The photos and videos (1, 2) of the trip tell most of the story, but this was the fist time I have ever been close to equipment of this type so here were my first impressions.
First I was amazed on how disorganized everything looks, three are wires and tubes going in every direction. Everything inside the ship is a customer job. Their were 100+ wires, lines, and ducts running 2 feet above my bunk alone, and to make them all fit there were multiple custom welded brackets. Multiply this by thousands of rooms and I blows my mind as to how many man hours it would have taken to install something as simple as cable TV on the ship.
Second while hanging out in the ready room with the Wildcats I started to think about how there are 4 jet squadrons aboard the ship, each with 12 pilots and 10 planes, and how the other 4500 folks that were deployed out there were there to solely support these 48 people and their 40 machines! Again my mind was blown about what an massive operation it is. It just happened that on the plane to Jacksonville I was reading an article in The Economist were it stated at any given time in Afghanistan there are only 100-200 troops in combat. Again there are 30,000 other troops that are in that country whose job it is to support those 100-200 solders in the field!
On the last day we were all packed up and ready to leave the ship in a couple of hours, and I asked Mike if we could take a look at the missiles and torpedoes. He knew a guy that worked there and so he though he could get a tour. When we got there we were told that cell phones were not allowed around the bombs because the frequencies the emit could potentially detonate a bomb. Since I was using my camera phone the entire trip I do not have any images to share of the inside of the missile room.
The sailor in charge of the bombs looked to be in his early 20's, wore glasses, and could not have been an once over 150lbs. In my mind this guy fit the description of the type of "nerd" that would build these bombs. Yes build these bombs. All the bombs come in parts and pieces to the ship and he builds them to specification sent to him on the ship while at sea! The room he builds and stores the 100+ bombs in is about the size of half a basketball court. While inspecting, and touching, these 1ton bombs I then realized I was wrong about the 4500 men on the boat to support the pilots and their jets.
All the man power and billions of dollars that go into maintaining a carrier is all in support of the 20 something kid who builds bombs in the lower hull of the ship! Everything on the ship is there so that a person in Washington DC can say, "Please drop the bomb I ordered this morning at these coordinates".
It gets crazier. The next day I went with Mike to his squadrons hanger to pick up his stuff that was offloaded from the cruise. While there there must have been a jet taking off every 5 minutes, maybe more often. I asked Mike how many planes he thought were stationed out of his base and he guessed 500. Doing some quick math, if it took 4500 folks to maintain the 40 planes on the Ike, it must take 56,000 people to support the 500 planes on his base! But when it comes down to it, these 56,000 folks are all there to support support of the sailor in the missile room and the man in DC that say, "light them up".
What an amazing display of wealth, power, and force. It still hurts my head to think about how the efforts of so many in the armed forces goes into supporting so few in the field.
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