Eisenhower CSG braces for nine-month deployment

The Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group is days away from a nine-month deployment — one of the longest CSG cruises in decades.

On Wednesday, the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with Carrier Airwing 8, and destroyers Winston S. Churchill and Jason Dunham will leave Norfolk, Va., and cruiser Hue City and destroyer Farragut will leave Mayport, Fla.

Navy officials said the long deployment is driven by ongoing demands around the globe and a finite number of ships in the fleet. The Ike CSG is expected to complete operations in the 5th and 6th fleets.

The longer deployments were scheduled to take some of the burden off of other ships in the fleet that have been well-used over the last decade, said Rear Adm. Philip Davidson, the director for Global Force Management, Operations and Intelligence at Fleet Forces Command, in an email to Navy Times.

Navy officials and experts said the nine-month deployment will allow other ships to spend more time in the yards for maintenance and upgrades.

Navy Times has also learned that the destroyer Cole will begin a nine-month deployment sometime this year. It’s unclear what sort of mission the Cole will have for the deployment, but Davidson has previously said that both a CSG and ballistic missile defense deployment will approach nine months this year.

The last nine-month carrier cruise was in 2002 when the carrier Abraham Lincoln spent 291 days at sea during a stretch that included the buildup and opening salvos of the invasion of Iraq. They aren’t new though, and deployments of nine months were common during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Today, the bulk of deployments fall somewhere between six and seven months, according to data compiled by Navy Times, but Navy officials said that there will also be several eight-month deployments lasting through 2013.

The carrier Navy has spent the last two years operating at the same pace as the days leading up to Iraq, Davidson said. In terms of op-tempo, it is the busiest it’s been in the past 30 years, he added. He and others across the service have warned that operating at this pace means that less time for maintenance and upgrades that could be costly in the future.

The upcoming deployment is the first for the Ike since the last one concluded in July 2010. It has received upgrades and maintenance work while its sailors have trained.