By LOLITA C. BALDOR and JON GAMBRELL (Associated Press)

ABOARD THE USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER IN THE RED SEA (AP) — The combat markings emblazoned on the F/A-18 fighter jet tell the story: 15 missiles and six drones, painted in black just below the cockpit windshield.

As the jet sits on the deck of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Red Sea, its markings illuminate the enemy targets that it’s destroyed in recent months and underscore the intensity of the fight to protect commercial shipping from persistent missile and drone attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But they also hint at the fatigue setting in, as the carrier, its strike group and about 7,000 sailors close in on their ninth month waging the most intense running sea battle since World War II. That raises difficult questions about what comes next as U.S. military and defense leaders wrangle over how they will replicate the carrier’s combat power if the ship returns home to Norfolk, Virginia.

Already, the carrier’s deployment has been extended twice, and sailors post dark memes around the ship about only getting one short break during their steadily growing tour. Some worry they could be ordered to stay out even longer as the campaign drags on to protect global trade in the vital Red Sea corridor.

At the Pentagon, leaders are wrestling with what has become a thorny but familiar debate. Do they bow to Navy pressure to bring the Eisenhower and the other three warships in its strike group home or heed U.S. Central Command’s plea to keep them there longer? And if they bring them home — what can replace them?

U.S. officials say that they’re weighing all options and that a decision is expected in the coming weeks.

U.S. commanders in the Middle East have long argued that they need an aircraft carrier in the volatile region. They say that it’s an effective deterrent to keep Iran in check and that the ship gives them critical and unique war-fighting capabilities against the Houthis, who say their attacks are aimed at bringing an end to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

The massive ship is a flexible, floating flight line that can launch fighter jets on a moment’s notice, without any of the limits that host nations in the Middle East can place on Air Force aircraft taking off from bases on their soil. And those carrier-based jets can get within striking distance of Houthi weapon systems quickly without crossing borders.

“What the carrier brings is an offensive platform that’s mobile, agile and doesn’t have any access, basing or overflight restrictions,” said retired Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who headed U.S. Central Command for three years, ending in 2022. “It’s sovereign U.S. territory. You can do as you want with those airplanes on that carrier. So that gives you enormous flexibility when you consider response options across the region.”

Rear Adm. Marc Miguez — who commands Carrier Strike Group Two, which includes the Eisenhower and supporting ships — agrees that the aircraft carrier is crucial to America’s military.

“Every time that there’s a crisis on the globe, what’s the first thing the president asks? ‘Where are the U.S. aircraft carriers?’” Miguez told The Associated Press during a visit to the Eisenhower and the USS Laboon, one of the guided-missile destroyers accompanying it.

On any given day, Navy F/A-18s roar off the Eisenhower and take out Houthi missiles or drones preparing to launch. The U.S. warships have fired volleys of Tomahawk missiles into Yemen to destroy warehouses of weapons, communications facilities and other targets.

Pentagon leaders worry that without the Eisenhower, they will need to tap more Air Force fighter jets based in surrounding countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

But many Arab nations place flight or other restrictions on the types of offensive strikes the U.S. can do from their land because of regional sensitivities. Others worry about triggering another war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen or inflaming tensions with Iran.

U.S. military leaders say the U.S. can adapt and get forces where they need to be. But that can require longer fighter jet flights from distant bases, requiring refueling capabilities and presenting other hurdles.

Extending the Eisenhower’s deployment again is an option — but for many, it’s the least desirable.

Navy leaders worry about the sailors, who actually have been able to see incoming Houthi-launched missiles seconds before they are destroyed by the ship’s defensive strikes. And officials in the Pentagon are talking about how to care for the sailors when they return home, including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.

Miguez also notes the strain on the ships themselves.

“We are constantly reminding the Department of Defense that we’re going to need to take a respite and a break, to try and get back to maintenance,” he said. “These ships are floating around in seawater. They’re steel, and they require a lot of maintenance. And when you run them past red lines, when you run them past scheduled maintenance activities, you have to pay those off somewhere down the line.”

A third option would be sending other ships — perhaps another carrier — to take the Eisenhower’s place. But the massive ships are relatively rare. The U.S. operates 11, which is about 40% of the total number worldwide. Other countries have only one or two.

The U.S. could turn to France or the United Kingdom, which each have one, for at least a temporary stint in the Red Sea. U.S. officials have insisted that protecting the sea lanes is a multinational effort and having an ally take a turn could reinforce that message. It could give the U.S. enough breathing room to get another American carrier there, perhaps late this year.

Of the 11 U.S. carriers, four are deployed, three are in training and preparing to deploy, and four are in routine maintenance and repair, which usually lasts about a year or more.

The USS John C. Stennis, however, is undergoing its major, mid-life overhaul, which can last about four years and calls for the replacement and upgrading of the ship’s nuclear propulsion system and other critical radar, communications, electronics and combat components. A carrier’s lifespan is about 50 years.

One carrier is always based in Japan and does regional patrols and exercises, and another is generally deployed to the Asia-Pacific. That focus on Asia reflects the long-stated belief that China is America’s top strategic challenge, and 60% of U.S. naval forces are based in the Pacific. The rest are Atlantic-based.

A third carrier is off South America’s west coast, heading toward Japan, leaving the Eisenhower as the only one in the Middle East or Europe.

Lacking a carrier, another option would be to deploy the USS Wasp, a large amphibious assault ship now in Europe that carries F-35 fighter jets. Those jets do short takeoffs and vertical landings, so they can do strike missions off smaller ships.

___

Baldor reported from Washington.

KYIV, Ukraine — As evening falls, the streets are mostly dark in Ukraine’s capital. Russia has been systematically destroying the country’s national power grid as Western allies have dawdled over providing promised air defense systems. The whir of generators has become the new night music for the restaurants, hotels, and homes that can afford to hold back the gloom.

The damage caused by the six-month congressional holdup of U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine is raised in every conversation I have had — the lives lost and morale lowered, all while allowing Russia to go on the offensive. In the wee hours of last Wednesday, five air raid warnings for Kyiv lit up my cell phone on the country’s Air Alert app. Dozens of alerts buzzed for other cities that have much less protection.

The good news: New Western supplies of missile interceptors have finally arrived. On Wednesday, they shot down the entire barrage of Russian missiles and killer drones over Kyiv, and nearly all of those unleashed on other parts of the country.

But what has cheered me up early in my trip — and bolstered my faith in Ukraine’s future — is that the civilian volunteers who rose up after Russia invaded are still actively involved, helping other Ukrainians escape the fighting or getting them medical care after terrible wounds.

They are not waiting for U.S. government aid to act.

I have been covering world conflicts for decades, and I have never witnessed such strong civic activism in any other country besides the United States. These grassroots movements define the difference between democratic Ukraine and authoritarian, top-down, follow-orders-or-be-killed Russia. They will be critical to any future recovery if the West helps Ukraine drive the Russians out.

A typical example: In Odesa, I visited a small metal factory where the workers were actors and stage designers in the city’s famous opera and theater house. Now, they are welding military vehicles and prototype drones.

Dimitro Bogachenko began the factory several years ago with a colleague to produce sets and metal stage curtains.

“I was an actor for 15 years in musical comedy, and then stage director at the opera,” he told me. “Now I can’t remember any of the sets I designed, only the specifications for the work that we do for the army.”

During the first week of the war, he and his friends began producing flak jackets with metal plates with money they raised on the Telegram app. They then armored 40 trucks and gave them to Ukrainian forces.

Their work caught the eye of National Guard Lt. Col. Sergei Sudets, who commands mobile units that patrol 157 miles of southern coastline to protect against drones. He shaped the volunteers into an innovative unit that repairs and repurposes old equipment to meet new needs.

“The Russian drones are flying higher now,” Sudets told me, referring to Shahed drones bought from Iran, as welders’ sparks flew on the factory floor. They are taking old Soviet machine guns from 1943, mounting them on truck beds, and modernizing them so they can strike up to three miles high, Sudets said.

As we spoke, a tall former ballet dancer in a work-stained jumpsuit passed by.

These innovative artists have put together a new model of a flying attack drone, a weapon that has become crucial to compensating for Ukraine’s lack of ammunition. “Hitting drones with a range of 40 kilometers would push (Russian) artillery out of range,” said Bogachenko. “We have the people to produce them, but we lack the financing.”

They have submitted their prototype to be considered for testing and government financing, but in the meantime, the workers are still pitching in their own money. Bogachenko said his wife would be horrified if she knew how much of his salary had gone into the projects.

There is still a desperate need in Ukraine’s defense system for a more organized way to scale up and fund the promising drone prototypes designed by Ukrainian civilians — a critical need if Russia is to be pushed back.

The help volunteers provide army units by raising funds from their own salaries, on the Telegram app, or from family, friends, businesses, or foundations — to deliver everything from drones to used cars to night vision goggles — may not match the impact of missiles, but it is essential for morale and survival.

Equally impressive are volunteer organizations focused on aiding civilians, like Helping to Leave, a project launched by cognitive neuroscientist-turned-social worker Dina Urich to help Ukrainians escape from occupied territory, which amounts to nearly 20% of the country.

“It breaks our hearts because these people have no basic rights and are treated like slaves,” she said. The sole routes to escape require obtaining a Russian passport from Russian occupation officials, then traveling through Russia and surviving terrifying checkpoints. Many would-be escapees are too old or too frightened to try.

Urich, a young woman who overcame personal health issues to take up this campaign, has to raise all the costs for extracting escapees and finding them shelter when they arrive in free Ukraine. She has 150 volunteers, often people who have been evacuated and want to give back.

“Of course, a lot of volunteers stop because they have to work, or they lose faith,” she said. Indeed, I am hearing that many contributors to volunteer efforts feel tapped out after two years of donations. But most are in it for the long haul.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Urich said. Ukrainians know they are involved in an existential struggle to retain their independence and freedom.

They are people like the volunteers I’ve met with Ukraine TrustChain, who are rebuilding roofs of Russian-destroyed village homes, and risking their lives to rescue villagers displaced by Russia’s recent rampage through villages near Kharkiv. And so many other people spend every spare moment raising funds to help war amputees or feed families displaced by fighting.

They give the lie to Russian propaganda — too often echoed by know-nothing MAGA media in the U.S. — that Ukraine is an authoritarian, or, absurdly, a Nazi, state.

These volunteers illustrate what kind of European democracy Ukraine could be if the United States and its allies finally decided to give Kyiv the weapons it needs now — to push Russia back before it’s too late.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email address is trubin@phillynews.com.

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Janet Jackson took the stage Tuesday night at St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center wearing a comically oversized jacket that, coupled with the lengthy braids she kept sweeping away from her face, kept her largely hidden from the enthusiastic crowd of about 10,000.

It turned out to be an apt metaphor for her enthusiastic, if underwhelming, performance that echoed the 58-year-old’s three most recent local shows in the time since she returned to large-scale touring in 2015.

Her live band, tucked away in the shadows at the back of the stage, often overpowered Jackson, who also leaned heavily into the prerecorded backing vocals. And, once again, she crammed as many songs into her 110 minute show as she could, even if that meant cutting down some of her most-loved songs to a mere verse and chorus.

Jackson did switch up the set list from her previous show at the X, which happened just 13 months ago. Split into four “acts” and a finale, with downtime between each to facilitate Jackson’s costume changes, the show bumped her biggest hits up against relatively obscure album cuts, many drawn from her post-Super Bowl halftime show years when the music industry pretty much abandoned her.

(I, for one, was hoping — hoping, but not expecting — to hear Jackson throw some shade in Justin Timberlake’s direction following his early morning arrest Tuesday on DWI charges in the Hamptons. Alas, she chose grace, something Timberlake most certainly did not in the years since he tossed her under the bus after her infamous “wardrobe malfunction.”)

Jackson opened the first act with “Night,” from her most recent album, 2015’s “Unbreakable.” From there, she dived deep into her catalog for a series of upbeat, sometimes indecipherable, songs delivered as a lengthy medley. It wasn’t until her a cappella intro to “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” that the crowd got their first clear taste of Jackson’s breathy vocals.

Flanked by her muscular dancers, who wore dress shirts with the arms ripped off and plaid skirts, Jackson revisited a trio of her earliest hits during the second act: “What Have You Done for Me Lately,” “Nasty” and “The Pleasure Principle.”

The concert was nearly half over when Jackson shifted into slow jam mode, kicking off a run of songs with 2006’s ode to, uh, self-pleasure “Take Care” followed, funnily enough, by her 1987 ode to chastity “Let’s Wait Awhile.” She let the audience sing the bulk of “Again” and then broke into tears and announced “I love you so much,” a popular refrain from Jackson the few times she did speak to the crowd.

Well into her second hour, Jackson unleashed her full voice for “Alright,” “Escapade” and “Miss You Much” and did the same near the end during “Scream” (accompanied by her late brother Michael’s recorded vocals) and a particularly fiery and noisy “Rhythm Nation.” It would have been great to hear more of that throughout the show.

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