Not being onboard those ships, all I can do is refer back to personal experience. We’ve just heard reports from someone. I suspect many are true or close to being true because of what I experienced and assume the similar case if conditions onboard the ships were worse.
But here’s some data:
Bab al Mandab is closed. Hormuz is closed. That means no resupply from the Med or Bahrain for fresh foods. Supplies like food, oils, bullets, JP5 jet fuel, diesel for yellow gear, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, mail, literally every expendable thing a ship needs whether it has 200 people or 5000 people must travel many thousands of miles to the Arabian Gulf to get to the “Wall of Steel” blockade. That doesn’t take days or weeks but months. Critical things can be flown to Diego Garcia, picked up by a C2 and flown to tge carrier & redistributed to the other ships via underway replenishment (UNREP) or helo.
The morale issue is a thing but it’s not as bad as our nearly non-existent logistics issue. We’re a maritime power, NOT a land power. Iran, Russia, China are land powers. They have interior supply lines. Ours have always been exterior when engaged in wars across oceans. Since our closest resupply lines have been cut off since February, and since we can’t make stand off weapons fast enough, and can’t resupply them without serious problems, that’s why we’ll lose this. Destroyers & frigates have to be rearmed in port NOT via UNREP. That’s a week to Diego Garcia, a week to load missiles, and a week to get back on station per ship. That’s a much bigger headache and reality than 6 guys “trying to” jump off the Lincoln.
Add the ridiculous Foxnews “expert” notion that we need to “finish the fight” with boots on the ground. They simply CANNOT be resupplied, period, end of conversation if we were stupid enough to successfully put a thousand Rangers or Marines in Chabahar (Khargg would be nothing but suicidal. I just can’t consider that as even a possibility for anyone but morons like Kellogg, Keane, Mark Levin, or Ben Shapiro). They would have worse resupply/logistics issues than the ships who would necessarily have to resupply the boots on the ground.
We lost because we have zero interior logistic lines. That’s all Iran has is interior lines from China via the “Stans” and Russia via Caspian Sea. We couldn’t close a twenty mile swath of border between Afghanistan and Iran for twenty years. Same with Pakistan. Those borders are as porous as our southern border (probably still is).
The brouhaha over the ships’ morale might be a Penn & Teller misdirection, I don’t know but we ain’t got no logistics. That I do know because there’s reality data and evidence that supports it. Albeit 250+ days plus five more weeks waiting for the replacement carrier then four more weeks to sail to Hawaii or Japan then San Diego on a floating prison sucks more than any other suck the Navy experienced, the suicide attempts might be a shiny object to ignore the reality of not having any realistic supply lines. EVERYONE in that theater above the rank of O4 knows how dire that problem makes the whole shit show. Bitching about it is the least of their worries.