The U.S. Navy faces a logistical crisis in the Middle East: supplies need to be transported over long distances after Iran destroyed its Bahrain base

On a typical U.S. aircraft carrier, 5,000 crew members work around the clock and need to provide up to four meals a day. Although aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered, carrier-based aircraft and helicopters consume millions of gallons of fuel every week.

Aircraft carriers never operate alone. They are escorted by destroyers equipped with anti-aircraft and cruise missiles and together form a so-called carrier strike group. These ships also need to be replenished with food and fuel.

Currently, there are two aircraft carriers and 12 destroyers in the Middle East participating in the blockade of Iranian ports.

Additional support was provided by an amphibious alert group of three warships carrying a Marine assault force.

The U.S. Navy currently has about 20 ships deployed in the Middle East, carrying about 20,000 sailors and Marines. The logistical challenges are daunting: The ships need to prepare more than 420,000 meals each week, as well as approximately 8 million gallons of fuel.

The U.S. Navy has operated in the Middle East for decades and has established multiple supply bases throughout the region.

But on February 28, the first day of the war, Iran destroyed a key U.S. Navy logistics base in Bahrain. Other ports in the region that can accommodate aircraft carriers or supply ships are also within the attack range of Iranian missiles and drones and therefore cannot be used.

Today, U.S. Navy supply ships in the region have to sail 3,500 kilometers to a small island in the Indian Ocean called Diego Garcia, from where they deliver food, fuel and other supplies to warships deployed in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.

Another option is to travel to Singapore, nearly 6,000 kilometers away, but that would mean the supply ship would have to pass through the Strait of Malacca, a busy commercial waterway.

Since the war has cut off the US military's use of bases near the Middle East, the fleet's only option now is to perform supply missions at sea every five or six days.