Briefs

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NAVY

Carrier battle group returning from war

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its 5,500 personnel will soon pull into Pearl Harbor following missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The seven-ship battle group has been on deployment for nearly nine months — the longest since the Vietnam War.

For the Pearl Harbor-based destroyer Paul Hamilton and frigate Reuben James, it will be a homecoming.

The San Diego-based cruisers Shiloh and Mobile Bay already pulled into Pearl Harbor, and other battle-group ships, including the Lincoln, will arrive over the next week. The frigate Crommelin is returning to Pearl Harbor after being deployed on a counterdrug mission in the Southern Command region of the Eastern Pacific.

After a several-day stop, the carrier Lincoln will sail to San Diego to offload its air wing, and then head to its home port of Everett, Wash.

The USS Nimitz battle group, with the Pearl-based cruiser Chosin along, relieved the Lincoln in the Persian Gulf.

COAST GUARD

Channel buoys in Iraq to be replaced

The Honolulu-based Coast Guard cutter Walnut, on station in the Persian Gulf since the start of the war in Iraq, will be replacing channel buoys in the Khor Abd Allah Waterway that flows to the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.

"The current condition of aids to navigation in the (waterway) is so bad that they actually serve as a hazard to navigation, rather than an aid," said Lt. Cmdr. Chris Smith, Walnut's commanding officer. "We hope to improve the ability of all vessels — military, humanitarian aid and commercial — to safely navigate the narrow channel that services Iraq's most critical seaport."

Walnut will be replacing or repairing approximately 40 buoys marking the 41-mile channel.