Let Carriers Do What They Do Best

The aircraft carrier and her strike group ships are essential components of U.S. maritime strategy. Even with upcoming developments in unmanned surface vessels, the tyranny of distance and technological limitations will require manned command-and-control nodes for tactical control. On paper, the U.S. carrier fleet should be well suited to that task; however, the time required to build new hulls means that the fleet the United States has now is the fleet it is going to have to fight with for the next decade at least. Without an immediate reprioritization of how the Navy trains, maintains, and deploys carriers, that fleet may turn out to be brittle and unable to meet the peer threat and emerge victorious.

The “double-pump” deployments of both the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) and Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) are the exclamation point on the Optimized Fleet Response Plan’s (OFRP’s) failure to improve both the material readiness and operational tempo of the Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers. The original OFRP concept imagined a 36-month deployment cycle for carrier strike groups: seven months in maintenance phase, followed by seven months of work-ups (basic ship unit-level training events through the Composite Training Unit Exercise [C2X]), after which the carrier strike group (CSG) would be certified to deploy. A deployment would be followed by a sustainment period, during which readiness levels would be kept high should a carrier need to go on a “surge” deployment in response to a national emergency or emerging threat requirements.¹

The reality is that OFRP may have been doomed before it began. In December 2016, the Dwight D. Eisenhower completed the first CSG deployment within the OFRP construct, with the ship returning to Norfolk seven months after deploying, following a well-regimented maintenance and work-up cycle. The carrier’s workups and deployment look like a validation of the OFRP concept; however, the only reason the Dwight D. Eisenhower had deployed in June 2016 was that she had required 24 months to complete a planned 14-month maintenance availability. The delay required the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) to deploy eight months ahead of schedule.

In 2012, sequestration spending caps let to the cancellation of the Truman’s 2013 deployment, which required the Eisenhower to complete back-to-back seven-month deployments instead. In September 2013, the Eisenhower entered the availability that eventually derailed the Truman’s workup cycle. Subsequently, at the end of her first OFRP sustainment phase, the Eisenhower returned to the shipyard in August 2017 for a planned availability running through February 2018. The Eisenhower would not emerge, however, until March 2019—triple the intended repair period. Over a six-year span, the Eisenhower spent 42 months, or nearly 64 percent of that time, in maintenance, deploying only once.²

Nearly every carrier availability of the past ten years has ended late.³ The Truman’s increased workload, caused by the Eisenhower’s delays, likely contributed to a severe electrical casualty that prevented the carrier from departing for her scheduled deployment in August 2019, forcing the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) to extend her deployment by three months—the longest carrier deployment since the end of the Cold War. A shipyard delay for one carrier demolished the OFRP cycle for two others. The constant requirements in the deployment schedule mean any delay in the workups or maintenance of one carrier will eventually have a negative impact on the entire carrier fleet.

Furthermore, the tactical skills of CSG personnel continually diminish with extended, uncertain maintenance cycles. The combination of maintenance woes and tactical stagnation can leave CSGs ill-prepared to participate in high-level training. This is the price the Navy was destined to pay after 20 years of sustained low-intensity but high operational tempo operations, combined with a shrinking and underfunded shipyard capacity. But with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) already having more ships than the U.S. Navy, along with a resurgent Russian Navy, the current rationale for deploying carriers is dubious, at best.⁴

Change How and When Carriers Deploy

The current focus of carrier deployments is heavily oriented toward presence and deterrence operations, which makes poor use of the carrier fleet and does not prepare units for more dynamic threats. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis’s dynamic force employment (DFE) concept was designed to allow for flexibility of operations and was executed with the Truman’s 2018 deployment.⁵ Carrier deployments should be targeted at three to four months long—as opposed to the current average of seven to nine months—and focused on countering and observing peer-threat nations. These deployments would primarily be to Sixth and Seventh Fleet areas of operations to observe and operate in the vicinity of Russian and Chinese forces.

Though the ability to conduct advanced training would still be limited, strike groups would gain experience operating in areas in which future high-end fights might occur, with increased opportunities to observe peer tactics and disposition. It also would give carriers experience operating in the critical role of at-sea command-and-control nodes that can maintain independent operations even in a communication-denied environment. The end state would combine the randomness of DFE with increased training against the peer threat when not deployed—a fundamental change from the current OFRP construct.

The proposed deployment cycle would be a 36-month process. In that time, CSGs should deploy on at least three patrols of three to four months each. The timing of these patrols would be irregular, but limited to no more than two patrols in an 18-month period, as operational realities allow. Frequent but relatively short availabilities would be programmed to address maintenance issues before they require extensive repairs. At the end of the 36-month period, the carrier would enter an 18-month period that would include a drydocking availability, during which operational tempo would decrease.

Improve Training and Readiness for Peer Threats

In addition to changing the deployment schedule, this proposed cycle also would change how carrier training exercises are conducted. The new cycle would have the initial unit- and group-level training to recertify a strike group immediately following the 18-month maintenance cycle. This would be followed by a deployment exercise akin to the current C2X. However, unlike the current construct, certifying the CSG would not mean that a long deployment is imminent. The CSG could be immediately sent on a patrol or kept in deployable readiness but retained for future operations. If the carrier were retained, it would then conduct another monthlong training exercise within four months of certification. This exercise would be oriented toward fighting peer-level threats. If more than one carrier on a coast were in a deployable status, they could exercise simultaneously to practice carrier strike force tactics.

Following a patrol, another exercise would be held within four to six months, also training against peer threats. This exercise would take the form of a “fleet problem” like those undertaken by carrier groups prior to World War II. The CSG would be given a task—“neutralize” Norfolk, for instance—and would plan the operation based on both previous exercises and lessons learned from patrol. The East and West Coast certification strike groups (CSGs 4 and 15) would “referee” the exercise and control opposing forces. Alternatively, if another CSG were doing its post-certification peer-level exercise, it could serve as the opposing force.

Maintenance at the Tactical Level of War

Despite a $3 billion government investment in shipyard capacity and personnel, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed more than 75 percent of carrier and submarine availabilities between fiscal year (FY) 2015 and FY2019 were late. On average, carrier availabilities were late by 113 days. One of the principal factors was unplanned work discovered after the availability started. GAO also asserted that delays were expected to continue for at least the next two years.⁶ The current industrial capacity of Navy shipyards is ill-suited to maintain 11 carriers.

Today, there are only three shipyards in the continental United States that can perform carrier maintenance: Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and Newport News Shipbuilding. Without additional yard space, there are limited options to reduce the maintenance backlog. One option involves decommissioning carriers to free yard space and personnel to focus on other ships. The nine years (and counting) the Enterprise (CVN-65) has been awaiting disposal following inactivation, however, suggests that deactivating a carrier early would save neither funds nor man-hours. A GAO report from 2018 shows the Navy had spent nearly $900 million to inactivate the Enterprise, with a path to disposal still unclear three years later.⁷

Much of the delay in maintenance work is a consequence of modern contracting, in which nearly all shipyard maintenance is performed by contractors and not uniformed or civilian service personnel. Whenever a specification for a repair needs to be changed, that change must first be analyzed in the context of the initial contract. This process can cause work that would take less than a week to drag out for months as the contracting process runs its course. In tactical conditions, when complicated repairs may need to be done at sea or forward deployed, leaving them to a contracting process is unsustainable.

For many shipboard systems, onboard personnel do not have the training and supplies to effect repairs, which can mean having a technical representative from a manufacturer conduct the repair or waiting for the next yard period. Even if the crew has the technical skills to complete the repair, ship’s personnel normally do not have the training or the authorization to carry out those repairs. Sailors are smart and well trained—if they were given the proper tools and instruction, many additional repairs could be done by ship’s personnel.

The Navy should focus on developing a new cadre of expert maintainers within the ranks who can effect repairs outside of the contracting environment, freeing shipyard periods for work that can only be done in a yard. These expert maintainers also would be directly employed by the Navy and able to perform repair work when needed, as opposed to when it is contracted. Construction of modern repair tenders that can travel with the fleet, carry spares, and fabricate components could further ease stress on shipyard periods.

The Road Ahead

The new tri-service maritime strategy, Advantage at Sea, released in December 2020, highlights the continued growth of the Chinese Navy and the reemergence of the Russian Navy. China is positioning itself to deny the U.S. Navy and its partners access inside the first island chain. Land-based units in Okinawa, Korea, and mainland Japan are highly capable, but they retain the strategic vulnerabilities of fixed fortifications.

The current way carriers are trained, used, and deployed does not support the goals of Advantage at Sea. In times of conflict, naval forces are expected to exploit our control of the seas. Maneuverable strike forces—composed of multiple carrier strike groups, surface action groups, and expeditionary strike groups, and augmented by unmanned platforms—will launch overpowering air and missile attacks from unexpected directions.⁸

Though laudable, this goal is impossible to achieve if only three of the Navy’s carriers are deployable at any time. A true carrier striking force in the Pacific would need at least two carriers in theater, with an additional carrier in reserve and a fourth available for stateside training and surge. The continued deployment of carriers to theaters that do not need their unique capabilities will degrade readiness of both ships and crews to fight the peer threat.

Any large-scale conflict in the Pacific likely would be decided in a matter of weeks or months. The forces the United States can bring at the start of the fight are likely the only ones that will be available for some time. The Navy must maintain and train every carrier as if it were about to engage in a peer-level fight. The carrier force must do that for which only it is suited. While aircraft carriers excel at showing the flag, other forces can do that mission in peacetime. The Navy must now concentrate on preserving and readying its aircraft carriers for the fight ahead.