The US military can still operate and have plenty of impact without...

The US military can still operate and have plenty of impact without a carrier in the region folks.

You can move other assets and, most importantly, don’t start and engagement you aren’t ready to sustain until those assets are in place. Outside of that, timing is up to the enemy, but you can’t have perfect coverage everywhere all the time ready for any possible contingency. That’s not reality.

And yes there is plenty of debate to be had about resource prioritization and foolish gaps in certain capacities, but a carrier is not a prerequisite for everything and the handful available at any given time can’t be everywhere at once

They can move Lincoln there if they need to, will take days but so will everything else