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Is the Deployment Surge Just an Exercise?
by Gerard Van Der Leun at American Digest. EFLâd to get to the good parts; worth reading the whole thing.As a seafaring friend of mine once remarked, an aircraft carrier is not really listed on the books as a "ship," but as a "strategic asset." And when a country starts to move 7 out of 12 of these assets around on the global chessboard, it might betoken something more than just a summer âexercise.â Indeed, if this were wartime (What? It is? Who knew?) moving this much killing power out onto the seas would be thought of as a fleet surge. Truman, Enterprise, Stennis, Washington, Kennedy, Reagan, Kitty Hawk. It could all be, of course, just prudent planning and practice. On the other hand, given the various signals being sent by Homeland Security, the nearness of the Olympics, and the advent of the elections, it may be a case of "Fortune favors the forward deployed." . . . Itâs also interesting that the same page: U.S. Navy - Status of the Navy tells us that 92% of our surface ships are currently underway or deployed, and that 91% of our submarine fleet is either underway or deployed. This is a lot of activity. It would be interesting to know the last time these figures were achieved. Granted that in any navy there will always be a bit of moving about on the oceans. That is, after all, what the Navy does. But the percentages strike me as high, especially those of the submarine fleet. Posted by: Mike 2004-07-15 |
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