How to strain your fleet: Inside the Navy’s global training exercise
The Navy invited reporters to Norfolk, Va., to witness parts of Large Scale Exercise 2025, the third iteration of its global training event.
By Justin Katz on August 08, 2025 11:27 am
An MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter attached to the “Tridents” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 9 performs a vertical replenishment with the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Francisco Linares)
NORFOLK, Va. — Rear Adm. Alexis Walker, commander of carrier strike group 10, was keenly aware that his day could become extremely chaotic on short notice aboard the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush (CVN-77).
The chaos could come in the form of one of his aircraft elevators breaking down, hindering the ship’s all-important sortie generation rates. He might receive news that one of his strike group’s destroyers suffered severe battle damage and is returning to port. Any of the carrier’s key systems for self-defense, offensive operations or navigation could be rendered useless if enemy electronic warfare systems succeeded.
“You go to bed at night and everything is working great. You wake up in the morning and this person has had a casualty. This piece of equipment doesn’t work very well. Some other event in the world has changed something that you intended to do,” he told a group of reporters earlier this month aboard the Bush inside a conference room located just next to his office and stateroom. “How do you respond to all of those things?”
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/08/how-to-strain-your-fleet-inside-the-navys-global-training-exercise/
