🇮🇷⚔️🇺🇸 Contrary to popular belief, the USS Abraham Lincoln isn't supplied from Diego Garcia. It is supplied from Singapore.

The New York Times falsely reported that Diego Garcia is serving as a logistics support base for Navy ships in the Middle East.

Sal Mercogliano corrected the record with data showing logistics is running out of Singapore and Mombasa, Kenya. He argued, due to proximity, Diego Garcia should be used instead, but thanks to the Army defunding its prepositioned ships there, Ready Reserve ships and logistics personnel would have to surge first.

It is unclear whether these ships will carry people to the island to build out logistics capacity or simply replace the passenger planes already serving it.

Here is the part nobody in the Pentagon wants to say out loud: sealift is the pressure relief valve for every air plan that fails. When the sky closes, the ocean is the only way out, and the ocean requires ships, crews and escorts we have not built.

The Ready Reserve Force is not a fleet. It is a museum with a maintenance budget. Average hull age north of 45 years, steam plants almost nobody is trained to run, and a mariner pool too small to crew a full activation for a sustained campaign.

The NVSM ships, that also serve to train maritime cadets, that might activate in support of this mission are new but California Maritime Academy hosts the only training ship in the Pacific and their NVSM is still under construction in Philly.

Their current ship, the TS Golden Bear, is old and has less bed space. The Department of Transportation under Biden foolishly scrapped the old training ship already replaced on the East Coast rather than putting them in the once crowded, now almost empty, Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet (know as the pacific Ghost Fleet).

No reserve ships have anti-air defenses installed aboard.

Bottom line is this activation, if it happens, is a tell. You do not reach for the Ready Reserve to move passengers unless the air option is degraded or expected to degrade.

Watch three things this week: MARAD activation orders, any change in Navy Military Sealift Command traffic through Singapore and Mombasa, and whether Diego Garcia starts receiving sealift instead of airlift.

🔗 John Konrad