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New deployment rules to protect time at home

Sailors' days at sea to be matched 1 for 1, officials say
By Andrew Scutro - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Mar 8, 2007 7:43:57 EST

Ship crews and other Navy units will now fall under a one-for-one
operating schedule designed to ensure a day at home for every full
day spent at sea, Navy officials said Wednesday.

While admitting there will always be exceptions in time of war,
officials said under the new "Personnel Tempo of Operations
Program," the Navy has adopted "dwell time" metrics and procedures
to measure — and enforce — those time periods.

"If a ship deploys on a routine deployment, goes for six months and
comes home, per the `dwell' numbers, they should be back in their
parent [area of responsibility] for six months before they can
deploy again to any of the other geographic commands," said Capt.
Mike Durkin, director of Global Force Management with Fleet Forces
Command in Norfolk. "Dwell is the number that counts for how long
you are supposed to be [in your home operating area] following a
deployment."

It's been 21 years since the last formal change to the Navy's
personnel tempo of operations program, officials said, and it comes
right from the top. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen
announced the new policy in a Feb. 27 message. Mullen said that
while the Navy still needs to lean forward, the plan is designed "so
our sailors and their families are not subjected to a routinely
excessive tempo of operations."

The new plan, according to CNO's message, attempts to "provide the
most predictability we can in our deployment and operating
schedules."

For example, Durkin said a carrier strike group that leaves Norfolk
and deploys for six months to the Middle East would not deploy again
for six months.

"Unless there's an urgent need," he added. "In that case we have to
go up to CNO to get his approval to do that. They will not be
routinely scheduled to deploy within that dwell period."

Previously, the ship that most recently had returned from deployment
was often viewed as the most ready and thus most likely to be sent
back out. Under the dwell time framework, that ship is protected
from a quick-turnaround deployment.

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BLUEJACKET said:

But when not deployed, they still must have at-sea periods for training and pilot quals- and those aren't very short, at least on CV/Ns!

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is a gateway to information concerning approximately 80 western Native American tribes, visited and photographed by Edward Sheriff Curtis from 1890 to 1930, taken from "The North American Indian", Curtis' massive lifework.

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An Iranian general who went missing on a visit to Turkey last month appears to have defected to America, taking with him a treasure trove of his country’s most closely guarded secrets.

Ali Resa Asgari, 63, a general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and former Deputy Defence Minister, vanished on February 7 after arriving in Istanbul on a flight from Syria. He had reservations at the Ceylan Intercontinental Hotel but never checked in. Iran has notified Interpol and raised fears that General Asgari might have been kidnapped. Yesterday, however, several sources confirmed reports in America that General Asgari had fled to the West, becoming the first senior Iran official to defect since the revolution 27 years ago.

Danny Yatom, the former head of Mossad and a member of the Knesset, said that the general could provide Western intelligence with a unique insight into Iran’s foreign operations in Lebanon and beyond. “From the very start I thought this was a defection,” Mr Yatom told The Times. “All the signals showed that it was well planned and executed. He left Iran with his family, so that no one would be able to put pressure on them. I assume the defection was to the US.”

Mr Yatom described the missing general as very important and said that he would be able to shed light on one of the murkiest chapters in recent Middle East history. From the early 1980s Iran funded, trained and armed members of the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, which began as a small Shia Muslim militia but is today the most powerful paramilitary force in the Levant.

The Iranians are accused of using Hezbollah to launch suicide bomb attacks against American, French and Israeli targets, to kidnap Westerners and to build a state within a state in southern Lebanon. They are also suspected of carrying out operations in Europe and even Argentina.

“He is a significant figure,” said one Western source, who follows Iran closely. “It has so far been very difficult to get reliable information on how Iran ran its operations in Lebanon. This could be a big break.”

Last summer Israel fought a bloody, 33-day war with Hezbollah after the group seized two Israeli soldiers, whose fate is unknown. At the time, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, boasted: “Israel doesn’t know our capabilities on every level. The Zionist enemy has not succeeded in infiltrating our group.” General Asgari could lift that veil of secrecy.

“It means for the first time, Hezbollah’s adversaries may have accurate estimates of stockpiles, weapons types, even perhaps placement and tactics,” said Nicholas Noe, the author of a forthcoming book on Hezbollah. “This is crucial because the limits and placement of Hezbollah’s weaponry has been a major problem.”

After Lebanon, General Asgari returned to Iran as a high-ranking official dealing with the arms trade and weapons industry, including the development of the Shaab-3 ballistic missile. He stepped down as Deputy Defence Minister in 2005. Iranian officials have played down General Asgari’s importance, saying he has been “out of the loop for four or five years. But his defection could cause a serious blow to Iran.

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FuManChu said:

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SAN DIEGO (March 8, 2007) - Air Force A-10s assigned to Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Ariz., wait on the tarmac on board Naval Air Station North Island prior to conducting joint maritime operations. Four Air Force A-10s visited NASNI to conduct joint maritime operations with Helicopter Maritime Strike Weapons School Pacific.

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..the fact that nuclear weapons are acknowledged as a possible choice in the conventional war theater is indicative that their use is an integral part of military planning. ..
If Iran were to respond to US-Israeli attacks in the form of targeted strikes on US military facilities in the Iraq and the Gulf States, the war would escalate to the entire region, in which case the US could retaliate in the form of "pre-emptive" nuclear attacks on Iran using bunker buster tactical nuclear war heads.
The most likely scenario is that Iran, in the logic of its own military planning, would indeed respond to the US sponsored attacks as well as deploy ground forces inside occupied Iraq. ..
Three strike groups including the Stennis, the Eisenhower and the Nimitz are being deployed in the Persian Gulf. According to Gulf News, "The Stennis strike group... is now strengthening a high level of US Navy presence in the Gulf. The Stennis and the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, already in the region, will soon be joined by the

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[which participated in

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]. (Gulf News, 21 Feb 2007). According to British military sources, the US navy can put six carriers into battle at a month's notice.
..Confirmed by military sources, some 8500 of US troops are being redeployed from US military facilities in Germany and Italy to Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which border on Iran. One assumes that they are being dispatched to the Middle East war theater in the eventuality that the air strikes will lead into a ground war with Iran.
..It should be noted that a nuclear nighmare would occur even if nuclear weapons are not used. The bombing of Iran's nuclear facitlities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing a Chernobyl type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout.

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..Unless deployment was accelerated,

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would depart some time in March 2007, replacing the Eisenhower [or joining it & Stennis], which deployed 01 October 2006 with plans to remain on station into March 2007.

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My guess is interoperability, and more importantly, those A-10s may be needed in the Gulf against Iranian fast boats.

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