[bubblewand]

A carrier operating at sea on the other side of the world is a ton more expensive than a carrier in port at home. The Ford in particular would probably be in port now if not for these back-to-back expensive adventures, they’ve been deployed for a remarkably long time now.

(As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)

[lefstathiou]

Carriers aren't meant to hang out at port at home. The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.

[adriand]

> The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.

But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.

The idea that the war isn’t costing money for personnel because those people would be doing something anyway makes no sense. They could be doing something else. In fact, they could be doing something that increases the wealth and wellbeing of the world, rather than destroying things. So from that perspective, the cost is far higher than what is shown here.

Then there’s the loss of innocent lives. It would be unconscionable to put a price tag on the lives of dozens of Iranian girls killed when their school was flattened and to show it on this website, and yet, this is not “free” either.

[bawolff]

> But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.

Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran.

Right now Iran is harrasing traffic. Previously the Houthis, generally considered an Iranian proxy, were harrasing traffic. Its all kind of the same war, this is just the end game.

[mikepurvis]

The first gulf war was 1990. The US has been at war with various factions of the Middle East more or less continuously for thirty five years. The current president specifically campaigned on no new foreign wars and repeatedly tried to bully the Nobel committee into awarding him a peace prize before accepting a second hand one from another world leader and a sham one from FIFA of all things.

What makes anyone think that this latest attack is the "end game" vs just the latest expensive chapter?

[antod]

As an aside, I remember before the 90s when the Iran/Iraq War was called "The Gulf War".

[karmakurtisaani]

The only end game here is distraction from the Epstein files and a potential coup to prevent midterm elections. The whole war is just plain stupid.

[Terr_]

Me-of-2000 would be utterly incredulous at just one auto-coup [0] in the US, let alone the potential for two in 6 years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

[Terr_]

If it were that straightforward, right now the US would (A) have a consistent set of demands/goals that include shipping security and (B) a large international coalition of support.

Neither are true.

P.S.: Plus, of course, the whole problem where "protecting global sea lanes" typically requires a different approach than "start a war by assassinating the leadership you were negotiating with."

[bagels]

JD vance whined that we shouldn't protect middle east shipping lanes because he believes it helps Europe more than the US.

[IncreasePosts]

Don't make me defend JD vance.

He said Europe should pay their fair share for protection since 40% of their trade passes through those lanes but only 3% of America's.

[bawolff]

US messaging has been all over the place, but stop funding proxies has been one of the more consistent parts.

To be clear, im not saying protecting shipping is the primary reason for this war. I'm just saying if that is what you think usa should be doing, then this war makes sense.

As far as b) there are a lot of factors. Its not like freedom of navigation is the top concern of every country in the world.

[RobRivera]

People should begin quantifying the commercial freight global costs incurred from the Houthi harassment. There is a basic ROI one can do that impacts not just US interests, but global interests.

[mothballed]

Houthi harassments was also a byproduct of the Israel-US "self defense" against the Iranian backed hamas attacks. Maybe it is pointless to pontificate whether the the tic-for-tat would have been initiated had the Israel-US coalition had stopped at punishing the Oct. 7 terrorists rather than leveling half of gaza, although I'm not convinced it was an inevitable byproduct.

[RobotToaster]

> Right now Iran is harrasing traffic

gee, I wonder why they're doing that.

[carefree-bob]

A total mystery!

[PieTime]

The end game is when the US backed dictatorships collapse, this is the end of American power, not the beginning.

[bawolff]

That seems pretty unlikely at the moment.

[throwaw12]

> Arguably the primary threat to modern sea lanes is Iran.

Such a strange take. Can you share number of attacks by Iran in the last 10 years in sea lanes, where it was started solely by Iran?

> Right now Iran is harrasing traffic

As a response to attacks, Iran AFAIK wasn't harassing anyone in the ocean traffic up until 3 days ago

[rwyinuse]

What about tens of thousands of peaceful civilians who have been killed by the Iranian regime during past decades? The alternative to this war is allowing the Iranian government to keep doing that, business as usual.

In my opinion bombing people responsible for these atrocities increases the well-being of the world. Most Iranians seem to agree.

[enaaem]

I don't see how this is going to work without troops on the ground?

The US had air supremacy, troops on the ground and a friendly regime in Afghanistan and Vietnam, and it did not work. (I am not sure if Iraq was a success, but I am sure that people were super tired of it, and did not want something like that again)

What is just bombing going to do? They just rebuilt their weapons and you have to bomb them again in 1-2 years?

The administration has already suggested sending troops as an option. It does not help that they are just making things up as they go.

[TemperaryT]

You’re right that airpower alone will not change anything. But as you pointed out, putting troops on the ground does not automatically change the outcome either. If there is a lesson from the last few decades it is that the military is good at two things. Killing people and breaking their equipment. What it can do is create opportunities that political or covert efforts have to capitalize on.

Any military campaign needs a clear objective and an achievable end state with contingencies planned. Even then something unexpected will still happen. Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Iraq were all very different conflicts and the current situation is different again.

As for rebuilding their capabilities, that is not trivial. Iran is still operating aircraft that we retired decades ago, which says something about their supply constraints.

The outcome also does not have to be installing a perfect government of our choosing. A more realistic result would be a government the United States can work with and one that the Iranian people actually support. That could still include parts of the current system if major and unpopular things changed.

I am sure someone in the current leadership would like to be the person who reduced the influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, loosened the grip of the religious leadership, and ended the country’s pariah status while getting sanctions lifted and money flowing back into the economy.

That would probably be a better outcome than trying to export our model of government to yet another Middle Eastern country.

[enaaem]

The issue is that no one is going to defect without protection. That is the reason you put troops there. Democracy building is nice, but that is not the real reason you sent troops.

[Jensson]

> I don't see how this is going to work without troops on the ground?

Their goal is to kill the leaders until a sensible leader appears. They haven't tested that before, so we will see how it works out.

Installing a puppet regime doesn't work well, but killing them until they put forward a reasonable regime might work.

[enaaem]

They killed Taliban leaders all the time. Did not work. And that is with troops on the ground and a friendly regime.

[mothballed]

Trump is at his best point to save face right now. It's now or never, IMO. He killed an entire leadership lineup of Iran. If he pulls out now it is a clear victory for him. If he continues the campaign 2 or 3 more weeks it's tough for me to find another out for him that doesn't involve a lot more risk to the USA.

Given he did take this clear victory and cash in, in Venezuela, there is some hope he'll do the same in Iran.

[lejalv]

Now turn your argument towards Saudi Arabia, or any of the human-rights violating countries that the US supports or has supported recently.

Your opinion is respectable, but not compatible with any idea of “justice”.

[khazhoux]

The point being that eliminating a murderous tyrant is bad, because there are other murderous tyrants?

[lejalv]

Your president is a murderous tyrant, so how about eliminating him?

[vkou]

Killing a murderous tyrant, while maybe cathartic for a few minutes, when done in isolation, rarely results in better outcomes.

[postflopclarity]

sometimes there are more than two options between

"do nothing"

and the clusterfuck the current administration has embarked on.

[bawolff]

Sometimes yes, but is there in this specific case?

Because from my vantage point it looks like the choice is, status quo or bomb them. Its not like america can double sanction iran, they are already fully economically sanctioned. What is the middle ground here?

[cgio]

You could relax sanctions in exchange for other priorities. A persistent pain is less effective than an acute one anyway. There’s carrots too in negotiations. But no, we cannot do what a previous president did.

[bjourne]

This justification for bombing Iran is dumb as fuck. In a few days the number of civilians killed by US-Israeli bombings will surpass the number of civilians killed by the regime in decades.

[irishcoffee]

Possibly.

What is that threshold? I've heard anywhere from 3k to 300k. You can definitively answer this question?

[orwin]

300k? You mean 30k right?

Iranian official numbers are 3.5k. the OSINT community say at least 15k in the 3 biggest cities (including peo-regime guardias of the revolution), and 'local' journalists (a lot with CIA ties though), not friend of the system say 30k.

I wouldn't trust Iran with a butter knife, so I imagine between 15 and 30k, including 1 to 2k 'guardians'

[bjourne]

Killing more people won't bring dead people back to life! I can't believe I have to spell this out.

[mierz00]

I’m sure the welfare of the Iranian people is a top priority for Trump.

[hollerith]

But what you describe was not the motivation behind the decision by Washington to bomb Iran. The motivations were Tehran's nuclear program and Tehran's support for groups like Hezbollah and generally Tehran's promotion of violence and instability outside Iran in the Middle East.

[we_have_options]

wonder what your view is of ICE actions against peaceful protesters in MN?

[tick_tock_tick]

> But rather than protect global sea lanes, the US is bombing Iran. That’s not the same thing.

With Iran's support of the Houthi I think you'll find they are exactly the same thing.

[state_less]

The strait of hormuz is the opposite of protected right now. Insurance companies aren't willing to cover ships if they enter the strait to pick up a load of oil, so little commercial traffic is occurring.

The real cost should include the spike in oil prices, the world consumes about 100 million barrels a day, so every $10 increase costs the world a $1 billion a day. We're already up ~$10, and it might continue to rise depending on how things go. You probably should include LNG in there too. If this oil halt is protracted, your stocks and bonds will be dragged down as well.

[Retric]

We have surplus carriers specifically to allow them to average a large percentage of their time at home unlike container ships who spend the vast majority of their time in service. Many systems that are both bespoke and complex means lots and lots of maintenance issues.

Sure the Navy can Airlift in parts etc, but that’s obviously very expensive and less obviously more dangerous.

[nradov]

We don't have a surplus of carriers. We have a shortage, at least relative to their current tasking. They're overstretched and behind on maintenance. This is unsustainable so the civilian leadership will have to either cut back on missions or build more.

[Retric]

There’s always an argument for more equipment, but you need to start building them long before they enter service and need to set budgets long before any specific crisis.

Funding for Nimitz was authorized in 1967 they started construction the next year and it was in service in 2025. The US has a very large and very expensive carrier fleet today because people decided it was worth having X boats a long time ago and they calculated X under the assumption that a significant number would be spending time docked / on the other side of the planet from where the conflict is.

Obviously, part of that equation was based around warfare and the likelihood of losing some / extending deployments etc, but what we want today has no barring on what we actually built as all those decisions happened a long time ago.

TLDR; Having more than strictly needed for normal operations = having a surplus when something abnormal occurs.

[nradov]

There is literally no surplus. There hasn't been a surplus for 15+ years when funding priorities shifted to sustain the GWOT. There haven't been enough carriers to meet requirements for the combatant commands during normal operations, let alone when something abnormal occurs. So they try to make do with other platforms but the cracks are really showing.

[Retric]

Your “requirements” aren’t actual requirements here.

[Jensson]

That is a good reason to focus what you have on Iran since Iran is causing a lot of that demand for power projection. If you fix it at its source there will be much less demand for them in the future.

[idontwantthis]

They aren't all deployed at all times and the Ford is more than overdue to be in Port. The sailors are notably suffering on this deployment and there is a ton of deferred maintenance.

[dspillett]

Exactly: that protection isn't happening right now because those resources are doing something else. The money would be spent anyway, but doing something that is normally considered useful, and that useful thing is not happening to the same capacity as before. Therefore there is an opportunity cost to consider.

[yberreby]

The Houthis have been doing a lot of shipping lane disruption, recently. They have sunk several ships.

Iran's Islamic regime has provided material and monetary support to the Houthis.

Crippling their capabilities aligns with the goal of protecting global shipping.

[nitwit005]

They haven't exactly been sending aircraft carriers after pirates. It's a huge excess of firepower for any traditional threat to shipping.

The US has liked to portray itself as the world's protector, but often that's just spin. The carriers are big weapons of war, meant for waging war.

[bawolff]

True.

Honestly i think my main opinion is that we have no idea what the number is, but its probably a large one.

[robaato]

WSJ: https://archive.is/IB7H2 Missed Funerals and Blocked Toilets: Iran Deployment Takes a Toll on U.S. Sailors The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford’s lengthy mission is causing strains for crew members and their families

Overtaxed crews can be a problem across the Navy’s fleet, beyond just the Ford. In April and May 2025, near the end of an eight-month deployment, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman lost several jet fighters while countering Houthi rebel attacks in the Red Sea. A Navy investigation blamed the high operational tempo of the mission.

One sailor on board the Ford told the Journal that many crew members are angry and upset, with some saying they want to leave the Navy at the end of the deployment.

[RobRivera]

Carriers routinely engage in war gaming and cruises. They dont port if they are not actively engaged in war.