That’s the Valiant Shield exercise, 2006, in the Western Pacific. I was standing on the Flag Bridge of the carrier on the left–USS Abraham Lincoln.

PHOTOEXes rock.

JoeCrow…normally operate? OK, sure, assuming by “normally” you mean peacetime. Generally, strikegroups are deployed for six months, and they go run around the Med, or the Gulf, or WestPac to show “presence” or to act as staging platforms for missions supporting Iraq/Afghanistan.

But the whole point of exercises like Valiant Shield are to demonstrate joint operability between the services. Can the Navy and Air Force work effectively together. So yes, this how how a strikegroup would normally function in wartime (OK, we don’t spend a lot of time doing fly-overs of the whole group, but you know what I mean).

This is the PHOTOEX that kicked off the exercise. It’s nothing more than a really cool opportunity to get neat photos. A few minutes after the pix were taken, the carriers peeled off in different directions (I went out on the fantail to watch), and the exercise started.

Oh, and since this is MCS I should add on a nonserious note: Huh huh, “joint.”