Cocooned within the ship, amongst the dimly lit CIC packed with glowing screens, are between 10 and 20 sailors on watch at any given time. Led by a tactical action officer (TAO), they track all threats and movements in the region around the ship. A CIC\u2019s air warfare watchstanders might flag an inbound\u00a0Houthi<\/a>\u00a0missile and approve firing orders to other ship combat systems, while others are scanning the rest of the sky, correlating electronic warfare signals, tracking other surface vessels and watching out for submarines. CICs also keep in constant communication with other Navy vessels and aircraft in the area via various datalink systems, sharing sensor data and coordinating actions. The CIC works closely with the bridge to best move the ship to its most survivable or advantageous position at any given time as well.<\/p>\n \u201cThe things that make the environment really busy are just trying to manage threats, trying to manage traffic, trying to manage the general environment,\u201d Bradley Martin, a retired surface warfare officer who spent two-thirds of his career at sea, told\u00a0TWZ<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s designed to handle a lot of information and handle processing and display and dissemination. But like anywhere, when a lot of things are going on, it takes a lot of concentration to keep things straight.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the slew of information being passed back and forth in the CIC, particularly in a cruiser serving as the air defense commander for a carrier strike group, the CIC \u2014 referred to as \u201ccombat\u201d in the surface fleet \u2014 would appear calm to an outsider who walked into the space, according to a retired Navy cruiser captain who spoke with\u00a0TWZ<\/em>\u00a0on condition of anonymity to share his assessment. But the seeming tranquility of sailors on computers or talking into headsets belies the stakes of the CIC\u2019s work.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have external comms coming from the aircraft carrier, from the planes,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have someone in combat typically talking to the planes themselves, checking in and checking out. You\u2019ve got internal communications, everybody\u2019s got a headset on, they\u2019ve typically got one circuit in one ear and another circuit in the other.\u201d<\/p>\n But these days, CIC watchstanders have been tested in unprecedented ways every day in the Red Sea over the past year, these SWOs\u00a0<\/strong>tell\u00a0TWZ.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAs the amount of aircraft and the threat of actually taking a hit increases, then the pucker factor and the intensity increases as well,\u201d the retired captain said.<\/p>\n The Red Sea fight has required endless vigilance and honed attention from CICs the entire time their ship is operating in those waters, according to an active-duty SWO who requested anonymity to share his personal thoughts.<\/p>\n \u201cYou run that kind of high-stress scenario from the moment you enter the theater until you leave if you\u2019re operating in the Red Sea,\u201d the active-duty\u00a0<\/strong>SWO told\u00a0TWZ.\u00a0<\/em>\u201cEvery other test since Operation Iraqi Freedom has been a test of our ability to support strikes into other places. This is the first time we\u2019ve had a sustained conventional threat against open water shipping.\u201d<\/p>\n Since October 2023, Navy destroyers have been shooting down aerial drones and missiles, as well as sinking drone boats, launched by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen,\u00a0sometimes at a near-daily clip<\/a>. You can read about the Houthi\u2019s arsenal being brought to bear against shipping around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait\u00a0here<\/a>. But even as CICs track, identify and at times engage with a variety of objects popping up on their sensors, system breakdowns and inexperienced sailors hinder effective CIC operations even in peaceful waters, raising the stakes of the current Red Sea mission \u2014 and the consequences of mistakes.<\/p>\n As an investigation into how the Navy cruiser\u00a0USS\u00a0Gettysburg<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(CG-64) came to shoot down a\u00a0F\/A-18 Super Hornet jet<\/a>\u00a0over the Red Sea last month continues, the cruiser\u2019s CIC was likely tracking a bevy of airborne objects simultaneously.\u00a0TWZ\u00a0<\/em>previously reported<\/a>\u00a0that the shootdown occurred during a sustained Houthi drone and missile attack targeting the\u00a0USS\u00a0Harry S. Truman<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(CVN-75) carrier strike group. Cruisers serve as the air defense headquarters within such strike groups.<\/p>\n With regard to the\u00a0Gettysburg<\/em>\u00a0friendly-fire incident, Martin said they were dealing with a situation where there were a lot of aircraft in the sky, along with surface threats, all of which created \u201ca complicated air defense environment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhether or not somebody might have made a serious mistake with the\u00a0Gettysburg<\/em>, we don\u2019t know what set of systems or decisions [were made], or what might have happened,\u201d Martin said. \u201cThey\u2019re busy and dealing with some ambiguous situations, situations unlike what the Navy has dealt with in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n The SWOs who spoke with\u00a0TWZ<\/em>\u00a0said that Navy CICs in the Red Sea deserve credit for executing so well.<\/p>\n \u201cThese ships over the last year have done a fairly remarkable number of engagements, far more than the Navy had done in the previous 50 years,\u201d Martin said. \u201cAnd they are by and large handling those correctly.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, the active-duty\u00a0<\/strong>SWO said the Houthi aerial drone threat adds a major layer of complexity for the CICs to manage.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a missile gets fired, I know what that is, it\u2019s coming out of Yemen, moving at this speed, blast it out of the sky,\u201d he said. \u201cAll these drones just act like airplanes, and the problem is airplanes can be good or bad, and it\u2019s hard to tell the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t envy their position,\u201d the active-duty\u00a0<\/strong>SWO said of CIC teams in the Red Sea. \u201cIt sounds miserable. It\u2019s not black and white, and you have a bunch of gray zone contacts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty damn complicated, and it requires a very high level of cognitive attention to detail, and alertness,\u201d the retired cruiser captain noted.<\/strong><\/p>\n Adding to the Red Sea stress is the fact that the systems upon which a CIC relies regularly go down, according to an active-duty, former destroyer commander who requested anonymity to speak frankly. That\u2019s compounded by the fact that, while a CIC watch team may spend months training up together, some of those sailors will never deploy due to them having to head to a new assignment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a miracle if you can train the same team that goes from basic phase to advanced phase to deployment,\u201d the former destroyer\u00a0<\/strong>skipper said.<\/p>\n Watching from afar, the former destroyer CO fears that a mix of inexperienced CIC sailors and the kind of regular system outages that plague Navy warships could at any time cause things \u201cto kind of break down pretty quick\u201d in the Red Sea, despite the winning track record so far. While the Houthis might not be the most advanced threat, \u201cit does not take much\u201d for a warship\u2019s radar or other systems to crash, he said, leaving the vessel without critical information and vulnerable.<\/p>\n The nature of the Houthi fight makes it harder to decipher objects on the radar as well, the officer said. In such instances, the TAO will often do a \u201chook and look,\u201d locking onto an airborne object that pops up on radar and then working to identify it.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I had hooked an unknown track that was at 10,000 feet going 340 knots in the direction of the carrier, my first thought is that\u2019s an F-18,\u201d and other ship systems would soon confirm that, the former destroyer CO said.<\/p>\n But in the Red Sea, an enemy aerial drone may get tracked at the same bearing and range, but perhaps at a lower altitude than the friendly jet, which can sometimes cause watchstanders or radar systems to \u201cswap tracks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we have people trained to then hook and look and verify and interrogate again,\u201d the former destroyer CO said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re doing all of that with a couple of aircraft, that\u2019s hard. If you\u2019re doing it with, like, 15 aircraft, it\u2019s really hard. If you\u2019re doing that with 15 aircraft, missiles and [air drones], it\u2019s very, very hard.\u201d<\/p>\n CICs also regularly struggle with \u201cleaders,\u201d or long lines on a radar that look like something speeding at 780 knots toward the ship, only for it to suddenly disappear. And while a warship\u2019s\u00a0Aegis Combat System<\/a>\u00a0is designed to help clear some of that clutter, the\u00a0f<\/strong>ormer destroyer CO said CIC watchstanders risk becoming complacent with leaders.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes you\u2019ll drop clutter so routinely that you could end up dropping a missile,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s specific parameters to set the ship to, even in the Red Sea, but you have to go through that process to make sure that your clutter mapping and your systems configuration is accurate to that exact location with the amount of sand that\u2019s in the air, deducting for the temperature and the environment and atmosphere and everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMore tracks and confusion, and then you start throwing in some of those long leaders of clutter, because it\u2019s the Red Sea, full of sand and shit,\u201d the former destroyer CO added. \u201cYou\u2019re like, well, I hope that\u2019s clutter.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, CIC sailors are working to coordinate object assessments with other strike group CICs and the air defense commander, a task made harder by the Red Sea\u2019s busy skies.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, track number 1234, is F\/A-18 friendly, or track number 1234 is hostile, [aerial drone], cruise missile, whatever that is,\u201d the former destroyer CO explained. \u201cBut if they\u2019re doing that for every one of the inbound threats, then you have a lot of track coordination that\u2019s going on in the background in a very short amount of time. That has to be correct, because they can force order something in the [Link 16 communications] system that will make it that thing, regardless of somebody disagreeing with it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n The former destroyer CO said he feels it\u2019s \u201clucky\u201d that no Navy ships have been hit so far in the Red Sea, but he suspects \u201cthe American public are going to lose their minds if a destroyer gets hit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt some point, sailors are going to get killed, and I feel like it doesn\u2019t take much,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a bad interface control, system casualty, fog of war, clutter, or your missile malfunctions, your [Phalanx Close-In Weapons System<\/a>] wasn\u2019t aligned properly, or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the efforts of the Navy warships and their CICs in the Red Sea, the former destroyer CO also said he thinks the Houthis\u2019 tactics will improve, as will their weapons, if other nations opt to provide them with better munitions. While Iran has largely supplied the Houthis thus far,\u00a0reports surfaced<\/a>\u00a0last year that Russia was seeking to arm the Houthis with more-advanced cruise missiles.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re doing everything they possibly can to try and kill Americans,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the end of the day, I think there\u2019s a lot of luck involved in this right now, to be right and perfect 24\/7.\u201d<\/p>\n When and how the Red Sea battle will end remains to be seen. Until then, U.S. sailors standing watch in the CICs will continue to deal with a hostile, crowded and frenetic combat environment, with no shortage of objects to track and threats to engage.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Cruise-CIC-1024x576.webp\")
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