USS George HW Bush headed for the Black Sea? VIDEO

reply to post by Hithe Merinos


The Hornet is a multirole fighter. That means that all the F-18s can be either a fighter or a strike aircraft.

Carriers generally carry a squadron of Electronic Warfare aircraft (either E/A-18 Growler, or EA-6B Prowlers), a squadron of AWACS aircraft (2-4 E-2C/D), one to two helicopter squadrons, and usually between 2-4 C-2 Greyhound COD aircraft. The rest are Hornets.

Perfectly normal deployments.

1.) The fact that the Mt. Whitney was (WAS) in the Black Sea with the USS Taylor is normal. Ostensibly they were there turning circles to "support" the Sochi Olympics. The Mt. Whitney has been in the Black Sea many times, including a couple of months ago when no one noticed. The Whitney is back in the Med now. For those of you who wish to keep track of particularly Russian ship deployments in the Bosphorus I suggest turkishnavy.net... You will find that the Russians go back and forth weekly. It's really no big deal and the nUMBER of ship movements is normal, as a check of the records will show you.

2.) The Bush is, of course, on the way to the Gulf to relieve the USS Truman, that has been there since August of last year. It will travel through the Suez for the handoff. This also, is perfectly normal, as is the number and type of aircraft aboard. They go through the Med and the Suez simply because it's a whole lot easier, cheaper, and faster than to travel around the Horn of Africa.

3.) I'm going to guess that we'll have a big deck amphibious hand over pretty quick, too. It's possible the Bataan is headed that way. We'll know better next week.

reply to post by butcherguy


Somebody did post about that. Don't get too excited. the Russians followed protocol and notified the US of the test....BEFORE all this buisness in the Ukraine started. The test launch has been scheduled for a while now.

As for the fleet movement...IF true...it's just Barry's attempt to look tough. As other posters have noted, there is no real need for this and it's likely to just highten tensions.

I tell you we'll be lucky if all these madmen don't get us all killed playing their nation sized game of chicken.