I am going to make some wild guesses here, but they are moderately educated wild guesses. (I don’t want to debate tax dollar usage or the reasons the ships are there in the first place, but I can give some context into what you are seeing that can either support your point or explain it. I don’t care which. You do you.)

Given the timing and that the ships are so close together, it’s probably a group presenting a show of force. A show of force is likely and would be needed especially if that many ships are about to transit the Suez canal. Otherwise, propaganda photo ops are common at the very start or end of deployments. Ships usually aren’t going to be that close together when they are actually in theater. Ships in lines like that means they are likely on the move in a serious kinda way.

The Baatan and Carter Hall were just deployed back to the Mediterranean so it’s likely that pair. Those are two ships close together, not one. (Two islands, two ships. That, or it’s a super weird ship configuration that I am not aware of.) That would also explain the LCAC (hovercraft) since you kinda need an amphib to support it.

One thing for certain and given that they just met up with the Mesa Verde, that adds up to a fuck ton of knuckle draggers… er… Marines… out there in the wild.

As a side note, and likely irrelevant one, that water doesn’t look like the Med. It may be, but the horizon is in the wrong spot. There always seemed to be huge dust clouds in the distance that raised the horizon up a few degrees. It looks colder too, but that is also wild speculation from the rain/fog I see in the distance. The sea is moody, so it could just as easily be the Indian Ocean or the Atlantic.

From a waste perspective, the aircraft probably may not need to be in the air but who knows? Here again, its probably something to do with transiting the Suez Canal. For the life of me, I can’t remember if it is common to have helicopters in the air during a canal transit, or not. (There are agreements with other countries that may determine that stuff.) The LCAC can get back to the hangar bay though. No sailor cares about them unless they are delivering pizza and they are not in the habit of doing regular pizza deliveries. I did get a special Subway delivery once, but that is something considered super rare.

But yeah, it’s insanely expensive to run that many ships but it looks “normal” to me. For better or for worse, we have to keep a fairly substantial force deployed most of the time.