U.S. Naval Retreat to Diego Garcia

The United States Navy has been forced to relocate, in other words, retreat. Reports as of Saturday from the New York Times show that the US has had to relocate the logistical hub which supplies its operations in the Middle East and Indian Ocean to Diego Garcia, an island under operational control of the United Kingdom.

This new logistical hub is some 2,200 miles from the relevant operations of their aircraft carriers near the Persian Gulf. This relocation validates a pretty obvious logical conclusion: that being that Iran's attacks on the U.S. gulf bases have caused significant damage to the U.S. Navy's capacity to operate. Further, it shows the possible massive deterioration of the United States' greatest and almost mythical supposed strength, its logistics. Beyond logical conclusion, the damage done by Iranian drones and missiles to U.S. bases in the gulf is something directly stated by the New York Times' report on the issue.

What lends further credence to the possibility of large scale U.S. Naval logistical deterioration is that it is concurrent with the continued shortages aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose logistical concerns are conjoined with its 258-day deployment, 239 of those being at sea. These logistical issues have been the cause of mass dissatisfaction, hunger, and mental health deterioration among the sailors aboard, some of whom have tried to throw themselves overboard. All of this while the USS Abraham Lincoln is still waiting to be relieved by the USS George Washington.

Despite the fresh crew and ship, this replacement would not guarantee the end of all dissatisfaction among the enlisted as throughout this conflict it has been seen that soldiers and sailors alike are showing cynicism towards the very justifications this war is based on. Soldiers have been reported specifically mocking that this conflict was brazenly done for, and at the behest of, Israel and America's Zionist Diaspora.

image uploaded by Trita Parsi to X depicting cynical jokes about the war written on an aircraft wing.

A shipping and logistics expert, Sal Mercogliano, put forth that logistics has possibly become the US Navy's greatest weakness. Notably, he highlighted that the Navy is conducting war time operations with peace time logistical infrastructure. The weaknesses could also be due to policy changes in the 90's, which, as he stated, "replaced Navy-crewed auxiliary ships with civilian-crewed Military Sealift Command vessels," and the "merging of station and shuttle fleets and reduction of overall capacity."

The coalescence of all the information we have about the United States military failures as of recently hints to something which is not just a mishap but rather a systemic issue in the military. And it certainly pokes holes in what seems to be an ever deteriorating facade of US military competence and strength. One must ask if a military which for the past two to three decades has been geared primarily towards insurgent suppression and world policing is able to maintain its hegemony if it can't maintain operations in a no-boots-on-the-ground war against a nation which for over a century has been considered a mere regional power if that.