allowed long gaps in carrier presence in the Middle East. In the years following Mattis’ presence surge, the U.S. “But it’s the long-term thinking that matters most here because you will mess up the carrier strike group rotations literally for years.” Having a second carrier - maybe you double the firepower, but for what? If one carrier doesn’t deter Iran, I’m not sure two does," he added. “And then the question is, what does a second carrier give you that one carrier does not? One carrier gives you an immense capability. “If you go now, you are guaranteeing yourself a gap later on." “When Mattis was CENTCOM commander, he demanded carrier presence and got it, and it messed up the carrier rotations for years,” Mabus said. "Really it has only been in the last nine months that the Navy has managed to shake the lasting effects of that readiness troth.”įormer Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who presided over the readiness shortfalls created by Mattis’ two-carrier requirement, told Defense News in a March 20 interview that pushing for two carriers now means that down the line those carriers won’t be there when perhaps the need is urgent. “And then you’re going to see the kind of cascading effects on carrier readiness that will take years to dig out of. “The carrier schedules are going to be such that they may not be able to make, or take full advantage of, their maintenance periods,” he said. There are already signs that increased demand for carriers in the Middle East are taking a toll, with the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group recently returning from the longest deployment in the post-Vietnam War era.ĭuring the early 2010s, long deployments and regular surge deployments wore out the ships, aircraft and sailors, creating huge readiness gaps that took years to recover from, Clark said, warning that a return to that posture would have significant consequences. Bush Carrier Strike Group in 2014 was deployed for 9 1/2 months, for example. The requirement sent deployments skyrocketing from six and seven months to nine and 10 months. Mattis fought for and received a two-carrier presence in Central Command at the end of 2010, a program that ended in early 2013, when the Navy successfully argued that continuing a two-carrier presence was not affordable with sequestration cuts hitting the force. Truman Carrier Strike Group, which arrived in the region late last year, would seem to point to the limited value in carrier deterrence. and Iran despite the presence of the Harry S. Kaleigh Thomas, an analyst with the Center for a New American Security who focuses on Iran, agreed, saying that the escalation of violence between the U.S. “So the Iranians see the carrier as a way to get the Americans to spend a lot of money on a show of force that doesn’t really impact their strategic calculation.” They can range the entire gulf with shore batteries along the coast in caves and other terrain where it’s hard to root them out," he added. “And when they are inside the Persian Gulf, the Iranians perceive them as being an easy target. “The Iranians don’t perceive carriers and a threat to their ability to project power because they project power through gray zone activities and terrorism - the kinds of things that carriers aren’t very good at dealing with." “It’s an asinine strategy,” said Bryan Clark, a former senior aide to the chief of naval operations and now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “And part of that is based, and part of that deterrence is obtained by our obvious force presence in the theater - force presence that was not there in the spring of 2019 that led them to undertake the cycle of violence that culminated in January.” “It is my best judgment that we have reestablished a form of rough deterrence - what I would call contested deterrence - with Iran in the wake of the striking of Qasem Soleimani and the attack on our bases,” McKenzie said. Qasem Soleimani and a retaliatory strike from Iran on U.S. assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. McKenzie went on to tell lawmakers he believes that the reduction in Navy carrier presence in early 2019 and years prior may have contributed to the latest cycle of escalation from Iran that came to a head with the U.S. And I view a carrier as a critical part of a deterrent posture effective against Iran,” he said. Kenneth McKenzie told House lawmakers that the aircraft carrier “has a profound deterring affect principally upon Iran.” During testimony on March 10, Central Command head Gen.
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