Dynamic. Distributed. Deadly.
By Rear Admiral Eugene H. Black and Captain Jennifer S. Couture, U.S. Navy
February 2020
When the ships and sailors of Carrier Strike Group (CSG) Eight departed Norfolk, Virginia, in April 2018, the crews anticipated a conventional seven-month deployment with Fifth and Sixth Fleets. Less than one month later, the strike group found itself testing then–Secretary of Defense James Mattis’s promise that the armed forces would become “strategically predictable, but operationally unpredictable†through dynamic force employment.
As a result, CSG-8’s schedule changed radically, even as the group significantly limited release of information about intended movements to maintain operational security. After three months, most of the CSG returned to homeport for a five-week “working port visit,†then redeployed to the North Atlantic, joined Exercise Trident Juncture, and conducted the Navy’s first sustained CSG operations north of the Arctic Circle since 1991.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/february/dynamic-distributed-deadly
