Collapsing Empire: RIP US Aircraft Carriers

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An Al Mayadeen investigation of July 19th laid bare the US Navy’s crushing defeat by Yemen’s AnsarAllah, in Washington’s initially-vaunted Operation Prosperity Guardian. Western media has finally acknowledged the Empire’s comprehensive trouncing by God’s Partisans, in an epic David vs Goliath triumph. Elsewhere too, reporting on the much-hyped USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group’s return to base after months of relentless bombardment by the Resistance amply underlines how aircraft carriers - the core component of US hegemony for decades - are quite literally dead in the water.

The New York Times innocuously headlined USS Eisenhower’s humiliating retreat as “the end of a strategic deployment”, while simultaneously hailing a heroic homecoming. The article records how as the grand vessel neared Virginia’s Norfolk Harbor, one of the world’s largest US naval installations, a plane carrying National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan touched down on its deck. He addressed “thousands” of returning sailors there, “all eager to be home”, in what the outlet dubbed “an extraordinarily pumped ‘all hands’ call’.”

USS Eisenhower

Recounting “how he would walk into the Oval Office and tell President Biden about the exploits of the Eisenhower and its strike group, shooting down all manner of Iranian-made drones and rescuing sailors attacked by the Houthis,” Sullivan volubly burnished the Navy’s courage and successes. “Man, what stories I got to tell: You guys played defense, you played offense,” he boasted. “When somebody comes at us, we come back harder at them.”

Similar bombast was present in remarks Sullivan made in an accompanying “exclusive” interview with The Times. He spoke of how in the immediate aftermath of “Oct. 7”, his White House national security team decided strident “military muscle movements that could show decisiveness” were absolutely vital. As such, Washington sought to “over-deliver on speed, and scope and scale of American power protection to reassure the Israelis, and to deter adversaries.” USS Eisenhower’s dispatch was considered the boldest “military muscle movement” possible.

Sullivan expressed delight with the results of Operation Prosperity Guardian, suggesting USS Eisenhower’s “fight” with AnsarAllah in the Red Sea “showed that [aircraft carriers] could still battle effectively at close ranges.” This appraisal was echoed by US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro. He dismissed “critics” who “predicted the end of the usefulness of carriers”, claiming Operation Prosperity Guardian was a “valuable lesson” demonstrating how US aircraft carrier naysayers had gotten it badly wrong.

‘Imperfect Result’

This is a truly bizarre analysis. Operation Prosperity Guardian can only be considered a deeply embarrassing cataclysm. As NBC reported following the effort’s launch, USS Eisenhower’s mere presence in the Mediterranean was initially calculated by White House apparatchiks to be a “blunt message” that would scare off Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Yemen’s AnsarAllah from striking the Zionist entity. However, the Resistance was not deterred one iota from its collective anti-genocide crusade. And now the flagship aircraft carrier has beaten a hasty retreat back to base.

A ship attacked by AnsarAllah

The Times understatedly concedes the conclusion of the US Navy’s Red Sea “strategic deployment” was “obviously an imperfect result”. As the outlet acknowledges, the Zionist entity’s 21st century Holocaust in Gaza continues apace, “fighting between Hezbollah and Israel could spiral”, and AnsarAllah’s blockade not only endures, but may expand if and whenever the movement’s leaders deem it necessary. Meanwhile, official figures indicate vast numbers of difficult-to-reproduce missiles, costing millions each, were expended shooting down low-cost AnsarAllah drones throughout the failed operation.

A far more rational conclusion to draw from Operation Prosperity Guardian is that US aircraft carriers have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be a redundant relic of a bygone, unipolar age. The Empire’s bloated, exorbitantly expensive military machine built in recent decades, exclusively suited to one-sided gang-beatings of adversaries that can’t retaliate, is now unable to meet the challenges of modern warfare. By contrast, the Resistance have effortlessly innovated and equipped themselves for 21st century battle.

If the effusive endorsements of Operation Prosperity Guardian issued by Del Toro and Sullivan are truly sincere, then unambiguous, urgent takeouts from the fiasco evidently have not been heeded. Eerily, such cecity was precisely foreshadowed by the July 2002 Millennium Challenge. Largely forgotten today, it remains one of the grandest war games ever mounted by the Pentagon. Costing $250 million - almost $500 million in today’s money - it involved both live-action exercises and computer simulations. In all, 13,000 real-life US troops participated.

The Millennium Challenge’s simulated combatants were the US - “Blue” - and a fictitious West Asian state led by an anti-Western dictator - “Red”. Under the war game’s auspices, a vast American expeditionary fleet headed to the Persian Gulf, in preparation for invading Red. The effort was widely considered to be an advance test of the Empire’s military readiness for “intervening” in Iran and/or Iraq. Red was led by Paul Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general.

Paul Van Riper

Believing Blue would launch a surprise attack, Van Riper opted to strike first. A vast swarm of computer-generated small civilian boats and propeller planes at his disposal were dispatched on a kamikaze blitz against both US military bases in the region, and the advancing expeditionary force, while cruise missiles fired upon the American flotilla from mobile launch points, on land and at sea. Before Blue even reached Red territory, its aircraft carrier and 16 accompanying vessels were sunk, with 20,000 fictional US soldiers killed.

‘Scripted Exercise’

The Empire had been comprehensively defeated by day two of the two-week-long simulation, in a worse drubbing than Pearl Harbor. So the Pentagon simply restarted the exercise, and began changing the rules, to rig US victory. A “control group” steadily imposed constraints on Van Riper. First, his military was forced to use unencrypted cellphones to coordinate and plan missions, so Blue could closely monitor its adversary’s official communications. Red simply opted to use motorcycle messengers, and coded messages broadcast via local mosque minarets.

This was just one troublesome, unorthodox tactic Van Riper deployed to frustrate Blue’s incursion, which was blocked by the war game’s Pentagon-directed referees. Meanwhile, constraints and demands on Red’s operations grew ever-wilder. Van Riper was compelled to switch off his side’s air defences, and move Red forces away from simulated beaches and other areas where Blue’s marines and soldiers were scheduled to swoop in from aircraft carriers, allowing them to invade unmolested. The restrictions imposed became so onerous, and ludicrous, Van Riper quit in disgust.

Millennium Challenge was initially hyped by Pentagon chiefs as a resounding success, and validation of the Empire’s aircraft carrier-dependent war-fighting doctrine. So Van Riper embarrassingly blew the whistle, exposing the effort as a scam consciously contrived to produce a desired, bogus result. He expressed grave concerns about US forces being sent into battle based on strategies that either hadn’t been properly tested, or were outright proven to end in defeat:

“It was scripted to be whatever the control group wanted it to be...Instead of a free-play, two-sided game…it simply became a scripted exercise. They had a predetermined end, and they scripted the exercise to that end…Nothing was learned from this…A culture not willing to think hard and test itself does not augur well for the future.” 

Today, in light of AnsarAllah’s triumphant victory over the US Navy, Van Riper’s warnings reverberate as a prophet’s curse come true. But it seems that yet again, the imperial braintrust has learned nothing from the experience. While one might be tempted to scoff at the Empire’s enduring hubristic delusions, when the reality of its decline is writ so large, we must remain vigilant. Washington’s inability to fight wars doesn’t mean it won’t keep provoking or launching them, with devastating consequences for the world.

Military veteran Lawrence Wilkerson has testified how, while chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell 2002 - 2005, he participated in many war games exercises pitting the Empire against China, in defence of Taiwan. Every scenario ended in nuclear war, typically within just days. One might expect this invariable outcome would discourage any and all prospect of US bellicosity against Beijing. Fast forward to today though, and Washington’s military chiefs openly discuss all-out conflict with China with alarming regularity. God help us all.