“She’s done fine so far,” Greenert says. “There are material issues here and there on the ship. We’ve had, we’ve had some element of a unique problem on the first ship of every class. The failures don’t disturb me, I find this is a pretty reliable ship overall. What we are seeing are problems with systems we’re not so familiar with. ‘What kind of cooler is that? What’s a splitter gear? What’s this line shaft?’ We’ll have to work through bugs, which is really a lot of the reason why we’re here to deploy the Freedom this early all the way to Southeast Asia.”

 

Real-world Operations

Wilke says synthetic training helped his crew be ready without being on the ship to train. “To get us ready for deployment, the synthetic trainer was set up for this region. When we had the bridge teams get together and run through simulations in the trainer, they weren’t driving in and out of San Diego; they were driving in and out of Changi here in Singapore; the Johor Strait; and the Singapore Strait, which is radically different than operating off of Southern California. We were able to flex to what we knew we were going to need. As Gold Crew, we’re feeding back to the trainers to help them incorporate what we’ve seen out here.”

“One of our priorities is to have a good understanding of how we would operate this ship forward, including the manning aspect and what goes into training; the support structure; logistics; as well as integrating and operating with the regional navies. That is not to be interpreted or to be understood that we do not have an idea. Does this work the way we thought it would? And I need to provide feedback. We’re the first one here, and we need to be able to operate these ships out of this region in the future,” Wilke says.

“The Navy has put a lot of brain power and thought into how to operate this ship,” Wilke says. “Now we’re enacting that brain power.”

Wilke is not a stranger to the region. “I’ve driven through this area many times, on cruisers, on destroyers, with a strike group. So I knew what we were in for. Our maneuverability on this ship is somewhat better, so being able to maneuver around the ships was very easy. And I’m showing what I’m doing to the other ship. If I do a slow lazy turn, that tanker doesn’t necessarily know what I’m doing. But when I’m able to turn on a dime like that, he knows what I’m doing. I can avoid ambiguity with how I maneuver, and that that avoids problems.”

Wilke says his crew has been “absolutely fantastic. I could not be more proud of them. Whenever you deploy a ship that’s the first of the class for the first time, that is a big task. And our crew really came together with the mission package and the air department, and really pulled through and operated the ship. The crew understands that this is a very important deployment, and validated by us being here and showing the ship. We’ve been very successful on this deployment. We have not missed an operational task.”

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel had a chance to visit the ship in Singapore while he was there for a series of meetings called the “Shangri-La Dialogue.”

“You all are making history out here,” Hagel told the crew. “What you represent to our country and our partnerships in the Asia Pacific – I don’t think can be overstated. You are really defining a new era – a new era of partnerships – new ship, new capacities, and new opportunities.”