US Navy aircraft carrier John C. Stennis: Out of action for over 5 years

Summary and key points: The overhaul and refueling of USS John C. Stennis, originally scheduled to be completed in August 2025, will be delayed by 14 months due to COVID-related personnel and material shortages and is now scheduled to be completed in October 2026, bringing the total downtime for the overhaul to over five years.

– Rear Admiral Casey Morton cited mandatory growth work and industrial base challenges as other reasons for the delay. The overhaul, which begins in 2021, aims to extend Stennis’ service life by decades.

– The Navy is incorporating lessons learned from USS George Washington’s lengthy overhaul to improve sailors’ quality of life during that time, including better accommodations and off-ship amenities.

USS John C. Stennis overhaul delayed by 14 months due to COVID-19 bottlenecks

USS John C. Stennis’s According to the U.S. Navy’s fiscal year 2025 budget, overhaul and refueling will be delayed by an additional 14 months.

The overhaul began in 2021 and was scheduled to last until August 2025. But now Stennis will not be available until October 2026. According to Rear Admiral Casey Morton, the delay is due to COVID-related personnel and material shortages.

Last April, NAVSEA said the Stennis The delay was due to “both mandatory growth work following the assessment of the ship’s condition and challenges related to the industrial base.”

The Navy hopes to incorporate the experiences of the USS George Washington’s last overhaul.

“George Washington was at the Newport News shipyard for nearly six years before completing RCOH (Refueling and Complex Overhaul). Sailors working in the shipyard faced some of the harshest conditions in the military, according to a 2023 Navy investigation that followed the suicide of several sailors assigned to the aircraft carrier,” USNI reported.

Stennis is expected to be overtaken faster than George Washingtonwith more attention being paid to sailors’ quality of life, but it will still be the second longest aircraft carrier overhaul since 2001.

Follow trends

Since 2001, the US Navy has completed seven aircraft carrier overhauls. The shortest overhaul was the USS Nimitzat 1129 days. Four overhauls lasted between 1,338 and 1,506 days – USS Dwight D. EisenhowerUSS Carl VinsonUSS Theodore Rooseveltand USS Abraham Lincoln.

Stennis And George Washington are outliers. The Stennis The overhaul is expected to take 1,990 days. George Washington’s The overhaul took 2,120 days.

The Navy has requested additional funding for Stennis Sailors are to live off the ship during the overhaul. The funds are earmarked for “additional months of crew housing and more off-ship housing in apartments rather than barracks for sailors,” USNI reported, citing Navy budget documents. “Beginning with (Stennis) RCOH, during the RCOH no onboard crew accommodations that provide sleeping accommodation for the seafarers will be used. In previous RCOH availabilities, the onboard crew changeover took place almost a year before the redelivery of the vessel.”

The additional funds are the result of an investigation which found that the overhaul George Washington Sailors had the “toughest standard of living in the U.S. military.” Specifically, the study found that Washington Seafarers face problems with “a lack of parking, adequate accommodation and other amenities such as reliable Wi-Fi and healthy food options.”

The Navy plans to build a $120 million garage that will create 2,800 parking spaces. Washington Seafarers often had to use satellite parking, which could mean a travel time of up to three hours to work.

Stennis was commissioned in 1995 and her RCOH will extend her service life for decades. The seventh Nimitz-class carrier, Stennis is nuclear-powered and can operate for 20 to 25 years without refueling. The ship has space for a crew of 6,500 men. It can accommodate 90 aircraft, including F/A-18, MH-60 and E-2C.

About the author: Defense expert Harrison Kass

Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer who has written over 1,000 articles on world affairs. Harrison is a lawyer, pilot, guitarist, and part-time professional hockey player. He joined the U.S. Air Force as a student pilot but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.

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