laudable that a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer is capable of sailing for straight 208 days, the reality is the deployment put a huge strain on the sailors aboard the Stout and their families back home in Norfolk, Virginia. Navy warship deployments are rarely supposed to last more than six months, and are typically punctuated with shore liberty in interesting and exotic places during their route.
While the lack of shore liberty during a global pandemic is understandable, having sailors spend 208 uninterrupted days at sea is not. The only reasonable explanation for that excessive duration is that there wasn't another ship capable of taking its place.
The USS Stout’s record is another example of a U.S. Navy without enough ships to do the tasks required of it. Today's expensive warships, cost overruns, and delays could have rippling consequences for decades to come, as the Navy must struggle to fulfill a global mission set with less than the ideal number of ships. The admirals promise a bigger fleet in 10 or 20 years, but that’s of little comfort to sailors who must serve for months on end without seeing their families.
Replies:
There have been no replies.
Post a reply:
<--
-->