September 06, 2019
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been sailing around the Indian Ocean for four months now without ever passing through the Strait of Hormuz and entering the Persian Gulf.
The New York Times carried a story August 23 pointing out that the carrier hasn’t gone near Iran and speculating the US Navy may be worried about an attack on the carrier.
It is normal practice for a carrier deployed with the Fifth Fleet to enter the Persian Gulf and stay there for a few days on each carrier’s six-month deployment. So the Lincoln still has another two months in which it might enter the Persian Gulf.
But such visits are for political and public relations purposes, not military purposes. Militarily, a carrier doesn’t like being in such confined waters because it is much more vulnerable. Ideally, it likes to stay a few hundred miles out to sea, where it can easily launch planes to attack shore targets and where it has hundreds of miles of sea in which to mount its defenses if anyone should try to attack the carrier.
Given the current tense Iran-US relations and the fact that many in the US suspect that Pasdar naval units often act on their own initiative without approval from Tehran, it is quite possible that the US Navy will order the Lincoln to stay far out to sea.
But the answer won’t come until the Lincoln completes its deployment and turns back to the US.
The Abraham Lincoln is one of 11 aircraft carriers in the US Navy and sails with a crew of 5,600 men and women.
The Lincoln has been spending much time on this deployment in the North Arabian Sea where furious monsoon winds scour the flight deck and boost waves to great height, giving the crew considerable experience in coping with high winds.
Rear Admiral Michael Boyle, who commands the strike group of ships that includes the Lincoln, told The New York Times his planes can strike Iran as easily from the Arabian Sea as the Persian Gulf—but there is a big difference. “They can reach us when we are there. When we’re here, they can’t,” he said.