So much for OPTEMPO/PERSTEMPO…
The ship left Naval Base San Diego on Nov. 21, 2025, as part of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. It remained at sea even after the carrier group moved on and the Lincoln returned to its home port.
Full article, HERE from Navy Times.
This mess goes back to the whole issue of how many ships the Navy has versus how many commitments the Navy has, e.g. operational requirements to meet, training requirements that have to be done underway, workups, multicountry exercises, etc. etc.
When you add in the missed maintenance availabilities, pushed upgrade schedules, etc. you end up with situations like the USS Boise, $800 million spent and NO upgrades done, one deployment in 11 years, and basically tied to the pier since 2015, lost dive certification in 2017, and IF a slot was found, it wouldn’t be back until 2030! So they decommissioned it, HERE.
And we’ve seen issues going back, that I know of, to at least 2007 on the surface fleet with cost cutting (sequestration), that pushed maintenance out years, lack of shipyards certified to actually DO the work, and pushing a lot of stuff off on the minimally manned ships (after saying the ‘extra’ sailors would be on shore duty to ‘help’ with maintenance.
The other thing you get into is the various technical inserts, and ‘builds’ for the ships, meaning ships of the same class do not have the same equipment or capabilities, and crews cannot directly cross platforms in class to benefit a crew…
And it’s NOT getting any better…
There are really two choices, either build more ships (which takes years), or cut commitments to a realistic level and actually start doing the maintenance on time!
Figure the odds of either of those actually happening…
OBTW, aviation is not in any better shape, you just don’t hear as much about it…