NORFOLK, Va. — The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to stop by Naval Station Norfolk and simply say thank you to members of the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group for a job well done following their recently completed eight-and-a-half-month deployment.
General Charles "C.Q." Brown did that on Friday, visiting sailors aboard the Ford as well as the guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage.
While there was much to celebrate, this is of course, also a time of deep mourning for the military. In less than two weeks' time, the nation lost eight military members: three Army reserve soldiers in a drone attack in Yemen, and five Marines in an MH-53 crash in California.
Brown expressed his condolences to their families and teammates. He added: "My responsibility as senior leader, as leaders at all levels, is to ensure that our service members are operating as safely as possible. But I also tell you, the operations we do are not risk-free."
Brown's visit also came as the Navy continues to grapple with two clusters of nine total sailor suicides in less than a year back in 2022 and 2023. He said it's important that military leaders work to know the junior personnel they command.
"And it's really the things we do to take care of our service members. And it's not just when we think of mental health, I mean, mental health is health. But it's also how we as leaders make sure that we have the skill set to actually sit down and talk with our young service members," he said.
The Ford Strike Group deployment lasted a total of 239 days.
It was the first major combat deployment for the $13 billion aircraft carrier since its construction at Newport News Shipbuilding.