The reason sailors have no fresh food is that Iran blew up the Navy's supply hub on day one of the war...
-Iranian missiles and drones destroyed much of the Navy base in Bahrain at the war's outset, taking out a logistics hub the service had relied on for decades
-The Pentagon shifted resupply to Diego Garcia, a British commanded island south of the Maldives sitting roughly 2,200 MILES from where the carrier strike groups operate in the Gulf of Oman
-That distance is why produce arrives spoiled and why nothing fresh reaches the ship except frozen meat
-Starmer initially denied the Pentagon access to Diego Garcia, drawing Trump's anger, before relenting on March 1 for what he called a specific and limited defensive purpose
-Iran fired two medium range ballistic missiles at the island on March 20, with one falling short into the Indian Ocean and a Navy warship downing the other
-Bahrain and the Emirati port of Fujairah are the two places carriers normally moor for crew downtime, and Fujairah sits well within range of Iranian missiles
-Navy regulation lets a commanding officer request a beer day after 45 straight days at sea, meaning the Lincoln's crew has earned FIVE already, and the Fifth Fleet did not respond to questions about whether any were requested
-Hegseth said yesterday the U.S. can hold the Hormuz blockade "as long as we need to, indefinitely"
-Trump today said the deployments are "not nearly long enough," with the George Washington now transiting the Strait of Malacca to relieve the Lincoln
Representative Mike Levin, whose constituents serve on that ship, asked the question their families keep asking: what exactly is the mission here?
The answer running underneath all of it is that Iran took out the one place that made sustaining a carrier in these waters practical, and the Navy has been improvising across 2,200 miles of ocean ever since.
Source: The New York Times / Writer: Daniel
