Quarterbacking Storm Relief
U.S. NAVY’S E-2 HAWKEYE PROVIDED TRAFFIC CONTROL
FOR HURRICANE KATRINA RELIEF FLIGHTS
BY RICHARD R. BURGESS, SENIOR EDITOR
MIKE CRUTCH
F E ATURE
U.S. NAVY
A Navy E-2C Hawkeye aircraft assigned to VAW-126.
Caceres explained VAW-126 was chosen by Commander,
Naval Air Force Atlantic, for the mission because of
its high state of readiness. The squadron had recently
returned from a combat deployment for Operations Iraqi
Freedom and Enduring Freedom and had surged soon
thereafter for 30 or 40 days at sea.
“So, we were in kind of the highest level of readiness and
proficiency,” he said. “It just kind of made sense. I think
we initially sent two aircraft and then a third followed, and
obviously, a number of full crews, but a good complement
from both the ready room — the pilots and the NFOs —
crews all the more necessary for air
traffic control. With the APS-145
radar and radios in all three frequencies
ranges — HF, UHF, and VHF — and an
Identification Friend or Foe system,
the E-2C was able to be the air traffic
coordinator platform for the relief
efforts.
“Working as a crew, to have maybe one
or two of the operators handling two
of the VHF frequencies and one UHF
while other operators are listening on
different frequencies. that way you
can cover” the communication needs,
Caceres said.
“There really wasn’t a lot of traffic,”
Caceres said. “A lot of it was just managing the flow,
ingress and egress of a lot of the helicopters that were
in and around flying there. And it took a while for them
to open up airports and such around that area. So, I
don’t remember that being very congested at the higher
altitudes. Certainly, at the lower altitude, 2,000 feet and
below, quite busy.”
and the maintenance crews to work on those aircraft.”
VAW-126’s E-2C Hawkeye 2000 aircraft were joined in
the operation by two other E-2 squadrons, VAW-121 from
Norfolk and VAW-77, a reserve squadron from Atlanta,
Georgia. H-60 helicopters from Carrier Air Wing Three,
P-3 Orion aircraft from the Navy and from Customs
and Border Protection, and Air Force E-3 Sentry early
warning and control aircraft also joined in the effort.
Northern Command set up a Combat Air Operations
Center (CAOC) at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, for
Joint Task Force Katrina to run the air control operations.
Captain Patrick Rainey of Carrier Air Wing Three arrived
to be forward element commander for the Navy aircraft.
Caceres spent his first week in the operation at Tyndall as
a liaison for the Navy effort.
Managing the Flow
The air traffic control nets and radars in the disaster
area was all down, which made the E-2C’s radar and
SEAPOWER DECEMBER 2025
Caceres said his crews “would kind of rack and stack that
list of capabilities or supplies [on the helicopters], and
then also monitoring how much time they might have
on station. Well, hey, they just went over and picked
up a bunch of water and moved it over from A to B and
now they only have this much gas left to do this much
longer of a mission. And we might send them back to the
fueling station first. So, you’re managing all those assets
through those different radio [frequency] changes and
then working together as a crew. Another E-2 coming
out would be taking over and you’ll be passing all that
information to them. So, having all those communication
capabilities was really critical in a mission like that.
“A lot of people wanted to help, as you can imagine, and
then kind of distributing that airspace,” Caceres said.
“The core of the aviation flow there were helicopters
that were delivering goods or movement of people,
identifying good landing zones, where water had
receded or not, making assessments both visually and
with sensors. So, a lot of that airspace control was really
critical at that time.”
The E-2C missions typically ran three or four hours.
The air tasking order generated by the CAOC was a
complicated task, maximizing the capabilities of the
various aircraft on hand and ensuring no gap in coverage.
Caceres recalls he flew between five and 10 sorties
himself during the operation.
The E-2C carried a crew of five officers: two pilots in the
cockpit and three NFOs sitting sideways in a row facing
to port in the fuselage “tube” to operate the mission
systems. The middle NFO is normally the senior NFO
on board and serves as the combat information center
officer (CICO) and mission commander. To his right
is the radar officer (RO). The controls for the radar are
between the RO and the CICO. To the left of the CICO is
the air control officer (ACO).
“The ACO has access to some different radio sets and
you would assign that person for when you’re doing
air control type of missions where you’re going to have
multiple assets checking in, whether those are fighter
aircraft or in this case with Katrina, it was helicopters,”
Caceres said. “You might have that person in direct
control offering tactical control of those assets. And
then, the RO might be assigned in this type of a mission
to assist or do the administrative control. So, hey, you
might move to this frequency or you might have to check
in with so and so and the RO would be tasked with doing
that while the ACO is more ‘turn left, turn right,’ your
next position is this time to that location is this, that kind
of a thing.”
Caceres said the progression of E-2 NFOs “is usually
you start out as an RO, then as you gain more experience
and you get your different missions flown at controlling
aircraft and you build that confidence, you might be
upgraded to ACO. And then, the next step would be to get
certified as a CICO or a mission commander.
“Obviously, there are times when you might have
multiple people that are qualified as mission commander,
but you’re assigned different roles, and you just pick
the one that’s going to be the mission commander for
that day. And then, other times I might be sitting in
the RO seat as a trained and certified CICO and mission
commander, but I’m having somebody else sitting in
that CICO seat to learn how to manage all of that. A good
example of that would be in Katrina, just based on crew
rest and other needs, you might have a very senior crew
of everybody in the back of the airplane is qualified as a
CICO and as a mission commander, but they’re just doing
A lot of it was just managing the flow,
ingress and egress of a lot of the
helicopters that were in and around
flying there. – Marcello Caceres, director for Advanced Mission Capabilities
Multidomain Command and Control, Northrop Grumman Aeronautics.
the different roles assigned for that flight itself.”
In the newest version of the Hawkeye, the E-2D
Advanced Hawkeye, the copilot has a tactical display in
the cockpit and is able to monitor the mission with the
same scope symbology and access to the same radios
as the NFOs. Called the Tactical 4th Operator (T4O), the
copilot can help the NFOs much more with the mission
tasks than in the E-2C.
“The T4O is assigned things that would in a different
kind of mission, not Katrina, but a different kind of air
to-air mission or interdiction where they have a bunch of
assets getting ready to drop bombs, if you have to bring
somebody in from afar and you’re checking on fuel states
and what their ordnance loadout is and all that kind of
thing and you might assign that to that fourth operator,
that pilot, to help with that administrative listing and
control and prioritization,” Caceres said.
VAW-126’s detachment spent about a month in the
Katrina relief operations. The squadron has since
replaced its E-2Cs with the newer E-2Ds. In fact, only one
VAW squadron in the Navy, VAW-116, is still equipped
with the E-2C, and it is scheduled to make the transition
to the E-2D during fiscal 2026.
“The E-2 is such a versatile aircraft,” Caceres said.
“When you think of it flying missions in OIF and OEF,
coming back and then being assigned something totally
different, but figuring out as crews, maintainers, falling
into that cycle, to be able to apply that same Swiss Army
knife to just a different mission and be very effective
at it and be able to do that on our own home soil, that
just shows how flexible this aircraft is, why it stayed
around for so long, over 60 years, and how the upgrades
continue to give more tool sets to those operators.”