U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered both the Theodore Roosevelt and the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike groups to remain in the Middle East as part of the United States’ ongoing response.
The two carrier strike groups are currently in the Gulf of Oman, according to USNI News’ Fleet and Marine Tracker. Austin ordered the two carriers to remain on station as part of his call with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, according to a Sunday readout of the call.
USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and its escorts arrived in the Middle East on Wednesday. USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) has been in the Middle East since June, USNI News previously reported.
Abe is homeported in San Diego, Calif., and deployed in June. TR is homeported in San Diego, as well, and deployed on Jan. 11.
It is unclear how long TR will remain in the Middle East. Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters he would not go into the timeline for the two carriers during a Monday gaggle.
Extensions for carriers that enter the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East have become the norm since USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) deployed in 2021 around the time Russia invaded Ukraine. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel, the U.S. sent carriers to the Eastern Med, then to the Red Sea once the Houthis began attacking commercial shipping.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group returned home in July after a nine-month deployment, with seven months spent in the Red Sea, USNI News previously reported. It was able to leave after the TR CSG entered the Red Sea.
“Clearly fleet management, force management, global force management is something that we take incredibly seriously, all the way up to the Secretary of Defense, himself, and that’s something we’re always going to look at,” Ryder told reporters Monday. “But it’s also important, again, to kind of take a step back and look at why we have these capabilities and why we have those assets in order to support our national security interests.”
The Ike CSG was out for a total of 275 days, according to USNI News data. The TR CSG is at 228, as of Monday. Even if the carrier strike group were to leave Monday, the journey back would take several weeks.
“And so those kinds of decisions are obviously a lot of deep thought goes into them, but certainly we’ll do everything we can to ensure we can meet our national security commitments, while also, at the same time, managing the finite resources that we do have around the world,” Ryder said. “All that to say this is exactly one of the key attributes of the DOD, is our ability to surge forces to where we need them, when we need them, for various contingencies and crises, and so that’s exactly what you’re what you’re seeing here.”
