Editor’s note, February 28, 2026, 7:30 am ET: On Saturday, February 28, the US launched airstrikes on Iran. The article below was originally published on February 26. Read Vox’s latest coverage of the attack here.
Does the US have enough aircraft carriers for all Trump’s wars?
Want to threaten Iran? You’re going to need a bigger boat.
Joshua Keating is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood, an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map.
As his latest threats to Iran suggest, President Donald Trump has become increasingly comfortable deploying military force around the world. But even with a military as large and technologically advanced as America’s, there are limits to how quickly he can simply pivot from one global crisis to another.
Specifically, that limit seems to be about 30 knots — the top cruising speed of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
Due to maintenance and refueling needs, only about three of America’s 11 carriers are usually at sea at any given time, and keeping them too long in any one theater leaves others exposed. Trump’s overlapping military conflicts have been pushing these ships and their crews to their breaking point. Most recently, the fleet was whipsawed between far-flung rally points in Venezuela and Iran, requiring extraordinary measures and weeks of maneuvering to pivot between the two conflicts.
Consider the long journey of the USS Ford strike group, which has been ordered to bolster the “massive Armada” Trump announced in January would assemble to pressure Iran.
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By Christian Paz
By Eric Levitz
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