While USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) continues to conduct flight operations as part of Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMTUEX), another Everett based ship is on the horizon training to ensure that no threat, airborne, surface or subsurface, can interfere with the carrier’s ability to project air power.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Shoup (DDG 86) is one of five ships from Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 9 that are part of Lincoln’s strike group. With COMTUEX in full swing, Shoup’s crew is working around the clock to integrate their capabilities with those of Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 9 to form a cohesive fighting unit.

“Shoup’s primary job during COMTUEX is to train for performing the mission of Alternate Air Defense Commander,” said Lt. Cmdr. Rolando Ramirez, Shoup’s executive officer. “If (Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS) Mobile Bay (CSG 9s Primary Air Defense Commander) loses communications, we have to be ready to take over.”

As alternate air defense commander, Shoup must be able to coordinate the defensive capabilities of the strike group and bring them to bear on any incoming air threat at a moment’s notice. For the destroyer’s crew, this means working with other ships and aircraft that have not operated together in over a year.

“This is the first time we’ve done this in a long time, and for a lot of the crew, it’s the first time ever working with the rest of the Strike Group,” said Lt. j.g. Elisabeth Erickson, Shoup’s communications officer. “Everything that we’ve been training for in simulations we’re doing now with real ships and aircraft, and it’s a lot more difficult than a simulation.”

The other major focus of COMTUEX for Shoup has been Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) operations. With the ship running quiet (including no exercise or laundry facilities due to the noise that they generate), the periodic whistle of sonar can be heard through the ship’s bulkheads as the sonar technicians working in Shoup’s ASW Module search the depths for submarine threats.

“Until now, our sonar techs were at the unit training phase. All they did was talk to themselves and coordinate between each other to find a submarine or a contact,” Ramirez said.  “Now they have to work that portion of the drill while they’re talking to our sea combat commander and other warfare areas.”

Besides these two primary training objectives, Shoup has also conducted Visit Board Search and Seizure exercises and, for the first time, oil platform defense scenarios, since getting underway for COMTUEX.

“These are big missions that the Navy is performing in the Persian Gulf, so there’s a very good chance we could get tasked to do it at some point in the future,” Ramirez said.

With a crew of 276 Sailors, Shoup is successfully meeting the objectives of these and other exercises with 74 fewer crewmembers than the ship was originally designed to accommodate. Under the Navy’s optimum manning plan, which relies on new technologies to reduce ship manning, Shoup’s crew size will eventually be drawn down to approximately 220.

“It’s a lot of cross-training, everyone has to know everyone else’s job,” Erickson said. “The most important thing is getting rid of that ‘single point of failure’ where only one person on the ship knows how to run a certain system or has a certain qualification.”

Shoup and its crew will continue to hone and integrate their capabilities with those of Lincoln and the rest of CSG 9 through COMTUEX and until the strike group deploys early next year.