Clearly, leaving 2 carriers in Persian Gulf region is very taxing on a military. It's not just the opex, but the abuse on the naval platforms & airwing that significantly reduces their service life. We saw this w/ GWOT. Big problem is all this effort hasn't solved the issue! we still get massive level of tanker destruction (in spite of Gulf bribery & willingness to tolerate higher transit cost) which will lead to tanker shortage that lasts for a while. Even if we get to 100 VLCC construction in a year, we cannot come close to making up for losing 2 to 4 tankers/day. So, the solution can only be going all in or get out of there. Staying at a holding pattern is not sustainable. Long drawn out w/ 2 to 3 carriers in Gulf region will destroy US military readiness for man yrs.