Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartan-117
This is an important point. Google 'tons of diplomacy' and what you get are lots of pictures of U.S. Aircraft Carriers [...].
We benefit from knowing that the timeline will result in a shooting war. So obviously we can look back and can easily criticize every non-optimal choice. But... in the real world, the calculations are not so easy.
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That is, of course, true. There are, however, reasons the USN never sent a carrier into the Baltic, not during the Cold War, not during the 2014 Crimean invasion of Russia, not for diplomatic visits or tourist attractions such as Kiel Week (German: Kieler Woche) and not even for BATLOPS exercises. As far as I know, that pond never saw a carrier from afar.
Yes, USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) participated in BALTOPS in June 2018 (
https://www.wtkr.com/2018/06/11/uss-...ltops-exercise), but only a part of its wing supported the exercise, the ship proper remained in the Mediterranean, where it took a break from bombing ISIS. Naval warfare in the Baltic Sea is the equivalent to a knifefight in a phonebox.