The US Navy’s Aircraft Carrier Troubles Can’t Be Fixed Quickly Enough

Records Few Want to Break

The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the lead vessel of the U.S. Navy’s newest class of supercarriers, was deployed for 326 days, the longest ever for any nuclear-powered warship and the longest of any aircraft carrier since the Vietnam War.

Such time at sea takes a toll on the crew and the vessel.

“Aircraft carriers are frequently discussed as strategic assets almost independently of the people who operate them,” explained geopolitical analyst Irina Tsukerman, president of threat assessment firm Scarab Rising.

“In reality, every additional month a carrier remains deployed means another month of watches, maintenance, flight operations, underway replenishments, interrupted sleep, family separation, and postponed maintenance for thousands of sailors and the ships accompanying them,” Tsukerman wrote in an email.

Those pressures can accumulate unevenly across a deployment and across different departments aboard the same ship. When a carrier spends extraordinarily long periods without port calls while supporting operations around an active war zone, deployment length alone becomes an inadequate measure of the burden being imposed on the crew. “Consecutive time at sea, uncertainty over extensions, operational tempo, and the absence of meaningful recovery periods become equally important,” Tsukerman warned.

A Floating City You Can Never Leave

As of Friday, the USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed for 266 days, still shorter than the 326 days the USS Gerald R. Ford was away from its homeport of Naval Station Norfolk. The difference is that CVN-72 has only been in port twice, and both times for less than a day.

Many sailors haven’t been on dry land since November, and the carrier has been operating in the Middle East since February.

“Spending six months effectively trapped inside the operational ecosystem of a carrier strike group produces a very different burden from a deployment of comparable overall length broken up by regular port visits, suggested Tsukerman.

Modern aircraft carriers are truly enormous ships, and are often described as floating cities. Yet, thousands of people live and work within a confined industrial environment in which machinery operates continuously, aircraft launch and recover at all hours, berthing is crowded, privacy is scarce, and many sailors work rotating schedules that interfere with normal sleep.

The lack of port calls means sailors have had almost no relief.

“Port calls give crews temporary physical separation from that environment and restore some degree of personal autonomy. Sailors can communicate with their families more easily, purchase necessities, eat somewhere other than the ship, experience quiet, and simply spend several hours controlling where they go and what they do,” added Tsukerman.

Those interruptions to the routine have been taken away, but operating around Iran adds sustained uncertainty to the physical exhaustion the sailors may face. The situation would be bad enough if it were just about the USS Abraham Lincoln, but a similar story played out with the USS Gerald R. Ford.

“The George Washington is relieving the Lincoln, which has been at sea over 250 days, about 200 without a port call,” said Aarathi Krishnan, geopolitical strategist, founder and CEO of RAKSHA Intelligence Futures.

Neither carrier was deployed on a war footing, but both saw their deployment extended indefinitely once the conflict with Iran began.

“The U.S. Navy then pulled its only forward-deployed Indo-Pacific carrier rather than surge a rested one,” Krishnan noted, referencing that CVN-72 was on patrol in the South China Sea when it was dispatched to the Middle East.

Krishnan added that Admiral Daryl Caudle, chief of Naval Operations, called CVN-78’s eleven-month-long deployment a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of events he didn’t want repeated.

Yet, here we are!

Tehran May Believe It Can Wait Out The United States

It isn’t just the strain on the sailors and Marines that should be seen as a concern. The conditions aboard these warships continue to make news even as Iran remains defiant, with no clear off-ramp in sight for the United States. Tehran may now be convinced it can simply wait out the United States Navy. Yet, it isn’t waiting passively, said Krishnan.

The regime has made past carrier-killing claims, or that it succeeded in driving away the U.S. Navy. This will remain the official line to the Iranian people.

“Withdrawal is tied to Iran completing nuclear concessions, which is a condition, not a schedule. Iran is betting American political will and munitions run out first; Washington is betting the reverse, and neither bet has been tested,” suggested Krishnan.

In the meantime, Iranian planners can watch the American carrier rotation and calculate how much effort Washington is expending to preserve a continuous high-end naval presence around Iran. Tehran can see how long individual carriers remain deployed, how often deployments are extended, and even which carrier replaces the departing ship.

“Moving the USS George Washington, whose forward-deployed role is closely connected to American commitments in the Western Pacific, provides particularly useful information because it exposes the relationship between Middle Eastern requirements and Indo-Pacific availability,” added Tsukerman.

“For Tehran, every additional month that Washington keeps a carrier strike group in the region generates costs without requiring Iran to attack the carrier itself.”

It Is More Than The Carriers

Although the recent headlines have focused on the conditions on the aircraft carriers, this could be a theater-wide problem for the U.S. Navy. The escorts have been deployed for as long, and in some cases even longer, than the supercarriers. Those vessels have far fewer amenities and less personal space.

“A carrier actually possesses many resources that sailors aboard smaller platforms do not have. Thousands of people serve aboard it, accompanied by substantial medical facilities, chaplains, comparatively extensive exercise facilities, larger food stores, and considerably more physical space,” said Tsukerman. “None of those advantages eliminate the hardships of a prolonged deployment, but their presence makes the reports from the Lincoln especially useful as a warning about what may be occurring elsewhere in the force.”

The destroyers accompanying a carrier strike group can carry crews numbering only a few hundred. Yet, sailors live in much tighter spaces, medical resources are smaller, opportunities for recreation are limited, and individual personnel frequently perform several shipboard responsibilities.

“During operations around Iran, those ships may also carry some of the most demanding defensive responsibilities in the strike group,” Tsukerman continued. “Air and missile defense requires persistent vigilance, particularly when Iranian drones and missiles can appear with limited warning. Months of heightened watch-standing requirements can impose substantial fatigue on relatively small crews.”

Beijing Is Watching

The final consideration is that it isn’t just Iran that is closely monitoring the situation; Beijing is likely watching even more closely. To relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, the United States Navy was forced to send the forward-deployed USS George Washington to the Middle East, the first time the carrier has operated in the region since 2004.

Typically, Yokosuka, Japan-based flattops conduct patrols in the Pacific.

“Taiwanese officials told Reuters that Beijing is reading the U.S. as distracted and timing PLA incursions accordingly. A July assessment documents a coordinated three-ring grey-zone push across the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the same window. A more sober Taiwan-focused read says this hasn’t tipped into anything imminent and Beijing looks content with sustained pressure,” said Krishnan.

The United States military has also expended vast quantities of ordnance in the campaign against Iran, something else noted by China.

“Interceptors and Tomahawks are what a Pacific contingency would consume, and the rebuild runs three to five years,” Krishnan continued. “That sits there regardless of where the carriers are.”