Come March 2007, America will have a 2-3 month window of opportunity to, if the President chooses, put 4 carriers and 3 Amphibious Strike Groups into/around the Gulf. Additional carriers/Amphibious groups could be deployed immediately (yikes) or retained for follow-up contingencies requiring war tempo operations.
We haven't seen such an extensive deployment since, gosh…uh…2001? Now this could all be just a bunch of elegant bluff (See my previous diary), but the US practiced joint multi-carrier, long-distance strike exercises in mid 2006 (The 3-4 carrier Exercise Valiant Shield—which, if I remember correctly, required just about the same number of soldiers as was requested for the “surge.”—22,000ish).
Saber rattling can be expected to crescendo sometime in a, say, 5-day window bracketing either March 19 or April 17, 2007 (no moon = darkness = good for stealth = nice bombing/special operations conditions). Details below the fold
CARRIERS:
- Ike, already in the Gulf, leaves early April, but can extend a month or two.
- Stennis, just deployed, is set to stay until May/June.
- Reagan, just deployed, is "holding" in the Pacific. It can dash to the Gulf very quickly.
- Nimitz is scheduled for deployment in early March, can arrive by late March. (Yikes!)
- An Atlantic Fleet carrier to be named later? (If so, that's a "Yikes!")
And to keep those pesky North Koreans and Chinese all calm, the Kitty Hawk is scheduled to come back into service in March. So too Abraham Lincoln...If Kitty Hawk rushes the refit, that's a "Yikes!
AMPHIBIOUS STRIKE GROUPS (An ESG is a strike group built around a large helicopter carrier):
- The Boxer ESG will be finished by March, but can extend/is extending time on station.
- The fresh Bataan ESG is arriving in the region now.
- The Bonhomme Richard ESG is loading up now, will depart soon.
ADDITIONAL (YIKES!-WORTHY) DEPLOYMENTS:
Also, the Navy announced last week that the amphibious assault ship Peleliu, which last deployed in 2006, will embark on an "unscheduled humanitarian mission to Southeast Asia before summer." Peleliu is being fitted out as a hospital ship, and her deployment might have been hurried up by a few months..(If so, then, YIKES! yikes yikes yikes...Deployed hospital ships can mean somebody's prepping for serious contingencies)
Command Vessel Blue Ridge is trundling about the South China sea someplace, ready, after working an exercise near Manilla (early Feb) to dash across the Indian Ocean.
AND FOR ALL THE PARTISANS OUT THERE:
Should a war occur, a war-level operational tempo (on the part of the carriers) can only be sustained for...a while. Like almost two years. And, if that occurs, The Decider would be handing a ruined Navy--with too few carriers to handle interesting contingencies--to the next occupant of the White House.