The US Navy is preparing for combat ops on a scale not seen for many years
The most heavily defended piece of real estate in the world. Aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford is in the eastern Mediterranean as part of a growing US fleet there, as the USA responds to the Israel/Hamas war - MC2 Jacob Mattingly/US Navy handout
Yesterday the USS Carney, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, engaged three cruise missiles and some drones in the Red Sea. She had left the Suez Canal the day before and was heading south, most likely en route to the Gulf of Aden to pick up and escort US amphibious ships Bataan and Carter Hall coming the other way to join the task group forming up in the Eastern Mediterranean. In one brief moment (although it wouldn’t have felt like that on board) the missile threat known about in that area for some time became real.
Where the missiles were heading from or to has yet to be verified but from Yemen and therefore fired by Houthis, and heading towards Eilat are reasonable assumptions. But their exact type and destination is perhaps less relevant to a large task group forming up in the Eastern Med than the fact that missiles have now been fired, in anger, over the sea.
I wrote recently in this paper that it was a standing joke among my US naval friends that their response to any emerging world problem was ‘the answer is a carrier strike group. Sorry, what was the question?’ Given the range of activities such a group can conduct – from intelligence gathering, through humanitarian support right up to high end warfighting – it’s a reasonable position to take. US carrier groups host a networked web of capabilities that includes much more than jets and missile tubes.
So when the USA sees a problem, a carrier group may turn up. But only the biggest and most serious problems would merit two such groups: yet there is one group already on station off the Israeli coast, and another is crossing the Atlantic to join it. Only a few days ago, this and other ship movements could all be seen as ‘precautionary’ in light of a rapidly evolving situation in Gaza. But since then a couple of things have happened to confirm that the US Navy is preparing for operations on a scale not seen for many years.
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