Carrier Battle Group

My ship was part of a Carrier Battle Group which escorted us anytime we were deployed to the Arabian Gulf. The Carrier Battle Group consists of:

1 Aircraft Carrier
2 Guided Missile Cruisers
2 Anti Aircraft Warships
1-2 Anti Submarine Destroyers or Frigates.

We never saw any of the ships who were escorting us. They are so far away from our ship, on the outer perimeter, we could not see them with the naked eye. The radar on the USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75) could detect anything within 200 nautical miles with the exception of submarines. Our radar linked to the radar of the other ships in the Battle Group, and therefore, we were able to detect anything coming within 200 nautical miles of the ship on the outermost perimeter of the group.

Here's an interesting observation I made on one of our underways in preparation for deployment. On this particular underway, we were accompanied by the two submarines that were assigned to our battle group. They were doing training exercises and were pinging us with their SONAR. Despite the enormous size of a carrier (as I've said before we're talking 97,0006 tons of steel at a MINIMUM), you could actually hear the SONAR pinging of the steel of the ship's hull It no matter where you were on the ship. It sounds like a little chirping/whirring sound. Every time we heard it, we knew the submarine's SONAR was hitting us.