national board because it is us troops getting ready to deploy
if biden doesn’t tell israel it’s time for a ceasefire or they don’t get billions
in weapons we are going to end in the middle of a major war over there
Austin orders US forces to be ready to deploy as Middle East heats up
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln will remain in the region after
Israel kills Hezbollah leader.
By PAUL MCLEARY
09/29/2024 04:31 PM EDT
The U.S. is further beefing up its military presence in the Middle East,
sending in additional troops and putting others on standby while keeping
an aircraft carrier on station as the region prepares for more violence.
The moves come after Israeli forces killed Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah in Lebanon on Friday, in a strike that threatens to plunge the
region into a wider war.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday ordered the aircraft carrier
USS Abraham Lincoln and its attached destroyers to remain in the region,
just a month after rerouting them to the Middle East while they were on a
planned deployment to the Pacific. The directive comes days after the
USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group left its home port in Virginia for a
scheduled cruise, potentially creating a two-carrier presence in the
Middle East for the second time since the summer.
The Pentagon also announced that the U.S. will be sending additional “air-
support capabilities in the coming days,” and that the USS Wasp
Amphibious Ready Group will remain in the eastern Mediterranean. The
group includes the amphibious ships USS New York and USS Oak Hill,
along with thousands of Marines capable of performing civilian
evacuations from Lebanon if necessary. The Wasp, which can launch small
boats ashore, is also loaded with Marine-flown F-35B fighter planes,
giving military planners an extra aerial punch if needed.
Those ships have been patrolling the Mediterranean since June and have
been at sea since April. The Wasp group replaced a similar group of
amphibious ships led by the USS Bataan, which had its own deployment to
the region extended several times and ended up spending eight months at
sea before heading home in March.
Meanwhile, Austin ordered additional U.S. forces to be ready to deploy,
“elevating our preparedness to respond to various contingencies,” the
Pentagon said.
“We did deploy some additional forces into the region,” National Security
Council spokesperson John Kirby said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
“We now have more force capability in the Middle East than we did in
April, when Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones. So there is
already a very robust military capability to defend ourselves and to help
defend Israel if it comes to that.”
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In a Sunday statement, the Pentagon said the ships are being backed up
by “DoD’s elevated fighter and attack squadron presence, including F-22,
F-15E, F-16, and A-10 aircraft.”
The Truman, which is still in the Atlantic, was initially scheduled to relieve
Lincoln and allow the carrier to return to operations in the Pacific, though
those plans may have changed now if the decision is made to put both
carriers in the Middle East.
The merry-go-round of U.S. ships in the region comes at a high cost for
the Navy. It also leaves the Indo-Pacific shorthanded as ships are pulled
into the Middle East to protect American forces and battle Houthi missiles
and drones targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
Elsewhere in the region on Thursday, two American destroyers knocked
down several cruise and ballistic missiles launched by Houthi forces at the
ships traversing the Red Sea.
U.S. Central Command also announced on Sunday that U.S. airstrikes had
killed 37 al Qaeda and ISIS fighters in Syria on Sept. 16 and 24, including
several operational leaders.
During the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group’s twice-
extended nine-month deployment to the Red Sea, U.S. forces fired over
135 Tomahawk land attack missiles at Houthi targets in Yemen.
The F/A-18 aircraft aboard the Eisenhower also fired 60 air-to-air missiles
and 420 air-to-surface weapons during the defense strikes at sea and
targets on the ground. The Eisenhower and its escort ships returned to
post in Virginia in July, handing off to the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier
group, which has continued knocking down drones daily.
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