Stardate 20011001.2034 (On Screen): USS Kittyhawk has been sent to the Arabian Gulf region from its home port in Japan. That will make the fourth carrier ordered into that area, including
Theodore Roosevelt, Enterprise and
Carl Vinson. According to this news report,
Kittyhawk is not carrying a normal air wing. Ordinarily a Nimitz-class carrier carries about 70 jets plus 20-30 other aircraft. Somewhat more than half of those jets will be fighters (F-14 Tomcats) and the remainder bombers (F/A-18 Hornets) and electronic warfare jets (EA-6B Prowler). There's no word on what it actually is carrying, but I would guess it's carrying exclusively Hornets, and no Tomcats at all. If the US is intending to make sustained air attacks against Afghanistan, then the fighters from one carrier should be more than enough to protect against any potential attack, given that Afghanistan's air force is a joke. The main threat would be if Iran got involved against us, which seems extremely unlikely. Also, the F/A-18 Hornet is actually a pretty decent fighter in its own right when it's not carrying bombs, and it should have no difficulty handling anything that Afghanistan is capable of putting into the air, or Iran either for that matter.
(discussion in progress)Update 20011002: It appears I was wrong. What they may be doing with Kittyhawk is using it as a helicopter platform.
