The Navy, which has been operating without an aircraft carrier in the Middle East since the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) moved out of the Persian Gulf last month, expects further carrier gaps in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific next year, service officials said Tuesday.
“There are, in the next year, some periods similar to what we’re seeing in CENTCOM (Central Command) AOR (area of responsibility) this year,” Vice Adm. John Aquilino, deputy chief of naval operations for operations, plans and strategy (N3/N5), told the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower and projection forces subcommittee.
Aquilino, citing classification concerns, declined to comment on duration of future gaps and when they would occur.
The USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) is slated to deploy to the Middle East to replace the Roosevelt. However, Sean Stackley, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, told reporters after the hearing that he would not disclose when that will happen.
Since the retirement of the USS Enterprise (CVN 65) in 2012, the service has had to work with a 10-carrier fleet and won’t be up to its usual, congressionally-mandated requirement of 11 carriers until the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is delivered in 2016, Navy officials told lawmakers.
Maintenance needs are also taking a toll on the fleet. Currently, only five aircraft carriers are available for operations. The Navy has three carriers in deep maintenance and one undergoing refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH). Another, the USS George Washington (CVN 73) will travel in December from San Diego to Newport News, Va., for its own RCOH, said Rear Adm. Thomas Moore, program executive officer for carriers.
Because of the high operational tempo over the last couple of years, more carriers are in depot maintenance than what the service would normally have under a stable operational cycle, Stackley said.
“We’re operating a small number of carriers, low density-high demand, and if the temperature rises in a risk area around the world, then the senior leadership is going to have to decide: is it more important to do that maintenance, which is a long term investment, or do we have to respond today to the immediate crisis,” he said.
If a contingency occurs, it’s possible for the service to speed up an availability to push a carrier out of maintenance, but the Navy might have to accept some risk in the area of training, Aquilino said.
“It’s pretty hard to button up a carrier in RCOH, but there’s others that are at certain levels where we’d be able to accelerate their getting into sea,” he said,
However, Moore warned that if carriers do not get the maintenance they need, they may not be able to last their entire service lives.
“Could you do it? Yeah, you could do it once,” Moore said of rapidly moving a ship from an availability into a deployment. But “we’re consuming the service life of these ships at a pace that’s faster than their design, and eventually you’re going to use up that service life, and then we’ll be in a situation where they won’t make it 50 years, and the domino effects from that will really cause significant problems.”
Although the Navy will technically be up to 11 carriers when the Ford is delivered next year, it won’t be deployed until at least 2021, after it’s gone through testing, shock trials and training with its crew, he said.