Out to sea: for Navy aircraft carriers, 'missions haven't changed'.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Tactical Aviation

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ABOARD THE USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT--After spending nine months in the shipyard last year for routine maintenance, this 24-year-old Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and her crew are preparing for the ship's fourth deployment to the Persian Gulf since 9/11.

"The missions haven't changed," says Capt. Ladd Wheeler, the ship's commanding officer.

The primary goal is to support troops on the ground, he says. The TR's fighter pilots will serve as the eyes for Army and Marine Corps units in Iraq.

"Every flight, you're talking to a guy on the ground, and you're providing some service to him that seems to benefit him. It might not be bomb dropping, but it's still a very critical mission," says Capt. Dan Dixon, the carrier air wing commander.

"If our use is just for building a better picture for the folks on the ground, that's great. If called upon to do a low fly-by and make noise, that's great. If called upon to strafe or drop bombs, we're ready to do that as well," he adds.

In an exercise in the Atlantic Ocean several hundred miles off the East Coast, warplanes are flying 90 to 100 sorties a day practicing strike warfare--dropping ordnance on target ranges in Florida, talking to joint terminal attack controllers who call in air support and conducting fly-bys, or shows-of-force.

Pilots also are practicing night strafing, which is something they didn't always do in training, says Dixon.

The TR will deploy with a typical carrier air wing that is composed of seven squadrons: four strike fighter squadrons with 44 F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets, a squadron of E-2 Hawkeyes, a squadron of EA-6B Prowlers, a squadron of SH-60 helicopters and two C-2 Greyhound logistics aircraft, known as CODs.

Pilots are arriving in "incredible shape," Dixon says.

Almost half of the aircrew has never been on deployment. "Part of what we're doing now is stressing them in the exercise so that they're not overwhelmed when they get over to Iraq," says Dixon.

In this conflict, it is important to have precise information about the location of targets so that if a weapon is dropped, civilians are not harmed. "There are strategic implications of a bomb that goes astray," says Dixon. "In an urban environment, it's important that we only affect the folks that the ground troops want us to affect, and nobody else. That's the challenge."

On the ship's 2005 deployment, the wing's aircraft ranked among the oldest in the fleet by a decade because they included the last...