US Puts World’s Largest Carrier Fleet To Work

More than half of the 11 United States Navy aircraft carriers—which is the largest fleet in the world—were underway over the weekend as Washington faced a sea power gap while juggling multiple fronts.
A “multi-carrier formation” transited the Atlantic Ocean for an ordnance transfer with two supply ships on Saturday, according to photos published by the U.S. Navy on Saturday and Sunday. The “flat-tops” in the formation were USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, USS Harry S. Truman, and USS Gerald R. Ford.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Harry S. Truman are the 97,000-ton Nimitz-class. The Gerald R. Ford is the lead ship of its class and the world’s largest aircraft carrier with a displacement of 100,000 tons. All of the three ships are East Coast-based at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower and its carrier strike group returned to Norfolk last month following what the Navy called a “historic” nine-month deployment in the Middle East. They engaged in combats amid Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels’ attacks on shipping in the Red Sea region.
Warships assigned to the strike group—a cruiser and four destroyers—launched 155 missiles for air defense, and 135 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles for striking targets on land. Meanwhile, the carrier air wing expended nearly 60 air-to-air missiles and released 420 air-to-surface weapons.
The Gerald R. Ford also returned to Norfolk in January following an eight-month deployment in Europe. However, its deployment with the carrier strike group was extended 76 days following the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war in October of last year while operating in the Mediterranean Sea.
The Navy said the Gerald R. Ford, its newest “flat-top” which was commissioned in 2017, was underway in the Atlantic Ocean to further develop core unit capabilities and skills like fuels certification and ammunition on-load during its basic phase of the optimized fleet response plan.
The plan is used for streamlining maintenance and deployment cycles across the fleet to fit in a standard 36-month rotation, according to the Navy. The functions of this plan included surging the force if required and resetting the force so the fleet remains ready to respond to world events.
As for the Harry S. Truman, it was underway completing its final deployment preparations ahead of deployment later this year, according to the Navy and the U.S. Naval Institute’s USNI News.
There are two more Norfolk-based aircraft carriers, but they were not available for tasking. USS John C. Stennis was undergoing a midlife overhaul that was due to complete by October 2026. It was also expected USS George H.W. Bush to finish its maintenance and upgrades by July 2024.
There are six West Coast-based aircraft carriers, two of them were underway in the Middle East as of Sunday, open-source satellite imagery showed. USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Abraham Lincoln operated in the Gulf of Oman, a gateway to the Strait of Hormuz, 161 miles apart.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday during a call that he has ordered the presence of the two American carrier strike groups to remain in the region, following Israel’s airstrikes on Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon earlier in the day.
Both the Theodore Roosevelt and the Abraham Lincoln had sailed from Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, California, for scheduled deployments in the Western Pacific Ocean, but they were retasked by the Pentagon amid heightened tensions between Israel and Iran in recent days.
Newsweek’s weekly update showed the USS George Washington departed from North Island and was underway in the Eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday. It has been designated the Navy’s forward-deployed aircraft carrier to Japan and was expected to deploy to Yokosuka naval base this fall.
For the rest of the “flat-tops” in the West Coast, the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan were still moored at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton of Washington State, while the USS Carl Vinson continued pierside in its homeport at North Island, according to Newsweek’s weekly update.
Although no aircraft carrier was immediately available for deployment to China’s nearby waters, the U.S. military has rebutted concerns about any shortage of American capabilities in the region, claiming it remained appropriately postured for emergencies in East Asia and the Middle East.
The Navy will struggle to find like-for-like substitutes for aircraft carriers as neither amphibious assault ships, destroyer groups nor submarines can replace them in terms of capability or posture they afford, according to an analyst.