07 Carrier by Tom Clancy

Author:Tom Clancy [Clancy, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

E-2C Hawkeye AEW aircraft on the deck of the USS George Washington (CVN-73). They generally parked alongside the island structure, on a spot called “the Hummer Hole.”

JOHN D. GRESHAM

In any event, the E-2Cs never directed the massive air battles they had been designed for. Instead, the Hawkeye crews spent the declining years of the Cold War flying their racetrack patterns over the fleets, maintaining their lonely vigil for a threat that never came. Carrier-based Hawkeyes were not strangers to combat, however. E-2Cs guided F-14 Tomcat fighters flying combat air patrols during the 1981 and 1989 air-to-air encounters with the Libyan Air Force, as well as the joint USN/USAF strike against terrorist-related Libyan targets in 1986. Israeli E-2Cs provided AEW support during their strikes into Lebanon in 1982, and again during the larger invasion the following year. More recently, E-2Cs provided the command and control for successful operations during the Persian Gulf War, directing both land strike and CAP missions over Iraq and providing control for the shoot-down of the two Iraqi F-7/MiG-21 fighters by carrier-based F/A-18’s. E-2 aircraft have also worked extremely effectively with U.S. law enforcement agencies in drug interdictions.

Today the entire Hawkeye fleet is being upgraded under what is called the Group II program. Along with thirty-six new-production aircraft, the entire USN E-2C fleet is being given the improved APS-145 radar, new computers, avionics, data links, and a GPS/INS system to improve flight path and targeting accuracy. This means that a single Hawkeye can now track up to two thousand targets at once in a volume of six million cubic miles of airspace and 150,000 square miles of territory. Current plans have the Hawkeye/ Greyhound fleet serving until at least the year 2020, when a new airframe known as the Common Support Aircraft (CSA) will be built in an AEW version. By that time, the basic E-2 airframe will have served for almost six decades!

A VS-32 S-3B Viking ASW aircraft on the deck of the USS George Washington (CVN-73) with wings folded. The S-3B has rapidly taken over many critical roles in carrier operations, espcially in-flight refueling of other aircraft.

JOHN D. GRESHAM

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