Is the US Navy reaching a breaking point? The imminent arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz back at its home base in Bremerton, Washington, after nearly a year at sea, has highlighted a growing problem for the Navy—the breakdown of its deployment and maintenance schedules as a result of the huge “demand signal” from the combatant commands, but most especially U.S. Central Command, with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command coming in a close second. In other words, the Navy’s attempt to meet the demand for forces is starting to break the fleet.
Until the last decade, the U.S. Navy tried to limit deployments to six months to give crew members ample time for training and maintenance, reports Defense News. But as the fleet contracted and demands remained steady — or occasionally grew — the length of Navy deployments exploded to as many as 10 months or more, forcing the fleet to fall back on extreme measures, such as sending carriers out twice in the same 36-month deployment cycle, colloquially known as a “double-pump” deployment. This has caused chaos in the Navy’s shipyards, where ships can no longer be brought in according to a regular maintenance schedule, and when ships do come, the work takes longer because of the extended deployments.
