BBC Verify has now tracked 12 US ships in the Middle East: the Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class carrier, which together with three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers forms a carrier strike group; plus two destroyers capable of carrying out long-range missile strikes and three specialist ships for combat near to the shore that are currently positioned at Bahrain naval station in the Gulf. Two other destroyers have been seen in the eastern Mediterranean near the Souda Bay US base, and one more in the Red Sea.