NORFOLK (Dec. 20, 2012) The aircraft carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), USS Enterprise (CVN 65), USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) are in port at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., the world’s largest naval station. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Ryan J. Courtade/Released) 121220-N-FA760-573
The Department of Defense has positioned two carrier groups to protect Israel from a potential forthcoming Iranian attack. In Foreign Policy, Jack Detsch describes the value of carriers and their mission, writing:
With the United States and Israel expecting a military response any minute now from Iran or its proxies for the recent deaths of Hamas’s political leader and Hezbollah’s second-in-command, the most visible presence of the U.S. military in the region is its hulking aircraft carriers.
On Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that he had ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to accelerate its deployment to the Middle East, leaving the Indo-Pacific empty of carriers. The Lincoln, a ship with a length of nearly 1,100 feet, was accompanied by two squadrons of carrier-launched fighter jets, a guided missile cruiser, and a guided missile destroyer. The United States also sent an additional missile submarine to the region on Sunday night, according to a Pentagon statement.
The Lincoln will join another carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is already stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean, with its carrier air wing detached on land. It’s the second time in six months that the United States has had two carriers in the region, after sending the USS Gerald Ford and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower back in October. The Eisenhower only just wrapped up its extended deployment in the Middle East.
“Two carriers is definitely a signal,” said Jerry Hendrix, a retired U.S. Navy captain and a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute, a U.S.-based think tank. “It allows us to cover both sides of the Middle East. You’ve got one coming out of the Mediterranean—that gives you double coverage to be able to cover down on Israel on one side and lay pressure on Iran on the other side.”
Even as military experts have cast doubt on the carriers’ ability to hold up against Chinese missiles in the Indo-Pacific, which are designed specifically to kill the massive floating airfields, these latest deployments show that carriers continue to be the workhorse of the U.S. Navy when it comes to showing its presence around the world.
If the White House and Pentagon made the decision to put both aircraft carriers on one side of the Middle East—either in Israel’s Mediterranean backyard or in the Persian Gulf—it would enable the U.S. Navy to have nearly 20 hours a day of continued flight operations from carriers, Hendrix said. And Iran has limited ability to destroy a ship of that size, as it takes a pretty big explosive to kill an aircraft carrier.
“Iran can launch a bunch of weapons at a carrier,” but the ship and its escorts could probably shoot those down, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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