[tanknetter]

When did they do away with the Sixth Fleet having a Carrier Air group always in the Mediterranean? We use to rotate with the Forestall, the Kittyhawk and Kennedy, spending six months there at a time. And this rotation was going on for years before I joined the Navy. We were capable of handling any threat that popped up - like Libya, Lebanon, and this was still during the Cold War with the Soviets.

We don't have enough decks to support that kind of rotation cycle anymore.

Navy tries to operate on a 3-1 deployment ratio: three carriers needed to keep one deployed. There's the deployed deck, the deck that's prepping for/transiting to deployment and then the deck that's returning/standing down from deployment.

From the 1970s until recently the US had at least 12 decks, meaning that it could support 4 concurrent deployment (for the brief time that we had 5 decks in the early 1990s we could support 5.

The US now has 10 decks (plus an 11th that's in RCOH - nuclear refueling). Additionally, the USN no longer has a dedicated training deck (Forrestal was the last designated one, for the time Kennedy was designated as a "reserve" carrier she filled the role, although she deployed as well) - so hauling out aviator candidates to become carrier qualified is built into schedules.

That's three decks deployed, unless there's a surge. You can see where the carriers are (slightly delayed) at Global Security here. From the looks of it, we have a LOT of decks out now. Lincon, Vinson and Enterprise are doing their deployments. Reagan was on her way out to relieve Lincoln but is now caught up in the Japan disaster relief. GW just deployed too (not mentioned on GlobalSecurity), also for disaster relief. But since she's homeported in Japan she doesn't have far to go.

[Cvengr]

Not to worry. We still don’t have an appropriations bill, so all the supplies we are using don’t have any permanent acquisition mechanism to resupply old stocks being consumed.

Budgets will be swung to meet higher priority demands, but when it comes back to balancing the budget, which has a higher priority from UN guidance?

Here are some early 21st century ‘buzzwords’ recently used to summarize Obama’s meetings in Brazil:

“They agreed on the importance of a green economy in the context of sustainable development as a means for generating economic growth, creating decent jobs, eradicating poverty and protecting the environment. In this sense, they agreed to initiate a dialogue on a joint initiative on urban sustainability cooperation which will serve as a platform for actions addressing the challenges and opportunities of developing urban infrastructure that promotes sustainable development with concrete economic, social and environmental benefits.”

This statement manifests the thinking of this Administration. When the numbers don’t support their desires, they will work to change the management of the numbers such that 50 will control the resources of 5000, focusing only on the 50 and ignoring the other 4950.

If they leave the military budget relatively untouched due to operational tempo, I suspect they will migrate their social programs of environmental regulation, eradication of poverty, and economic growth more into the military, promoting equality while diminishing freedom, and will become even more proud than they arrogantly manifest today.

Such a program is, in their eyes, a moderate position. Those to their extreme left consider the eradication of poverty and developing sustainable urban infrastructure concurrent with wilderness programs, will imply the formation of ghettos for those who do not comply with their edicts and execution of their elimination. If they can corner all capitalists into concentrated areas, take their resources, then slaughter them, they will have eradicated poverty from their perspective.