But carriers are obsolete, some carrier fans think that a carrier in the neighborhood is a big deal. We’ve long been told that, so it must be true, right? And worth the investment of circa twenty billion for each carrier group, total eleven? Wrong.

Look at it this way. The US has had a carrier parked in the Persian Gulf most of the time, sometimes two (none right now). They were mainly used to fly sorties of destruction over Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But they were also a part of the stupid US foreign policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was frequently summed up as “all options on the table.” Did Iran quake at the sight of a carrier continuously off its shore? No, because Tehran knew and Washington knew too that the carrier was a sitting duck if the balloon went up. It was a potential easy target for missiles, torpedoes and mines. Actually the carrier presence was an insurance policy AGAINST a US attack on Iran. Sending five thousand swabbies to Davy Jones’s locker is not an option for the Pentagon, no matter what some smart-ass politicians think.

By the way expensive obsolete carriers are high-maintenance way beyond Stormy Daniels territory. Of the eleven US carriers only two are currently deployed, which is about average.

There’s a bigger point here, and that is that the US military is pretty much useless for anything important, which it has fully demonstrated, and one reason is that corruption in military acquisition has only provided the troops with a bunch of expensive complex useless crap. So you can bet your booties that the arrival of the Truman probably portends some agreement between Russia and the US, in Russia’s favor. The US can claim that it was the carrier’s presence that ensured this or that and the carrier won’t have to do a damned thing, which is in its favor.