As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...
Two US carriers, the USS Nimitz and the USS Kittyhawk,
have been involved in war games with the Indian navy in
the Bay of Bengal — actually the whole ocean to the east of
India. Operation Malabar is over and there are mixed reports
about the destination of the ships.
Debka, the intelligence oriented Israeli site says the Nimitz is
heading back to the Persian Gulf, along with the USS Truman
(from training off the Virginia coast), to join the USS Enterprise
already there. If true, this is very worrisome news given all the
reports and speculation about plans for spectacular strikes on Iran.
Two carriers add something like 160 aircraft, carrying 10 bombs or
missiles each. [If the authors of this paper are correct the US could
drop some 10,000 bombs from land based bombers alone.]
An Indian newspaper, on the other hand, reports the Nimitz is “going
home.” This could be just sloppy reporting, or a nonchalant way of
saying “away from India.” If actually true, the Nimitz home port is
San Diego, CA and would be better news but not by much.
As to the Kittyhawk, no word at the moment.
Debka also reports that the USS Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike
Group with an expeditionary strike force is off the coast of Lebanon
in anticipation of troubles in the upcoming presidential elections…
In an added piece with some relevance to speculation on attack Iran
plans, Debka reports that the airplanes in the Israeli bombing run into
Syria were able to escape recently purchased Russian missiles by radar
jamming. Iran, also has purchased the same missiles. So, whatever the
actual purpose of the Israeli raid [claimed to be an attack on a Hezbollah
weapons cache] one result is discovery of a major weakness in Iranian
defenses.
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