ship slip by Navy

The Navy did some slight unscheduled aircraft carrier moves in recent weeks...

The USS Stennis left harbour early to join the USS Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea.

Shortly after, the USS Reagan scooted out, to cover for the USS Kitty Hawk in the western Pacific.
The Kitty Hawk was going in for maintenance, she is old, but she had major maintenance last year, and is due to be decommissioned a year from now? Hm.
Be unlike the US Navy to disguise ship movements by faking maintenance, eh?

Now, the following appears in the Navy Times

"...Military observers have said that stepped-up deployments in the Persian Gulf -- including the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan carrier strike groups -- are a show of force directed at Iran."

Oh dear. What a dreadful typo.
Clearly he meant the John Stennis, NOT the Ronald Reagan.
The Reagan is not going anywhere near the gulf...

In unrelated news, atlantic fleet submarines are rotating to pacific coast ports through the current deployment, after a recommendation that more subs be stationed on the west coast.
So some of the subs setting out now in the atlantic, will in fact go to the pacific.

For the paranoid minded - the end of this particular Shia holy month is monday, and since it is a lunar month, that is also new moon.

The USAF is not doing anything unusual, except deploying F-22s forward, and running Red Flag exercises in the southwest, which meant shuffling some bombers and tankers and F-22s and stuff around in that direction.

I'm still thinking mid March is the time to be worried - although as always it is a political decision.
By mid-April the Bushehr reactor ought to be in the process of being fueled, which complicates things. A lot.

Another complication is whether Israel gets fed up and decides to take out Bushehr, they've certainly exercised for that contingency and have the equipment to do it. I don't think they'll wait for Bushehr to have the opportunity to do a short burn and have neutronated fuel extracted for possible reprocessing of plutonium 239. Unless the political crisis there is such that they are paralysed.

What interesting times. Such interesting people.