Navy deactivates two more patrol, reconnaissance units

Sea Power, Aug 1999

The Navy has deactivated two more combat squadrons, one carrier-based, the other land-based. Patrol Squadron 91 (VP-91), a reserve P-3C squadron, and Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 5 (VQ-5), one of the Navy's two carrier-based ES-3A squadrons, have been retired as the result of budget constraints.

VP-91, known at various times as the Pink Panthers, Stingers, and Black Cats, was established at Naval Air Station (NAS) Moffett Field, Calif., on 1 November 1970. For more than two decades the squadron operated, in succession, the P-3A, P-3B, P-3B (MOD), and P-3C Update III versions of the Orion maritime patrol aircraft. VP-91 annually provided many detachments to the Pacific Fleet and made deployments all over the Pacific and Indian Ocean areas, conducting such operations as tracking Soviet submarines and detecting drug-running ships. VP-91 was the only reserve P-3 squadron deployed in support of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, during which one of its crews participated in the destruction of Iraqi naval vessels.

VQ-5 was established on 15 April 1991 to operate the ES-3A Shadow carrier-based electronic reconnaissance aircraft, a modification of the S3A antisubmarine aircraft that replaced the EA-3B Skywarrior reconnaissance aircraft that was retired after the Gulf War.

The VQ-5 Sea Shadows initially were based at Naval Air Station Agana, Guam, but following the closure of Agana were moved (in October 1994) to NAS North Island in Coronado, Calif.; the squadron also maintained a two-aircraft detachment at Naval Air Facility Misawa, Japan-that detachment usually deployed on board the aircraft carrier forward-deployed to Japan.

VQ-5 completed IS carrier deployments between 1993 and 1999, most of them in support of Operation Southern Watch over Iraq.

The squadron's final deploymenton board the Nimitz-class nuclearpowered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson-brought the Sea Shadows into combat over Iraq during Operation Desert Fox in December 1998.

The ES-3A is being retired this year without replacement because of the expense of upgrading the aircraft's mission suite to meet the interconnectivity requirements of the future. Airborne signals intelligence collection requirements for the fleet will be consolidated in the Navy's land-based EP-3E aircraft squadrons.