Captains Electronic Update 12 June 2005
Hello NIMITZ Family and Friends,
Good morning everyone and happy Sunday. It’s been a couple of weeks since my last update to you and I hope this finds you healthy and enjoying a good weekend. Your Sailors continue working hard and they are doing their jobs very professionally and well. We are out in the central Pacific after a very successful port visit to Hong Kong. For many in the crew, it was their first experience with liberty in a foreign land, and Hong Kong certainly did not disappoint. Hong Kong is near the top of my list of world’s favorite cities and it has always been one of our favorite liberty ports. Many of your Sailors enjoyed the great shopping, the Hong Kong tailors, some great food, and a very welcoming local population. Prior to pulling into port, we spent a lot of time and energy stressing the need to be good ambassadors of our Navy and Nation, and your NIMITZ Sailors performed superbly. I couldn’t have been more proud of this crew.
It’s hard for me to believe that we have been out at sea for over a month. For those of you that remember our original schedule, you may be surprised to hear that we are still operating in the Pacific. Our airwing has been getting some good flying in for the last few days and we are really showing our adaptability with changing plans. This reinforces the fact that in our business, flexibility is a key asset and one of the real strengths of our Navy. The ability to use the vast maneuver space of the sea and bring a persistent, credible force to any region is a quality unique to naval power in our case, Naval Aviation. This adaptability to changing tasking would not be possible if it weren’t for your Sailor’s ability to support the mission through flawless and consistent execution of their duties in any theater or operational environment. I expect to continue in this area of operations for a little while longer and then we will pick up our original schedule. None of these changes have effected our projected rotation dates or plans on the back end of the deployment, or our scheduled return to homeport date.
As schedules change it becomes even more important to maintain Operational Security or OPSEC. This is only as good as each person’s ability to abide by the guidelines set forth. As many of you know, I directed restrictions on email and Sailor phones (known as River City) upon our departure from Hong Kong due to uncertainty in our schedule and operational security concerns. I realize this is a significant inconvenience for many Sailors and families and I don’t / won’t take this action unless I feel it’s really necessary. The various conditions of River City help us to not disclose any sensitive information. Yet, even with River City conditions in place, it could be possible to accidentally disclose sensitive information through other means. The ability to safeguard classified aspects of our mission is extremely important in what we do. Forming good habits now will help ensure that lives will not be compromised in the future. I know it’s difficult to be disconnected from our loved ones, no matter when or for how long. Therefore, I ask for everyone’s cooperation and patience when we occasionally put these measures into effect.
I would like to send a Bravo Zulu (a signal that means “well done”) to our Morale, Welfare and Recreation folks for the presentation of Star Wars–Episode III in Hangar Bay 2 the other night. “Big Navy” MWR and some fine folks in Hollywood have done great work getting recently released movies out to our armed forces. Your Sailors work hard out here and deserve the opportunity to catch the latest releases from back home. We will continue to work diligently to get major releases delivered whenever we can.
Finally today I want to say thanks again to all of you for continuing to do your part in making this team successful. We all know that holding down the home front is a tough task, and your ability to do it with style and grace is extraordinarily important to our peace of mind and our ability to do our jobs out here safely and well. Our family support group, Team NIMITZ, is going strong. They had a meeting last week and I’m told it was a packed house. That’s terrific. The support and shared experience that Team NIMITZ and our great group of Command Ombudsmen can provide are very helpful. Our command Ombudsmen can be reached at (619) 890-3469 or ussnimitzombudsman@yahoo.com. You can contact TEAM NIMITZ at TeamNimitz@yahoo.com.
Warm regards and very respectfully,
CAPT Ted Branch
Commanding Officer
USS NIMITZ (CVN 68)
Date Posted/Last Updated:6/12/2005 12:45:47 PM