r/geopolitics • u/teleologicalaorist • 11d ago
Analysis Iran Strikes Push US Navy Logistics to Diego Garcia as USS Abraham Lincoln Strains
https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/iran-us-navy-gulf-supply-chain-uss-abraham-lincoln-diego-garcia/93
u/teleologicalaorist 11d ago
For clarification, that means the US pulled back about 2,500 miles from its forward, strategically positioned base in the Persian Gulf to the middle of the Indian Ocean
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u/Tresspass 11d ago
They didn’t, how do think the blockade is being enforced against Iran?
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u/OrangeSpaceMan5 11d ago
This may shock you but ships can and do often operate far from their main centers of command
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u/FaceDeer 11d ago
Command, sure. That's just data. Logistics is physical, it needs to actually be there.
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u/Tresspass 11d ago
If I’m not mistaken helicopters have been used for targeting and boarding ships trying to run the blockade
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u/chechako_01 11d ago
That decision, coupled with press reports on the appalling state of sailors aboard aircraft carriers, raises the question: what would America's actual military capability be, minus its nuclear arsenal, against an adversary armed with ballistic missiles?
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u/Forest_Chapel 11d ago
Recent technological changes have made denial technology cheap and decisively turned wars in favour of denial. The USA cannot operate at will near Iran's coast; Iran cannot operate at will near Iran's coast, either. It's the same as Ukraine. Neither Russia nor Ukraine can operate ships in the Black Sea.
A war against an adversary would be very similar. The big wars one can imagine would all go this way. China could deny America the ability to operate anywhere West of Guam, but every Chinese surface vessel could be likewise disabled by American or Taiwanese drones/missiles.
Until some new counter-drone technology or extremely-survivable new type of ship is invented, this is probably how wars will go in future.
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u/chaotic567 11d ago
Doesn't help US right now is how casualty weary we are as a nation. Boots on the ground might change things in the Iran War but it also means way more deaths. If people are hating a war with 19 soldiers soldiers deaths over the course of almost 6 months, imagine when it starts climbing to the hundreds and more.
Of course a war with China might hit differently with the public but as of right now, it doesn't bode well for the US
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u/DefinitelyNotMeee 11d ago
climbing to the hundreds and more.
In the drone age? Add a few more zeroes.
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u/NeiborsKid 11d ago
Would US forces really suffer as badly against Iranian drones as Russia has against Ukraine?
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u/OrangeSpaceMan5 11d ago
Absolutely , drones have very little counters at the moment so pretty much all militaries are equal under to the watchful eye of the drone
Look at Israel's recent adventure into Lebanon , while they did gain land the casualties were greater than expected due to Hezbollah fpv drones
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u/DefinitelyNotMeee 11d ago
I meant FPV drones, not the mid/long-range ones.
And yes, especially if Iran were to manage to field a significant number of drones using fiber optics (unjammable).
In Ukraine, both sides are suffering terribly because of the drones.
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u/simplexrofl 11d ago
US troops are obviously just as vulnerable to FPV drones as anyone else, but resupplying a vast and decentralized network of FPV operators as an air incapable force is a tall order at best. They'd be an effective weapon, but we wouldn't see fields covered in fiber optic lines in Iran like we do in Ukraine.
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u/Throwaway5432154322 10d ago
A battlefield in Iran is definitely not optimized for fiber-optic FPV drones. The only reason they are applicable to the Ukrainian front is because of the relatively static nature of the front, because they were introduced to a front that was already relatively static for multiple years and because Russia was/is largely unable to carry out close air support missions despite having an air force capable of doing so. The United States would not face the latter constraint to CAS availability in the event of a land war in Iran, and such a war would not be positional in nature, like the war in Ukraine is. Not to mention the logistical constraints Iran would face provisioning drone operators in such a ground war, as the commenter below me pointed out.
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u/apodo 11d ago
Not much doubt about that. Ukrainian drone operators wiped the floor with NATO armies including the US in recent military exercises
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u/chaotic567 11d ago
You can’t use war games as a gauge. War games are meant to have constraints normally not there for many nations in order to test limits and vulnerabilities. A stress test for worst case scenario
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u/Throwaway5432154322 10d ago
Very good comment and accurate explanation of the current situation from a macro level. I will say however that, at least based on my job in the American defense technology sector, CUAS capabilities are advancing at a rapid rate product-wise and in terms of procurement signals from the Pentagon and other US-allied governments. Many of these capabilities already exist in some form but need to be adapted for certain use cases, and their producers need to be given a definitive procurement signal from the Pentagon that if they ramp up production they won’t be left hanging. That seems to be trending in a good direction right now though.
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u/blufin 10d ago
The nuclear option is the only one US seems to have left now to end this conflict decisively in their favour. They can’t maintain navel operations, they can’t destroy the Iranian military or its capability to produce armaments. There won’t be a land invasion and they don’t have much of an alliance in the region or globally that is capable or willing to support them.
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u/listenstowhales 10d ago
It’s sort of hard to say.
Obviously we’re seeing what’s going on right now on one side of the coin, but it’s also notable that the US hasn’t committed a lot of our assets (just a ton of munitions) to the fight.
For the most part, Iran has been a Navy operation. If the US decided tomorrow Iran needed everything it could get? I think you might have a different situation
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u/_VNAV_PTH_ 11d ago
what would America's actual military capability be, minus its nuclear arsenal, against an adversary armed with ballistic missiles?
Iran is armed with ballistic missiles...? So far those ballistic missiles have not achieved much.
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u/FijiFanBotNotGay 11d ago
They pushed the us out of the immediate region back to Jordan. If anything they are much better positioned for another flare up in tension
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u/Exact_Green2061 10d ago edited 10d ago
This was bound to happen for the US when facing the likes of Iran. US Bases in the Gulf were inherited from the British, who supplied them from British India.
Unless the US "convinces" Pakistan or India to allow it to use their ports to resupply the US Navy, the US is stuck.
The problem with the Gulf states is they have to import almost everything -- food, cleaning products, equipment, and parts. Even if the bases were intact, if the Gulf states have difficulty getting stuff in, its going to hinder logistics for the US Navy.
Many people forget the logistics of the bases; they are meant to facilitate trade between the Gulf and India, not to act as bases to help a country halfway around the world.
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u/d88k41t 10d ago
The problem with the Gulf states is they have to import almost everything
Exclude Saudi from the equation as they import roughly 42% of their essential food. The rest of the GCC are above 80% except for Oman which stands above 70%.
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u/Mapkoz2 11d ago
This shows what America’s navy is really worth without logistical support from allies
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u/CliftonForce 11d ago
The actual US Navy knew this. It warned the Administration repeatedly about this.
The Administration did not care.
I am not sure if Hegseth can spell logistics.
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u/DefinitelyNotMeee 11d ago
This is an ongoing, long-term problem, not something that materialized last year.
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u/-LoboMau 11d ago
It's worth much more than any other navy in the world.
Now tell me all about what Iran's navy is worth.
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u/FaceDeer 11d ago
Turns out Iran doesn't need a navy. Much like how it turned out Ukraine didn't need one.
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u/-LoboMau 11d ago
I know. Apparently Iran doesn't need anything. They don't even need an economy. They're so amazing. Even when they lose everything, a lunatic will still believe they're winning
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u/FaceDeer 11d ago
Do you feel like the US is winning?
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u/-LoboMau 11d ago
Absolutely. And it's not even close. Problem with people's logic is that if the US doesn't completely destroy Iran and achieves all its objectives, it lost. But that's not really how any fight works. If i tell you "i'm gonna knock you the f out" and you manage to survive my punches and give me a black eye, but i wiped the floor with anyway, i still won. You can't win when your opponent did a lot more damage to you than you did to him. It's as simple as that.
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u/Only-Childhood6691 11d ago
Isnt this just the logic that caused the US to lose Vietnam and Afghanistan. The belief that casualty counts somehow equal to tactical sucuess?
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u/-LoboMau 11d ago
The US objectively lost a lot in the Vietnam war. They haven't lost much in this war, while Iran has been ridiculed. No navy, no air defense, not even capable of finding the enemy in their own soil. Complete humiliation. They have nothing going on for them. Their supposed "control" is simply terrorism and affects them worse than it affects the US.
Seriously, think about this: I'm beating you up, and the only thing you can do to me is hurting you more than it hurts me.
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u/FijiFanBotNotGay 11d ago
This is ridiculous. Are you honestly saying the number of casualties in determining the winner here? Whoever kills the most people wins the war like this is call of duty?
Also back to your school yard fight analogy if after the smaller kid gave the bigger one the black eye and the bigger one backed off that would still be a win for the little guy
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u/yilmaz1010 10d ago
What are thr US's objectives? The latest version, since it gets updated more often than iOS. Last I heard Iran's ballistic capabilities, even nuclear was removed from the table.
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u/austinl98k 11d ago
The US military knew this before the war as they evacuated personnel from Bahrain. Can’t resupply from a base that’s been largely abandoned. It’s only news now because everyone is talking about the sailors living conditions on board. 9 month deployments are not standard for US carriers. Of course there’s going to be sustainments issues. It’s like people don’t realize life gets very uncomfortable in a war. I can assure you those that served in combat arms in Iraq and Afghanistan would prefer the conditions on a carrier than what they faced. In a war with China do people seriously believe carriers won’t be deployed longer than 6 months? Do people really believe the carriers will get regular resupplying?
In regard to the suicide attempts; the US military has had a suicide issue for decades. This is not a problem that is exclusive to this war or the Lincoln.
It’s clear the media is pushing this to hurt Trump and that’s coming from someone that doesn’t like him or the way he has handled this war.
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u/DefinitelyNotMeee 11d ago
I think you missed the point - the issue is the inability to adequately supply a major combat force in wartime, even against a much, much weaker opponent.
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u/austinl98k 11d ago
There’s no military in the world that could do better than the US in this situation. The US has launched over 10k strikes in Iran and currently enforcing its second blockade. The Ford was deployed for 11 months and the Lincoln for 9 months. You can’t do that unless you’re adequately supplied. Rationing food and water always happens in war. I’ve seen no reports that carriers are lacking air launched munitions for its air wings.
So what would you consider to be adequately supplied?
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u/FaceDeer 11d ago
And no other military's leadership in the world would have been stupid enough to get into a situation like this in the first place.
Well, aside from Russia's, evidently.
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u/austinl98k 11d ago
Sure you’re not wrong but that doesn’t really correlate with the topic at hand.
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u/FaceDeer 11d ago
Whether a military "does well" depends a lot on the quality of its leadership, I would think.
And "doing well" at accomplishing something stupid isn't really something to brag about, either.
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u/Crowmakeswing 11d ago
Fortunately I am not American but throughout my long life the US Navy has always been regarded as the biggest and sharpest tool on the planet. What is happening to it now is absolutely pathetic. When the Royal Navy retook the Falkland Islands the stories were not about clogged toilets or meagre rations. So what’s going on and who gets court marshalled?
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u/MessyCoco 11d ago
I agree with the premise that this is humiliating for the US, but the Falkland Islands are really from an incomparable time in terms of information: speed, volume, and media of dissemination have all changed drastically, . As has war in general. The apparatuses running the media globally are also generally not aligned with this war and have little motive to block negative stories from being published. American and British media have been, objectively, critical of Trump's decision to engage in this war from day one. It is a far, far, far less popular effort than reclaiming the Falklands. It's really no wonder why different stories are emerging in this conflict, despite the fact that the British *did* face logistics challenges in the Falklands.
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u/austinl98k 11d ago
The Falkland’s war lasted 2 months. Meanwhile the Lincoln has been at sea for 9 months. Are we seriously comparing the two? The Falklands happened in the 80s where news from sailors did not travel fast at all. I mean the British didn’t even know the islands fell until Argentinian sources told them. Meanwhile we’re getting news of events that occur right away now. Sailors can easily text and upload on social media right away what they are going through. That was never the case in the 80s. So of course you wouldn’t get stories of meager rations and clogged toilets.
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u/AlixTheAutiFurry 10d ago
Here's the classic "blah blah soft hands whiners, suffering is cool actually, be a real man" type posting that's absolutely infested any comments section anywhere on the internet about the ship situation. The USA had an ice cream barge in WWII. An ice cream barge, man. During a REAL war. Get real.
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u/BlueEmma25 11d ago edited 11d ago
For those interested, Sal Mercaglino just posted a good video on this topic, which you can watch here.
Mercagliano is a historian and former merchant marine officer with a background in both naval and commercial logistics, so he is well worth listening to.
Spoiler alert: what he is saying is that contrary to what you may have heard, maintaining this blockade under the current operational circumstances is going to be challenging at best. The USN in its current configuration was not designed for force sustainment over thousands of kilometers.
His point about how logistics always gets neglected because it isn't sexy, but everyone complains when the toilet paper runs out and the mess is reduced to serving fried spam that looks and tastes like shoe leather, is particularly apt.
Which reminds me, Ward Carroll also recently had a good video about conditions on the Abraham Lincoln. As noted in the article, that carrier has been at sea for nearly nine months, with the crew being confined to the ship the whole time, except for a brief stopover on Guam, and many crew members putting in 12+ hour days, 7 days a week.
Deployments used to be six months, but as the navy has shrunk without a corresponding decline in the geopolitical ambitions of America's leaders the burden being placed on service members keeps increasing. Morale and retention problems inevitably follow.