By Tom Sharpe*
A week ago, looking at the position of the USS Gerald R Ford – the most powerful aircraft carrier, indeed the most powerful warship of any kind in the world – I suggested that she would be in position to strike Iran by 25 February. With the Ford having put into Souda Bay in Crete on 24 February and the last of her escort destroyers, the USS Winston Churchill, passing Gibraltar on Sunday, this prediction has played out.
I also suggested that just because US strike ops could start immediately, it didn’t mean they necessarily would. The Ford and her strike group have averaged less than 18 knots across the Mediterranean and the carrier has now put in for stores and repairs: it is clear that the US Navy is not in a rush.
