CROSSPOST: RILEY CEDER & J.D. SIMKINS: Navy Not Returning to Damaged Bahrain Base ‘Anytime Soon,’ Top Officer Says

A fixed, forward, insufficiently defended logistics hub is a single point of failure; its loss propagates faster than any combat loss of ships. Distance is a hidden tax on military operations—doubling to thousands of miles broke just-in-time resupply cadence. And the Navy had no institutional plan for prolonged loss of its primary regional base—resilience was assumed, not engineered: Iranian missiles and drones gutted Naval Support Activity Bahrain on Feb. 28, 2026. What the Pentagon first downplayed as operationally insignificant is now revealed as a strategic logistics failure with cascading effects on fleet readiness, sailor welfare, and roughly $400 million in reconstruction costs. A single strike on a fixed forward logistics node collapsed the Navy’s supply chain in the region, forcing a fallback to Diego Garcia—more than 2,000 miles away—and exposing how brittle concentrated infrastructure is in this age of killer robots: CROSSPOST: RILEY CEDER & J.D. SIMKINS: Navy Not Returning to Damaged Bahrain Base ‘Anytime Soon,’ Top Officer Says By Riley Ceder and J.D. Simkins Tuesday, Sep 1, 2026 The Navy’s highest-ranking officer told sailors during a town hall on Monday that it would be a while before the service would return to its main logistics hub in the Middle East after it was heavily damaged early in the Iran war. Answering a displaced service member’s question about retrieving personal goods from the base they previously called home, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said the Navy would not be using Naval Support Activity Bahrain for the foreseeable future. “We’re not getting back in there anytime soon,” Caudle said. “I just want to be completely honest with that.” On Feb. 28, Iran struck NSA Bahrain with missiles and one-way attack drones after the U.S. and Israeli militaries launched strikes on the Islamic Republic. The Pentagon initially reported zero fatalities and said the strikes did not significantly impact military operations. Several months later, however, the true impacts of the strike are coming into focus. Retired Navy Capt. John Cordle recently described the loss of NSA Bahrain as having “profound tactical and strategic repercussions.” “The more we learn about the attacks on the U.S. Naval Support Activity in Manama, Bahrain, during the opening days of Operation Epic Fury, the clearer it becomes why the news of its near destruction was not initially reported or acknowledged,” Cordle said. Moving supply hubs that were once hundreds of miles away to thousands of miles away will prove to be a major limitation to future maritime operations, he added. A sailor who was deployed aboard an Independence-class littoral combat ship during the Iran war told Military Times that they were unable to get food resupplies after NSA Bahrain was damaged. After the damage, the Navy shifted to relying on a logistics hub at Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that sits more than 2,000 miles away from the service’s carrier strike groups in the Middle East. The distance required the sailors onboard the LCS to place food orders 30 days in advance, which proved challenging due to the unpredictable schedule of frenzied military operations. At an Aug. 11 town hall in San Diego, military families told acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao that they were concerned about food shortages and declining morale aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln after the ship had not made an official port call in over seven months. Damage to the Fifth Fleet headquarters, barracks, warehouses and communication towers at NSA Bahrain may lead to construction costs worth roughly $400 million, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation. Meanwhile, thousands of troops and their families are reportedly still in limbo, with many living in temporary lodging while waiting to be reunited with their belongings — and even pets — after the base’s destruction. Vice Adm. Curt Renshaw, who leads the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, admitted during a recent virtual town hall with Navy families that the service is “making it up as we go because nothing is conceived to go on this length of time.” “These are complex problems, and the solutions have not been exactly obvious,” Renshaw said. Brad DeLong here: I think we need to listen to John Cordle here: John Cordle: The devastation of NSA Bahrain is a national security warning : ‘The more we learn about the attacks on the U.S. Naval Support Activity (NSA) in Manama, Bahrain, during the opening days of Operation Epic Fury, the clearer it becomes why the news of its near destruction was not initially reported or acknowledged. Extensive damage… is likely to have profound tactical and strategic repercussions…. The potential loss of NSA Bahrain is effectively the equivalent of losing an aircraft carrier. It could not have come as a surprise that Iran would attack it in retaliation…. There is now talk of “reducing the footprint” of U.S. forces in the region, a “strategic retreat” that will have a significant impact on logistic support… The equivalent of the loss of an aircraft carrier framing is startling to me. But I cannot think that it is incorrect here. I am amazed that American media and public continue to be oblivious to the fact that the US military was routed from not only the 5th Fleet HQ, but from most bases in the area. 'No Tab Pete' is an imbicile in martial strategy, logistics, and tactics. 'Fox News Pete' may be quite competent in manipulating America's perception of the Iranian conflict. In the long-run, the US may not project a presence in the Middle East, particularly if the next administration and Congress are not boosters of Israel. Perhaps that is best for all. Prompted by this post (which, thank you again, Prof. Delong, I am a paying subscriber, and you educate me and all your readers in many different areas), I went and googled NSA Bahrain (which I had not done before) and looked it on a map. In the following, assume that I'm coming at this from the POV of a strong believer in US military power, our hegemony, and our hegemony over the Persian Gulf. The abject stupidity with which some military planner decided that NSA Bahrain could be a supply hub for the US Navy in any Persian Gulf conflict is .... mind-blowing. It's well inside the Persian Gulf, and the only way to reach it with ships is via the Strait of Hormuz. I can't blame Trump or any of his cronies for this own-goal: generations of US military planners have baked the assumption that somehow in any conflict the US will retain entire control of The Gulf, into their thinking. When we hear that the only fallback option is Diego Garcia, it really goes to show that our planners were just entirely out-to-lunch for the past forty years. It's as stupid as packing dress uniforms for an invasion of Ukraine.