Quoting unnamed Pentagon sources, Defense News is reporting that the United States Navy is giving serious consideration to retiring the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS George Washington when its mid-life refueling comes due in 2016. This class of aircraft carrier is designed for a fifty year life, with a mid-life refueling and refurb. This process is called a Refueling Complex Overhaul (RCOH).
The USS Theodore Roosevelt is in its final year of RCOH and the Abraham Lincoln is scheduled to begin its three year RCOH in the summer of 2012. If this proposed change to the George Washington’s schedule occurs, the ship could be decommissioned at any time between 2016 and 2021. That would leave the Navy with ten nuclear aircraft carriers.
The Washington is home ported in Japan. Its fuel use is less than those carriers that are home ported in the continental U.S. That may allow the GW additional years of operation beyond 2016 without the benefit of an RCOH.
The loss of the GW’s RCOH would leave a gap in the schedule at Newport News, and would mean the loss of related jobs, subcontracts, etc. Roosevelt’s RCOH costs plus fixed fee contract started at $2.4 billion. The last RCOH, on Carl Vinson, resulted in costs of $3.1 billion.
The next class of carrier will be the Gerald R. Ford class. The first ship of the class is being built at this time at Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia. The USS Gerald Ford is scheduled to be commissioned in 2016, and the second carrier of the class is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy in 2020.
A temporary or permanent reduction of Navy carriers from 11 to 10 must be approved by Congress. Federal law currently mandates 11 carriers. The USS Enterprise, the oldest carrier in the fleet, is due to be decommissioned 2013.
Four carriers are reported underway as of today’s Navy Status Report. The ability of the U.S. Navy to respond to both the national security and humanitarian assistance requests of the Commander in Chief are largely dependent on the availability of the carriers.
Charles Simmins brings thirty years of accounting and management experience to his coverage of the news. An upstate New Yorker, he is a free lance journalist, former volunteer firefighter and EMT, and is owned by a wife and four cats.
