❓WHAT HAPPENED: The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) has been ordered to redeploy to the Middle East in response to escalating tensions with Iran.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, U.S. Navy, U.S. Central Command, and President Donald J. Trump.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The redeployment follows recent operations in the South China Sea; the carrier will take approximately one week to reach the Middle East.
🎯IMPACT: The Lincoln will substantially boost U.S. Central Command’s offensive capabilities in the Middle East, as President Trump warns the Iranian regime that he will intervene to prevent the killing of protesters.
President Donald J. Trump has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) aircraft carrier to be redeployed to the Middle East amid the possibility of U.S. military strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Lincoln, a nuclear-powered Nimitz–class supercarrier, has been operating in the South China Sea since late last year.
Satellite images showed the USS Abraham Lincoln and its accompanying strike group sailing past the Philippines on Wednesday. It is expected to take the strike force around one week to reach U.S. Central Command’s area of operations in the Middle East.
The aircraft carrier left San Diego in late November last year, with the Pentagon initially declining to disclose its area of deployment. Subsequently, the USS Abraham Lincoln joined a large U.S. naval contingent in the Indo-Pacific in response to increasing Chinese military activity in the region, and conducted live-fire exercises last week as part of its routine operations.
The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group includes the supercarrier itself, Carrier Air Wing 9, and several Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, such as USS Spruance (DDG 111), USS Michael Murphy (DDG-112), and USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG-121). Additionally, a fast-attack nuclear-powered submarine typically accompanies such groups, though details remain classified for operational security.
Previously, President Trump shifted the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group from the Middle East to the Caribbean, as part of ongoing strikes against Central and South American drug cartels, and the U.S. operation earlier this month in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of now-former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. The redeployment of the Lincoln will leave the Indo-Pacific region with a temporarily reduced carrier presence, where the USS George Washington (CVN-75), based in Japan, is undergoing maintenance, while other carriers, including USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) and USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), are either returning from or preparing for deployments.
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