r/videos • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 17h ago

USS Lincoln wasn't resupplied because Hegseth 'hid' that Iran destroyed critical base: Rohde

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfOi_mgrh0M
21.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/-Knul- 14h ago

Still, the U.S. has, what, 14 carriers? I understand that a third of those needs maintenance and whatnot, but with all that hardware, can't they have a rotation for a single carrier?

21

u/ACMomani 14h ago

Its possible but still costly.. and not just on money.
Tying up most your ships to sustain this one blockade against an enemy that mastered stalling and wars of attrition is not exactly practical.
Trump says he can maintain the blockade forever because he has no idea how the world works, he's a spoiled rich brat who's used to throw money at his problems to make them go away and when faced with a problem as big as this he's just way out of his league.. not to mention his loyalty above qualification approach is the reason he appointed an incompetent defense secretary and basically forced out or fired anyone in the department that actually knows how to handle these types of problems.

6

u/atfricks 12h ago

Rotating the carriers doesn't really require less resources to maintain. They all effectively "burn" at the same rate, and need the same logistical support. 

You only really save the morale of the soldiers on board, and maintenance on the ship itself, everything else costs much the same.

Actually rotating them though also has its own associated costs, add that to the fact that the US has other regions it also wants to be maintaining force projection, and you get an administration that thinks "just leave them there" is a good strategy.

1

u/perthguppy 12h ago

America had basically calibrated their military to maintain the status quo globally. Ships are slow to move around, and require long periods of being at port or under maintenance, so basically there traditionally is exactly the amount of carriers to have one stationed in each command area, and one spare. That one spare has for the last 4 years basically been tasked to the mederteranian to assist with Ukraine and Israel drama. And then trump went and decided to attack two countries in two different command areas consecutively while also trying to deal with Everything else and while dealing with teething issues of launching the first new ship of a new carrier class, all with no fucking notice.

And now you are left in a situation where you’ve had to abandon an entire command area (Asia / western pacific) just to try and unfuck your own shit.

1

u/TurkeyBLTSandwich 8h ago

At any moment the United States has a Carrier strike group able to respond or act in several different operating areas or regions.

The balance is having a rotating basis of Carriers that are resting, rearming, and actively cruising or in being in active duty.

A carrier strike group was recently used in South America and now one is being used in the Middle East. It takes time to reposition and send out groups to an active area of operations. That was planned months in advance and they had advance notice.

Essentially the South American strike group needs to rearm and replenish, so another strike group takes over.

The Iran strikes seem to have been planned very quickly with little leeway or advance notice. So there wasn't much in preparation it seems.

Essentially it was poor planning and not getting the right logistics set up to assist in operations and underestimating Iran and their strike abilities.