Neither the US nor the British ships can be reprovisioned at sea, so they have a limited ability to “stay in the fight” if it continues for any length of time.
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So what do all those US Navy supply ships actually do? Please explain this mystery.
The article explains it. The missiles are vertically stored and launched. They cannot be reloaded at sea.
“So what do all those US Navy supply ships actually do?”
Food, fuel, spare parts, maintenance items, and mail.
L
About the only thing they can do is transfer food, mail and fuel.
You cannot reload VLS tubes on a submarine from a sub tender and you cannot reload VLS tubes from a supply ship.
The entire structure of US naval surface groups were meant to fight a two-three week intense conflict. It would take ground based assets from Saudi Arabia, Israel and at the extreme end of the likely scenarios Egypt to keep up sustained operations.
I can’t imagine Egypt is at all pleased with the evaporation of Suez traffic and would love to assist but publicly cannot or will not.
They can be reprovisioned at sea. They can’t be rearmed. Reloading the launch tubes needs to be done dockside.
CC