From Iranian Revolutionary Guard speedboats harassing Navy ships in the Persian Gulf to Russian jets maneuvering near American bombers in the skies over the Mediterranean, the Defense Department is working to maintain its posture globally, including with a debilitated Pacific force, while a “war” is waged against the coronavirus at home.
“This is a normal week for DOD,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Thursday morning on the Today show. “This is why I said that we must maintain our national mission capabilities, our readiness.”
Consumed in recent weeks with how the Pentagon will pitch into the nation’s whole-of-government response to the coronavirus, Esper said the Defense Department had maintained global deterrence of challenges by adversaries.
Wednesday, in the waters of the North Persian Gulf, 11 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy ships can be seen in videos racing at high speeds across the bows and sterns of six U.S. Navy vessels as they conducted integration operations with U.S. Army Apache helicopters in international waters.
“All these things continue to happen out there, and we want to make sure that our adversaries are not taking advantage of the situation,” Esper said Thursday morning. “Our adversaries are not standing down.”
Meanwhile, in recent days, Russia has repeatedly demonstrated it will continue to challenge American airspace and presence globally.
Over Mediterranean skies Wednesday, a U.S. P-8A Poseidon aircraft was intercepted by a Russian SU-35 fighter, which followed the aircraft for 42 minutes and conducted an unsafe inverted maneuver at high speed 25 feet in front of the aircraft.
A week ago, the North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled F-22 jets to intercept two Russian IL-38 bombers in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, an international airspace near sovereign U.S. and Canadian airspace. On Wednesday, Russia also tested direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles, U.S. Space Command reported.
After the April 8 intercept in the Bering Sea, NORAD Commander Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy told Fox News he believed the Russians were testing U.S. readiness in the wake of the coronavirus.
“I think what they do is they just wanted to see if we’d be able to react. Are we prepared? Are we impacted by the virus? Do we have any vulnerabilities?” O’Shaughnessy told Fox, noting Russia did the same thing three weeks ago when the United States was conducting operations with submarines.
“We were able to intercept them then as well. So, we don’t have any vulnerabilities. We’re prepared. We’re postured. We made sure that they knew that,” he said.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said Tuesday that the nation was at war with the virus while continuing to respond to global adversaries.
“We are, in fact, at war against a virus,” Milley said. “At the same time that we do that, we will continue to do our mission assignments around the world.”
He added, “Our readiness is still strong, and we are able to deter and defeat any challenges that try to take advantage of these opportunities at this point of crisis.”
Pacific presence weakened or resolute?
In the Pacific, North Korea tested short-range missiles earlier this week while the U.S. still struggles to close a long-term basing agreement with South Korea that threatens to disrupt American military presence on the peninsula and fracture relationships with the longtime ally.
Esper again argued that the sidelining of the Pacific carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in Guam while 4,000 of its crew members quarantine or recover from the coronavirus does not inhibit America’s ability to react to a threat in the theater.
“We have 11 aircraft carriers. There are others at sea right now. If necessary, the Teddy Roosevelt could go to sea immediately and perform its wartime mission,” he said. “We have 90 Navy ships at sea. All are in good health. All are performing their important wartime missions. And we’re taking other actions to ensure that we can, again, continue to defend the American people.”
Esper left the door open for the Roosevelt’s commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, to return after he was summarily dismissed two weeks ago by then-acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly.
“I’ve got to keep an open mind with regard to everything,” Esper said Thursday. “I directed that investigation a couple weeks ago. It concluded late last week. It is now with the Navy. It will come to me at some point in time. As I’m in the chain of command, I can’t comment further.”
Navy commanding officer Adm. Michael Gilday also left open the possibility of restoring the celebrated captain, a move that could return lost morale to the ship’s crew.
“I am taking no options off the table as I review that investigation. I think that is my responsibility,” Gilday told the Wall Street Journal in an April 9 story.
In an April 1 Pentagon press briefing, Gilday said there were times when a Navy officer is justified going outside the chain of command, which is what Crozier is accused of doing when he warned the Navy of the rapidly spreading contagion on his ship.
“If they’re not getting the proper responses from the chains of command, then they need to maybe go outside of it,” Gilday said.
