US Unprepared for the Loss of Its Aircraft Carriers if the War Escalates in Israel

And Yes, This Is a Real Possibility.

There is so much going on and it is happening so fast, I am going to have to distill my letters into short blurbs to get you critical information.  Getting right to the point, our naval surface fleets deployed in the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf region are in serious danger of being sunk if a hot war breaks out.  Yes, the aircraft carrier reigned supreme for decades, but times have changed.  Anti-ship missiles possessed by potential adversaries to include Iran, Russia, China, and even Hezbollah have the capability to sink any of our ships.  Regardless of the risk, we are steaming them into harm’s way and Israel is stalling its offensive to give the US time to push 2-3 aircraft carrier strike groups to the region.  These carrier strike groups are not intended to support the war in Gaza, but to fight the broader war for Israel.  How can I be more direct?  I’m telling you tonight that if this war escalates and this war spreads to involve countries like Iran, Turkey, and Egypt, our navy will lose ships.  If it is allowed to escalate to the point of involving a country like Russia, all of our surface ships in the region will stand a high probability of being sunk.

To put this in perspective, depending on the configuration, a single aircraft carrier has over 5,000 personnel and up to 90 aircraft.  The greater carrier strike group usually has roughly 5 additional surface ships and a submarine lurking somewhere.  We are in the process of deploying 3 of these strike groups in addition to at least one expeditionary strike group carrying a Marine Expeditionary Unit already in the Persian Gulf.  This is an incredible concentration of firepower, but also creates a huge vulnerability.  If this war goes hot, and these ships begin to be sunk by anti-ship missiles, we could lose tens of thousands of personnel including a huge percentage of our most seasoned navy and marine aviators, hundreds of aircraft, and see our power projection capabilities completely annihilated.  None of the equipment can be recreated easily or quickly, but we’d suffer the most detrimental loss in skills and leadership of personnel that took years and decades to build.  For example, the loss of aviators alone could take a decade to reconstitute.  In addition, the aircraft and ships could be reconstituted over the course of years to a decade, but it would be doubling down on failure.  Today, advanced access denial weapons, such as very potent anti-ship missiles have proliferated across the world.  These missiles have the potential to evade, defeat, and overwhelm ship-based countermeasures.  Some of these missiles, such as those possessed by Russia, have incredible ranges, far beyond the range of aircraft, and can maneuver at hypersonic speeds.   In addition, these missiles carry advanced countermeasures of their own to include jamming and electronic warfare capabilities, deployable decoys, and can fly routes designed to specifically avoid detection and intercept.  These missiles render conventional naval surface ships obsolete.  Read it again.  Our surface fleet today is nothing more than a huge floating liability. 

If the US engages with a peer or near peer military, its reliance on carrier strike groups to project military power will become an unmitigated disaster.  The US hasn’t seen losses like what we potentially are facing since World War 2, and it will shock the nation.  Despite the cognitive dissonance, the facts have been clear since really the 1980s that major surface fleets were obsolete in high intensity conventional warfare.  Nonetheless, for reasons I have written extensively about (see my library of letters), the money being made by politicians and defense contractors by continuing to build and use these big weapon systems was just too good to cut.  The US has only gotten away with this because we have been fighting low level threats for decades.  This has led the US to become overconfident, apathetic, and desensitized to war over the last two decades.  The public and political mind today is incapable of differentiating the difference between the threat posed by the Taliban and that of Russia or China despite the difference in capabilities being almost incomparable.  This is leading to gross overestimation of our actual combat capabilities while drastically underestimating the costs and casualties.  This inversion of reality primes the US for a major miscalculation that will lead not just to a humiliating military defeat, but a catastrophic situation for the Homeland. 

Tonight, we are on the edge of what could become a legitimate world war.  What started out as a bloody raid killing numerous innocent civilians, will soon spread to Syria and Lebanon.  This will lead to Hezbollah and jihadists from around the world flocking to Israel’s borders looking for battle.  Unlike the Mark Levins and Lindsey Grahams that love wars, but never fight in them; these jihadists have been honing their craft over 20 years of fighting US forces around the region and will enter the fight.  Then, it is likely Syria proper will be forced into the conflict as well as Iran.  If it is allowed to escalate to this point, and it could happen in a matter of hours, not days or weeks, then it is difficult to see how countries like Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey do not also become directly involved.  This would pull the US into the war and every single service member would have to be called up to include reservists.  At this point, we’d have a world war because by extension, countries like Russia would also get sucked in.  I know I just built a big strawman with a lot of what ifs, but there is real potential.  We basically are already at the point Hezbollah will fully enter the war and Iran isn’t far behind.  Again, this could happen in as little as a few hours, but we are most likely to see it blow up in the next couple days before all of the strike groups get into theater.  Remember, Israel is delaying to allow the US to get here to fight the regional war for them.  However, Israel’s enemies are keenly aware of this too and for that reason have incentive to start the fight now and inflict as much damage as possible before the US can get into the mix.  From that point, the US will get involved and all bets are off.  We would be facing a situation where uncontrolled escalation could lead to all scenarios to include the use of nuclear weapons.

Whether we want this or not, the odds of averting this showdown are diminishing by the hour.  I don’t think there is much we can do as mere serfs to avoid this conflagration.  All you can do is try to insulate yourself and your family.  The most obvious impact will be on oil and gas so stock your fuel supplies in particular.  If this escalates, we will be looking at not just high fuel prices and economic devastation, but actual fuel shortages worse than the 1970s.  Fill gas cans, automobiles, propane tanks, etc.  This may be your best investment of the century because if things calm down, well, you will use the fuel anyhow.  If not, you’ll have something more valuable than gold and silver.

Till next time