On his personal blog, Sonar 21, former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson published a highly critical analysis of the U.S. Navy’s logistical failure to properly supply its ships and personnel.
Under the title, “The Tail That Couldn’t Keep Up: How the US Navy Ran Its Own Sailors Short on Food and Soap,” the former U.S. intelligence officer examines in detail the supply shortages that affected several crews at sea.
Between poor inventory management, weaknesses in the supply chain, and transportation delays, his conclusion is unequivocal: the U.S. Navy is now struggling to provide its own troops with the bare necessities.
Following prolonged deployments of more than 250 days in the Arabian Sea, the crews of the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Tripoli reportedly faced extreme living conditions, including food shortages, sanitation failures, and a lack of basic hygiene products, according to the security consultant. In response to revelations about this material and human crisis, military commanders initially dismissed the reports, with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth even describing them as “fake news,” while the fleet maintained that the ship remained “fully capable of carrying out all its missions.”
Yet, far from being an isolated incident or the fault of a single logistics officer, this material deprivation is, he argued, a direct symptom of a chain of command “more eager to defend its narrative about operational readiness than to confront the reasons why its sailors lacked the bare minimum.”
For the former CIA analyst, the origins of the problem lie in the gradual weakening of the Combat Logistics Force, the fleet responsible for supplying combat ships at sea. In an effort to achieve budget savings over the past fifteen years, the U.S. Navy reduced its most capable fast-support vessels, creating a situation in which “the logistics force is insufficient and too slow to meet current demands,” he said.
According to Johnson, this capability gap has been dramatically exacerbated by the geography of the Indian Ocean and by the operational environment of 2026, particularly the expansion of missions linked to the conflict with Iran. Operating at the end of extended supply lines with little room for maneuver, the Navy has exposed its sailors to the predictable consequences of past budgetary decisions.
“The multipurpose ship it eliminated in the 2010s for the sake of cost savings is precisely the one it needs most today,” he observed.
Johnson goes on to highlight the human cost of the crisis. Beyond the purely material dimension, this logistical failure has translated into a critical human cost aboard the warships.
When safety margins collapse, the failures of the world’s leading naval power become visible “in a laundry room that has stopped working and kitchens running short of supplies,” directly undermining sailors’ physical and psychological resilience. Regarding the human impact, Johnson is categorical: keeping a crew at sea for more than eight months while restricting basic sanitary necessities seriously damages morale and threatens the mental health of personnel, because “logistical support is not a luxury: it is the sine qua non of a crew’s resilience.”
Ultimately, the hardships experienced aboard the Lincoln have exposed the physical limits of a military strategy that demands a permanent distant presence without providing the logistical means to sustain it. As Johnson concludes, “a fleet that cannot be reliably resupplied cannot be reliably sustained.”
In reality, this episode demonstrates that the world’s leading power may no longer be as infallible as it has sought to portray itself for decades. Subject to what the author describes as uninformed political leadership and questionable decisions—symbolic of a system of power increasingly resembling farce—the U.S. military has lost some of its prestige and aura of invincibility.
The confrontation with Iran, the article argues, offers the clearest evidence: despite lacking Washington’s technological capabilities and enormous investments, Tehran has managed to stand up to the U.S.-Israeli axis, demonstrating to the world that a power unable to feed its own sailors can no longer impose its will.
By Hanane Ben
Source: Algerie54
#United_States #war_against_Iran #inventory_management #supply_transportation_delays #US_Iran_war #US_army
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