Ready and Waiting: Military Counts Cost of New Deployment Strategy

For decades, sailors' families and U.S. adversaries could set their calendars by deployment cycles. That has changed

Sailors stand on the flight deck after launching an F/A-18F Super Hornet from the the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) in the North Atlantic on Sept. 18, 2018. 2nd Class Anthony Flynn/DoD

American military wives and Iranian Revolutionary Guards used to share the same comfort of the ticking U.S. military clock.

Two, sometimes three years in advance, they knew how the aircraft carrier groups would rotate through the Arabian Gulf and back to U.S. shores. Similarly, China’s commanders, building up their island bases, could rely on the same cycles.