Garrison Davis

So again, this fire was certainly not enough to sink the Gerald Ford.

It didn't destroy it, but it did enough damage that it became combat ineffective, or at least you could argue that's the case.

Obviously, we replaced it with a different carrier group.

There's not just not a carrier now, but the Ford was not originally scheduled to leave and left as a result of the fire in order to undergo repairs.

That gets at something very important, very relevant to the question of how a higher-intensity war, one involving ground troops against Iran, would go.

Because while Iran may or may not be able to sink a carrier, they certainly have the tools to potentially hit one, starting a fire or just damaging the deck badly enough to render it combat-ineffective.

And if these deployment cycles keep getting extended, if sailors are kept at a high operational tempo for days or weeks or months at a time, people will start fucking up.

And some of those fuck-ups have a chance, as we've already seen, to remove the ship from being combat capable or to remove other ships from being combat capable.

If you're talking from the perspective of U.S.

Marines trying to hold onto an island surrounded by enemies...

This is a really scary thing.

The fact that your main source of air support might not be able to function because somebody fucks up or sabotages it.

There's a fire.

It gets hit.

These boats are not sinkable, but in certain ways, they're a lot more fragile than people are used to thinking of them as being.

Aircraft carriers have been gods of the sea for so long.

I think it really is something people ought to pay attention to.

The fact that this simple laundry fire took the Jerry Ford out of the theater matters.

The longer the U.S.

keeps fighting, the longer we keep our ships deployed chasing Donald Trump's dreams, the higher the odds that something else goes wrong.