I have a feeling they actually brought a lot more equipment home than Omega implies - and no not tanks - but insisting on bringing on 50 cal MG, 25mm autocannons, mortars and towed artillery - and possibly a couple of M109's tied down to the deck of ships that they can be loaded onto - yup that I can see for sure - those are civilian ships remember - and the US military took a hell of a lot of casualties from raiders and pirates - no way are you going to just jam 43,000 guys on defenseless ships
thus they need that to arm the ships to defend themselves - and they sure arent going to ship it back once it gets to the US
as for Tarawa - that book remember was for both Twilight 2000 and for Merc 2000 - so its still an open question if the reference to Tarawa being part of the Atlantic Fleet applied to both timelines
also lets say those nuke powered ships are still afloat - they may have simply been not available - i.e. they are in the Pacific and dont have escorts - and you dont send a nuke carrier by itself with no escorts especially if it doesnt have flyable aircraft left -
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