{"id":39447,"date":"2018-05-02T18:00:23","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T18:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/05\/02\/what-if-the-us-stopped-sending-aircraft-carriers-to-the-arabian-gulf\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:15:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:15:36","slug":"what-if-the-us-stopped-sending-aircraft-carriers-to-the-arabian-gulf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/digital-show-dailies\/sofex\/2018\/05\/02\/what-if-the-us-stopped-sending-aircraft-carriers-to-the-arabian-gulf\/","title":{"rendered":"What if the US stopped sending aircraft carriers to the Arabian Gulf?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gaps in carrier presence have been<\/a> increasingly frequent in recent years. Both 2015 and 2017 saw monthlong gaps in U.S. Navy carrier presence <\/a>with little evidence of a major shift in power dynamics there. Indeed, the Navy is currently without an aircraft carrier in the Gulf, with the Theodore Roosevelt leaving the region in March without a replacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a new National Defense Strategy<\/a> from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that deemphasizes the war on terrorism and places emphasis on competition with China and Russia, the U.S. is rethinking how it uses its most recognizable and fearsome force-projection instrument: the aircraft carrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue, of course, is oil and maintaining the free-flow tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial choke point that serves as a gateway to more than half the world\u2019s known petroleum reserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Withholding carriers from the Arabian Gulf, also known as the Persian Gulf, upends nearly 30 years of Navy policy that created a standing requirement to have at least one carrier there, as well as a carrier in the western Pacific. That requirement dates back to 1990\u2019s Operation Desert Shield that evolved into Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which saw five aircraft carriers deployed to the region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, various commitments have kept carriers in the region: Operation Northern Watch and Southern Watch, which created protected airspace over northern and southern Iraq; 1998\u2019s bombing campaign against Iraq\u2019s weapons of mass destruction facilities, Operation Desert Fox; 2003\u2019s Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation; in 2011 when Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz and then-U.S. Central Command head Gen. Jim Mattis ordered a standing two-carrier presence requirement in the Gulf; in 2014 when the Obama administration, in the middle of punishing budget cuts, ordered strikes on the Islamic State group in Iraq and then Syria after the public execution of journalist James Foley \u2015 the high watermark for the militant organization that overran much of northeastern Syria and northwestern Iraq. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that the campaign against ISIS has rolled back the group\u2019s presence to just another warring faction in Syria\u2019s ongoing bloodbath of a civil war, leaving little for the Navy\u2019s F\/A-18s to strike, the military thinks the carriers might be more useful elsewhere. But what will happen to the balance of power if U.S. carrier patrols become the exception rather than the rule? <\/p>\n\n\n\t