A group of F-15E Strike Eagle fighters from the 494th Fighter Squadron arrived at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates Oct. 18 to help support ongoing operations in the Middle East.
I prefer this to sending a carrier into the Persian Gulf in order to support ground operations in the region:
Small boats could slip out of the radar shadow of Iran's coast and swarm any carrier or large warship that sails in the Strait of Hormuz or the Persian Gulf. So we are building an expensive system to spot those small boats and sink them before they get close to the big ships.
Excuse me for asking the obvious, but why do we need to send our carriers into the Persian Gulf to fight Iran? Those small suicide boats aren't ocean-going assets. They have to stay in shallow water. Relatively calm, shallow waters.
Why don't we keep our big ships in the Arabian Sea where the small boats can't go and use our aircraft--including persistent drones--to go after the Iranian forces?
And as I've said, apart from the question of why on Earth we send carriers into the Persian Gulf, I don't know why the Navy couldn't send its aircraft to operate from land bases and leave the carrier behind--or send the Air Force, as we just did:
If we are going to rethink our CENTCOM naval aviation presence, why not maintain carrier air wings equal to carriers and deploy elements of the carrier air wing to land bases in the Persian Gulf region? I do believe Oman maintains quite the air base that we've used in the past. Forward deploy a headquarters element and rotate elements of the air wing that lacks an operational carrier (because it is in long-term refit) through the base, keeping it warm to receive the full air wing in an emergency.
Seriously, with land bases, why is this necessary?
The Lincoln Carrier Strike Group will remain on station in the Middle East while its relief carrier is still undergoing unexpected repairs on the East Coast, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Robert Burke said.
Our troops or our allies don't care which one of our air forces kills the enemy in front of them. In an era of "purple" jointness and the new ultra-jointness of Multi-Domain Operations, why is sending an aircraft carrier or two to CENTCOM to support land operations even important?
