The New York Times reports:

The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln’s supply problems began soon after the first day of the war, as Iranian missiles and attack drones fell on a Navy base in Bahrain.

The Iranian attack, retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli assault on Tehran, destroyed much of the base. And as it went up in smoke, so did a major logistics hub that the Navy has relied on for decades.

The Navy needed a Plan B to continue feeding the sailors working around the clock to keep warplanes flying strike missions, and later to maintain a blockade of Iran’s ports.

With the threat of Iranian attacks at other ports in the region, the Pentagon looked to a base under British command on the island of Diego Garcia as its supply hub, which is south of the Maldives and roughly 2,200 miles from where two aircraft carrier strike groups have been operating in the Gulf of Oman.

The loss of the hub in Bahrain has contributed to a host of reported problems on carriers supporting operations against Iran, as Democratic senators raise concerns about the Lincoln’s 5,000 sailors and their nearly nine-month deployment.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the reported problems included shortages of basic supplies and the deteriorating mental health of its crew members.

On Friday at a military air base in Maryland, Mr. Trump dismissed those concerns. “That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another, very similar, ship,” he said.

The Lincoln’s replacement is the Japan-based carrier U.S.S. George Washington, which earlier this week was heading west through the Strait of Malacca in Indonesian waters en route to the Middle East.

Another carrier, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush, has been operating in the Middle East for months since deploying from Norfolk on March 31.

When asked if the carrier deployments were too long, the president said, “No, no, no, not nearly long enough.” [Continue reading…]