WiFi connectivity was major morale-booster for sailors during extended Red Sea deployment

Navy Capt. Chris “Chowdah” Hill is unapologetically bullish about elevating crew morale across every level of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier he commands, which recently returned from an extended and high-stress combat deployment in the Red Sea. 

Providing sailors with secure access to internet connectivity — explicitly for personal use — proved to be a key morale-builder during the nine months that “the Ike” was deployed, according to Hill, where they frequently faced a barrage of threats from the Iran-backed Houthis and others.

“We had WiFi for the group — not huge bandwidth, by any means. But it really helped people connect with their external support network in ways that we’ve never seen before,” he said at the Military Reporters and Editors Conference on Friday. 

“There’s obviously got these security concerns about adding WiFi. A couple of the ships have tried a prototype of this. We went through our type command that provides the funding for this. It’s not a program of record by any means, but the system has some built-in protocol, so it can be turned on immediately. And it can be monitored and that sort of thing for [operational security or OPSEC] purposes,” he noted.

Hill didn’t reveal the WiFi supplier, but a Navy official who spoke to DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity on Monday confirmed in an email that the capabilities were part of the Starlink satellite network from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.  

“Ike uses Starlink to provide sailors an opportunity to communicate with families back home,” the Navy official said.

Like a growing number of other Navy ships, they noted, the Ike has an internal computer system that is web-accessible. However, the amount of sailors “way outnumbers” the amount of installed systems, they explained — so WiFi associated with Starlink and other competitors “allow sailors to speak on a real-time and flexible basis on their own time.” 

“If you’re a sailor and you’re having a bad day, you don’t always want to go to your chain of command,” Hill noted at the conference. “For you [journalists], you don’t always want to go to your colleagues to complain, right? You go to your external support network — your mom, your dad, your spouse. And this offered an instantaneous way to do that.” 

In his keynote at the annual MRE event, the commanding officer shared additional details about the “underdog” crew’s experiences at sea, amid what he called “one of the most challenging deployments for the U.S. Navy since World War II.”

There weren’t many days, he noted, “where something did not happen.” Hill called it the busiest deployment completed in his more than 20 years of service.

“This strike group racked up a lot of equipment kills. I’m talking about shooting down well-more than 100 drones, a couple dozen ballistic missiles, some cruise missiles, and a couple dozen small boats. We also destroyed hundreds of land targets, to include surface-to air missile systems, weapons caches, missiles and drones on the ground,” he said.

Even beyond that physical combat, environmental and other factors made this deployment particularly challenging for those involved, in the captain’s view. 

“The water temperatures eventually got up to 90-91 degrees Fahrenheit, which impacted our air conditioning systems, and it made it difficult for a lot of people to sleep,” Hill said. 

Due to the severe circumstances of their mission, port call conditions were largely deemed unsafe — meaning most crew members generally didn’t get any more than six days off the ship in the nine months they were deployed.

Hill assumed command of CVN-69 in March 2023, about eight months before the strike group was sent out to help protect commercial maritime assets moving in and around the Middle East, from rebel-backed drone and missile attacks.

Previously, the vessel’s crew had completed back to back deployments during the COVID-19 pandemic and never saw a real port call, Hill said. Re-enlistment was low, and the almost 50-year-old ship was also not in its best shape while under the spotlight of multiple inspections.

“I got to ride with the ship in February 2023 and I got to experience some of that negativity. So there was kind of a reputation issue for the ship. People spoke of the ship as ‘Cell Block 69’. One sailor told me that when she was chosen to go to the Ike at boot camp, everyone started laughing — so she cried,” Hill said. 

He continued: “I personally believe that improving morale — now, this is a term that’s been overused and misunderstood — but I think morale can still make a difference. By the way, morale is not happiness. It’s something much deeper. It is spirit, grit, pride. The civilian equivalent term is probably ‘job satisfaction.’”

Early into his tenure, Hill introduced a command philosophy he conceptualized and named “The Way of the Warrior’s Sailor.”

The 26-page guide, he said, “argues that morale could be created by leaders if they truly demonstrate that they love and value people, and give them mission and purpose.” 

Led by that strategic vision, Hill noted that during the Red Sea deployment those leading the Ike worked hard to keep morale high by constantly discussing what was going on with the mission and real-world combat ops.

And ahead of the mission, they also built up “resiliency resources to get sailors back into the fight” in case morale inevitably was impacted. 

“So right before deployment we added a civilian therapist and active-duty licensed clinical social worker. We had a life boss that provided classes on anger management, stress control and other key life courses. We had 10 chaplains throughout the strike group — one chaplain for every ship. We also had a facility dog who was there to help manage stress, he did a good job. And we added a [United Services Organization] setup so people could relax on the minimal downtime,” Hill explained. 

For one of his side hobbies at-sea as the commanding officer, he also opted to give individual shoutouts to standout sailors via social media, which resulted in hundreds of meaningful direct messages with the crew’s family members and loved ones. 

He also used social media to combat falsehoods about operations the Ike was involved in that were unfolding in near real-time.

“As you know, the social media took a weird turn when I was essentially countering with the misinformation about the ship getting hit or sunk. That was not expected at all. But social media, I think, is an effective form of information operations, if used appropriately,” Hill said.

Although he declined to share many details, the captain suggested that these and other morale-building measures eventually contributed to improved inspection results and re-enlistments for the crew, as well as a decrease in destructive behaviors and mental health issues. 

“Morale works if you enforce it and allow it to affect people,” he said.