The Navy abandoned the safety in numbers policy back in the Clinton years. USS COLE was over a day or more out from the nearest USN ship. The nearest Naval air fire power to respond to the Russians are land based likely in Sicily. We abandoned a two carrier posture in the MED Sea area in the late 80's and even one carrier there 24/7/365 again in the Clinton years.
I wish my older Bookmarks still worked. Many of the Navy readiness ones go back to conditions under Slick Willie and some under W as well. As for the carriers? Half of the 10 we have left active are likely docked meaning physically there at Norfolk Naval Station. Sometimes we actually send a carrier on deployment now. Deployment meaning at least 3 months usually 6-7 months. A very bad decision was made sometime in the Reagan years to build a third carrier pier which made N.O.B. Norfolk a 5 carrier base instead of the three carrier berths it had been even when we had over 20 carriers Navy wide. Previously Pier 12 a two carrier pier and Pier 7 was it as far as carriers go at NOB Norfolk. Or in other words if some Dork in DC decided to order it we can now berth all USN aircraft carriers in one port city all within about a 5 air mile radius.
Pictures of 5 carriers berthed in a row are real easy to find now. I have one picture where some schmuck had four carriers berthed in numerical order of hull ID numbers.
Re: Bookmarks, have you tried pasting the old URL addresses into this website ?
Sometimes you can still retrieve stuff that way.
Isn't Poland a NATO ally? Could the Captain not have contacted the nearest Polish Airbase and requested the Polish Airforce fly top cover?
I suspect that the Poles did not chase these Russians away from our destroyer because they were not asked, not because they could not.
Norfolk hosting five carriers is like Pearl Harbor circa 1941