Operations
Kearsarge is capable of amphibious assault, advance force and special purpose operations, as well as non-combatant evacuation and other humanitarian missions. Since her commissioning, she has performed these missions all over the world, including evacuating non-combatants from Freetown, Sierra Leone, on 31 May 1997 and rescuing Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady from Serb-controlled territory in Bosnia on 8 June 1995.
Additionally, Kearsarge is fully equipped with state-of-the-art command and control (C&C) systems for flagship command duty, and her medical facilities are second in capability only to the Navy's hospital ships, USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) and USNS Mercy (T-AH-19). These facilities allowed Kearsarge to serve a dual role during the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as a platform for bombing missions against Serb forces in Operation Allied Force, and as a treatment facility for Albanian refugees in Operation Shining Hope.
On 19 August 2005 Kearsarge and USS Ashland (LSD-48) were targeted by rockets while in port in Jordan. The rockets flew over Ashland's bow and struck the pier adjacent to the ships. The vessels were not hit but one Jordanian soldier was killed and another was wounded.
USS Kearsarge, in 2006, and again in 2008, served as the principal attraction for New York's "Fleet Week". In August 2007 the ship visited the port of Valletta, Malta on the way to a six-month deployment to Iraq (5th Fleet AOR). The ship also recently deployed Sailors and Marines in a relief effort in Bangladesh following Cyclone Sidr and provided support for President George W. Bush's January 2008 visit to Israel.
On 6 August 2008, Kearsarge deployed in support of Operation Continuing Promise. The ship's crew, along with augment from the United States Marine Corps, the United States Air Force, the United States Army, the United States Coast Guard, the United States Public Health Service, Canadian Forces, and other multi-national forces and NGO's provided medical, construction and humanitarian services to seven Central, South, and Caribbean American countries (Panama, Columbia, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Trinidad). The ship also provided Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) operations in Haiti following four Atlantic hurricanes.
On 2 March 2011, Kearsarge, along with USS Ponce (LPD-15), traveled through the Suez Canal in response to the 2011 Libyan civil war. Robert Gates had said days earlier that he ordered the two warships into the Mediterranean, along with an extra 400 Marines, in case they are needed to evacuate civilians or provide humanitarian relief. As of 20 March, AV-8B Harrier II attack aircraft from the Kearsarge have been reported attacking Libyan targets as part of Operation Odyssey Dawn. On 22 March, V-22 Ospreys from the Kearsarge conducted a successful CSAR operation to recover the crew of a USAF F-15E Strike Eagle after it crashed in Libya due to a mechanical failure during a combat mission. The Daily Telegraph reported a military source as stating that during the rescue strafing runs were carried out and two Harriers dropped two 500 lb bombs on a convoy of Libyan vehicles, with other reports alleging that Libyan civilians were wounded in the operation. The ship returned to home port at Norfolk on 16 May 2011.
Read more about this topic: USS Kearsarge (LHD-3)
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)