ON THE USS BOXER IN THE ARABIAN GULF, 10 April 2003 — Many believe the US Navy continues to receive less recognition than it deserves for the role it has played in the region since the 1990-91 Gulf War. These waters are certainly not unfamiliar territory to the US Naval forces currently operating in the Gulf. “Those of my generation have spent a significant part of our seafaring careers in these waters or preparing to be in these waters,” said Capt. Thomas Crowley, 47, commanding officer, USS Boxer. “The Navy has spent a lot of time since 1991 enforcing the UN sanctions in Iraq, and we’ve continued a robust presence here.”
Other naval career officers agree. “I’ve been deployed here in the Gulf seven times in the last 20 years. I’m sure I’ve spent three to four years of my life floating in these waters,” said the ship’s Executive Officer, Capt. Thomas Culora. Since the war began last month, US naval ships have maintained a supportive infrastructure for Marines on the ground by launching hundreds of cruise missile attacks against Iraq, while US carriers in surrounding waters sent airstrikes deep into Iraqi territory.
Because of the environment, US naval ships also maintain a large security force to monitor mine threats, small boats and low, slow flying threats such as suicide Cessnas. “Almost a third of the crew is very heavily involved in the operations and air control departments,” said the Boxer’s captain. “The operations department supports air control, the ship’s defensive weapons and helps keep track of helicopters in the air space.”
“Since the USS Cole attack” — by a small boat packed with explosives off the coast of Yemen — “there’s been a lot of emphasis on small suicide boat threats,” said Crowley. “The trick is to figure out if an inbound plane or boat is a threat. We take every small boat and plane seriously, because you have to.” To date, there have not been any serious threats to US ships in the area: “We have not had to fire flares or shoot any shots across the bows of ships. But I believe this has happened occasionally on other ships.”
During the last Gulf War things were complicated by a presence of media helicopters, hired by television reporters trying to cover the Gulf War by flying in their airspace. This has not been an issue in this war, the captain said, because of the Pentagon’s current policy on embedding journalists within ground operational units.
But there are still “lots of things moving around in the air control space,” he said. “Trying to control our own aircraft, prevent blue-on-blue (friendly fire) engagements, and sorting out and identifying unfriendlies from our returning aircraft” keeps the ship’s security officers busy.
Regarding the dangers at sea, Culora said: “We are alert. We use multi-layered sensors to sort non-hostile traffic from hostile traffic.” No easy task, when matters are complicated by the presence of many multinational ships currently in the Gulf waters. “There are a lot of ships in the Gulf that are doing a lot of operations restricted to specific areas (going in circles) to ensure safety. More ships than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” said Crowley.
These are not only ships from the Anglo-American coalition. The solution: “We’ve divided the open space into certain operating areas. Everyone follows the seagoing rules of the road, which we all stick to,” said Crowley. “What you typically do when you have so many large warships in close quarters is to divide up the waters because we’re staying in the same area,” said the captain.
A primary purpose for the ships “is to make sure everyone knows where everyone else is — to keep them from running into each other.” Ships patrolling the area are given nautical area “boxes” that limit their travel range. “The diciest work we did was with six different ships doing three different things in five miles of the sea with lousy visibility. That was very interesting.” Matters are made easier by the cooperation between Naval vessels and commercial traffic.
