Why Can’t We Just Send Another Carrier?
Sent to newspapers 8/14/2026
Aircraft Carriers 101
There’s been a lot of coverage this week over the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), the aircraft carrier currently in the North Arabian Sea supporting whatever we’re calling the war with Iran.
The Lincoln has been deployed for nine months, 50% longer than a typical deployment, and has gone nearly the entire time without a port visit. In all this time, there have only been two days when the crew have stepped off the ship.
More importantly, that’s only two days to pick up supplies. All resupply has taken place via underway replenishment, or UNREP, from supply ships at sea via high-tension cables. UNREP only delivers a fraction of what can be obtained from a land-based warehouse, and fresh food is severely limited.
Further, the work in the Fifth Fleet Area of Responsibility, or AOR, is especially grueling. Aircraft carriers have one job: operate a fully functional mobile airfield to deliver air support anywhere in the world. This includes launching and recovering aircraft, as well as storage and repair for 70-90 airplanes.
In the Arabian Sea, temperatures on the flight deck routinely exceed 130 degrees. And up to 150 Sailors are launching and recovering aircraft at a rate of one every 20-60 seconds. Weapons are stored and maintained on board. The ship itself is operating a nuclear reactor for propulsion and ship’s power.
Armchair warriors may say that the Sailors in the Lincoln strike group signed up for this. Yes, the draft ended more than 50 years ago. That does not make military service easy any more than working in law enforcement or as a first responder is. Possibly the most worrisome story this month out of the Fifth Fleet AOR is reporting that several Lincoln crewmembers have attempted to throw themselves overboard.
Neither humans nor ships can run indefinitely.
The Lincoln is accompanied by three destroyers and a submarine. In addition to air reconnaissance and strike capability from the Lincoln, these ships provide guided missile capability, counter mine measures and undersea screening. All in all, the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group includes about 7,500 Sailors enduring a nine-month deployment.
Aircraft carriers are marvels of design, engineering, training, and logistics. Tens of thousands of men and women – Sailors, civilians, and contractors – are involved every day in making sure that these amazing ships are ready to project power around the globe. It’s a tremendous undertaking no other nation can match.
One question you may ask is, “why don’t we just send out another carrier?” After all, we have 11 of them. And we are required by law to maintain 11 aircraft carriers in inventory. I’ve tried to explain quickly just how complex operating an aircraft carrier is. Deploying one takes a toll on the crew and also the materiel condition of the ship.
To keep the Fleet operating smoothly, the Navy has an Optimized Fleet Response Plan, or OFRP. The OFRP is designed to ensure maximum readiness and flexibility while ensuring Sailors and ships are at optimal training and maintenance levels. It’s basically a train-deploy-sustain-maintain cycle.
Sticking to the OFRP is challenging for a number of reasons. One is industrial capacity. For carriers, there is only one place to build them and only one place to refuel them and it is the same place for both. It’s a matter of limited drydock real estate for something as massive as an aircraft carrier hull. If the schedule slips for any reason, it starts a backlog.
Then there is a question of manpower. The shipyard workforce is shrinking and is fighting for workers. The Columbia-class submarine program has recently doubled its build rate. This requires workers – many of whom are being drawn from the available pool who would be working on aircraft carriers.
Against this backdrop, extended deployments that throw off the timing of a Planned Incremental Availability (PIA) at shipyards – the typical maintenance period post-deployment – change schedules for the yards and shift capacity. Then there is the issue of deployments 50-90% longer than planned, combat deployments, and the associated wear and tear on the ships that come with these.
New ships are also delayed. The USS Doris Miller (CVN 81) has just been pushed out to 2034, meaning a 15-year build time. That means the oldest carrier, USS Nimitz (CVN 68), had to extend its current 51-year service life to meet the 11-carrier statutory requirement. The Nimitz does not have enough fuel in its reactor to deploy so only serves as a paper tiger. USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) is scheduled to be delivered as a new carrier in 2027, allowing the Nimitz to be decommissioned.
The Nimitz is undeployable. USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) is currently in its once-in-a-lifetime refueling, now extended into 2027, so is undeployable until then. Also off the roster is the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) which just entered the yard for its refueling and requires extensive repairs after a major collision at sea earlier this year. Truman will not return to service until 2031. USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) is completing a routine PIA. USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) will be in the yard for 12-14 months in its first PIA after an 11-month combat deployment that included a shipboard fire that burned for more than two days.
That leaves six carriers. Lincoln we all know about. She’s about to be heading home and to a PIA of her own – she’s off the list. She will be relieved by USS George Washington (CVN 73), which is the carrier permanently forward deployed to Japan to serve as a deterrent in the Seventh Fleet AOR, which includes China and North Korea.
The four remaining carriers are USS Eisenhower (CVN 69), currently in pre-deployment workups, USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), beginning pre-deployment workups, USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), deploying next month, and the USS George Bush (CVN 77), which deployed to the Fifth Fleet AOR in March.
From getting fresh milk to a ship in the Arabian Sea, to calculating the correct catapult setting for each aircraft based on how much fuel it’s carrying every 30 seconds during a launch sequence, to rejiggering the maintenance package after the ship endures a deployment more than 80% longer than planned, to keeping the crew going after an aircraft goes over the side, the cost of these extended combat deployments cannot be overstated.
The White House issued a presidential memo Aug. 13 which, among other things, ordered a reversion of technology onboard aircraft carriers back to World War II-era innovation. The Navy is directed to scrap the all-electric catapults and aircraft elevators currently being installed on the Ford-class carriers and return to the steam catapults and hydraulic elevators on the Nimitz-class ships.
The Wall Street Journal reported Aug. 14 that President Trump had this to say about the naval deployment in the Arabian sea: “not nearly long enough.”
Imagine if the manager of the Dodgers asked superstar Shohei Ohtani run a marathon before each game and then ordered him to pitch blindfolded. I kind of feel that’s how this President feels about the U.S. Navy.
Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appeared regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican for 36 years, she became an independent upon reading the 2024 Republican platform. She lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and one of cat. She can be reached at merritt@merrittocracy.news.