Daily Press:

When the USS Gerald R. Ford headed out to sea last month for some final weeks of tests and trials, the ships that will sail with it as part of Carrier Strike Group 12 seized the chance to practice working together.

Although, in the case of the cruiser USS Gettysburg, still at the BAE Systems Norfolk Ship Repair for maintenance work, that meant sending Capt. Megan Thomas and her ship’s air- and missile-defense team to the Ford to conduct an air-defense exercise.

Commanding a strike group’s defense from attacking planes and missiles is part of the job of a cruiser captain. Thomas, less than two months into her role leading the cruiser’s 300 sailors and 30 officers, saw an opportunity for her team to drill. Their job with the strike group is coordinating how the Ford, its air-wing and the guided missiles on their ship and the group’s destroyers fend off attackers.

Setting up in the Ford’s tactical flag combat center to simulate their operations center on the Gettysburg, Thomas and her team worked closely with the destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill, which recently joined the strike group…



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