Five days after firing the commander of a coronavirus-crippled U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, and a day after apologizing for calling that skipper naive and stupid in heated remarks to that warship's crew, acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has called it quits. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has accepted his resignation.

Modly resigned amid public outrage over his handling of the COVID-19 crisis aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt and growing demands from congressional Democrats for his removal. ...

Modly's departure as the Navy's top civilian official comes two weeks after the drama of the Roosevelt began, when the warship confirmed its first three cases of COVID-19 among more than 5,800 crew members after making port calls in Vietnam.

An impassioned memo emailed to superior officials and dated March 30 from the carrier's commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, described an "accelerating" crisis aboard and pleaded for swift removal of its crew to adequate quarantine housing in Guam, where the warship is currently docked.

Two days ago, three U.S. Navy sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) tested positive for COVID-19. Yesterday an additional five sailors tested positive. This is the first time that the Navy has detected the virus aboard a warship at sea. While aircraft carriers have capable and well-equipped medical departments, complete with operating rooms and intensive care units, ships at sea are an extremely difficult environment in which to quarantine individuals who are infected. Accordingly, Roosevelt has suspended its deployment and is now in port in Guam. The entire ship will be placed in quarantine while its crew, literally all of the personnel aboard, will be tested for COVID-19.

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Reasonable people can differ on whether the aircraft carrier, with its massive cost basis and uncertain survivability against modern anti-ship ballistic missiles and other emerging threats, is still the best option for protecting American interests abroad. With that said, for the near future at least, the aircraft carrier still plays a central role in America's national security strategy, and a COVID outbreak on a currently deployed aircraft carrier threatens to remove that forward-deployed part of America's national security construct on short notice and leave a large and unfillable gap for a period of at least several months. ...