The aircraft carrier USS George Washington transited the Arabian Sea today after arriving in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) region yesterday, the command announced via X. The move was designed to relieve the overworked USS Abraham Lincoln and comes as the U.S. continues to maintain a naval blockade of Iranian ports amid ongoing tensions with Tehran. However, the deployment also leaves the U.S. bereft of aircraft carriers in the western Pacific, at least for the moment, highlighting the strain on one of its most important assets for American power projection. Extended deployments across multiple carriers is putting extreme stress on the carrier force and could have major cascading effects as maintenance required to reset these ships after deployments draws on longer than originally planned. At the same time, delays in carrier production could also exacerbate the future availability of the force.
The need to redeploy the Washington from Yokosuka, Japan, where it is based, to the CENTCOM region was sparked by concerns about the condition of the crew of the Lincoln. That carrier reportedly endured grueling conditions amid round-the-clock operations without any liberty port calls since deploying last year. The issue sparked outrage from those worried about the mental and physical health of the sailors and Marines aboard, as well as pushback from U.S. officials who claimed the media was blowing the situation out of proportion.
The addition of the Washington comes as the Lincoln has departed. That means there are now two carriers in the Middle East at the moment. The USS George H.W. Bush arrived in the region on April 23.
While the U.S. and Iran have stopped firing at each other, the region remains a tinderbox. Both Washington and Tehran are claiming control over the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations to end hostilities have broken down.
With the ongoing blockade, as well as CENTCOM’s efforts to move millions of barrels of oil through its preferred southern route close to Oman, there is still a need for the aviation assets provided by carriers and the strike and defensive missile capabilities provided by their escort ships. This is especially true for contingency operations, deterring Iran, and pressuring them to conform to Washington’s demands.
As we noted earlier in this story, all this leaves Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), with no carrier coverage in theater to deter or counter potential PRC or DPRK aggression. Carrier gaps in the Pacific were rare up until 2024, which marked the first time in decades that the U.S. had no flattops in Asia. Though the U.S. military has been largely focused on the Middle East, the PACOM region remains the top concern among many within the national security apparatus, as China is America’s top pacing threat and North Korea remains unpredictable and dangerous. Russian operations in the Pacific are another issue, among a slew of others.
The extended deployment of the Lincoln, and the need to replace it, didn’t just create an issue, albeit temporary, for PACOM. Typical carrier deployments last about six to seven months, a period designed to ensure the ships can maintain readiness and the crews do not get worn out. When that doesn’t happen, it creates a cascading series of problems that affect not just the ships and crews, but the facilities that have scheduled repairs and lined up workers to make them happen.
The bottom line is that the longer these vessels stay out on cruise, the longer they have to stay in on deep maintenance, and past a certain point, the magnitude of this relationship skyrockets. Extra days out can turn into extra weeks in the yard, and so on. With yard facilities at a premium, especially those capable of dealing with a supercarrier, critical schedules can quickly implode, with work stacking up across multiple vessels, resulting in them being sidelined much longer than planned. You can read all about this in our past feature linked here.
For instance, after returning from a historic 11-month deployment, USS Gerald R. Ford transited to Pier 5N at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in July to begin its first post-deployment Planned Incremental Availability (PIA). Ford’s PIA will take longer than initially expected due to the stress from its journey, including a fire the laundry room that raged for more than 30 hours and will require an additional, concurrent availability. This will likely extend its time in dry dock, a situation experienced by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower after it had an epic deployment. Of note is that the damage to the Ford meant it had to depart the CENTCOM region in March at the height of the war on Iran. That left just one carrier on station, which, ironically, was the Lincoln.
There are several other issues being faced by the carrier force as the Navy has had to juggle maintenance schedules to make up for construction delays.
The future Ford class USS John F. Kennedy is not scheduled for delivery until March 2027. JFK just completed Acceptance Trials Aug. 15, following a four-day underway period off the Atlantic Coast. The Navy had originally planned to take delivery of the Kennedy in 2022, but that was delayed until March 2027 “to support completion of Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) certification and continued Advanced Weapons Elevator (AWE) work,” according to the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget request. To offset that, the decommissioning of the USS Nimitz was pushed back.
The entire Ford class program has been running years behind schedule and now the U.S. Navy is reportedly evaluating changes to the Ford class that could add further delays. This includes moving the island superstructure further forward on the flight deck and abandoning the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) catapults and Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE) on the Ford class, starting with the future USS Doris Miller.
As for what carrier capacity is actually available today, four are currently offline or waiting to enter maintenance availabilities.
The USS John C. Stennis moved to complete a Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH) period at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia in May 2021. When the contract was awarded to Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) in February 2021, work was expected to be completed by October 2025, and the downstream effects of the extended delay have rippled across the fleet.
Nimitz class aircraft carriers typically complete RCOH, a lengthy modernization and maintenance period that includes a nuclear refuel, at the halfway point of their expected 50-year service life. The Navy is rethinking its approach to speed up future such overhauls and cut down on labor requirements, beginning with USS Harry S. Truman.
Truman is pierside in Norfolk, Virginia, waiting to enter RCOH following the Stennis, as only one shipyard on the East Coast is capable of conducting such invasive maintenance.
USS Ronald Reagan is the only carrier on the West Coast that is unavailable to deploy today. It was previously forward-deployed to Yokosuka, Japan, completed a hull swap with USS George Washington in mid-2025 and is currently in dry dock at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Bremerton, Washington. When the contract for the Drydocking PIA (DPIA) was awarded in 2025, work was expected to be completed by August 2026, and the timeline appears to be on schedule. According to Stars & Stripes, Ronald Reagan is expected to wrap up the 17-month DPIA and return to service by the end of the month.
This leaves three carriers that could be pushed toward the Pacific in an emergency, one of which is largely ready for deployment. The USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS Carl Vinson, and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, are in various states of readiness and working up in preparation for future deployments. Theodore Roosevelt, which completed COMPTUEX in May before participating in large-scale exercise RIMPAC 2026 over the summer, is expected to deploy in the very near term, and is the most likely to be sent to the Pacific. Also homeported out of San Diego, Carl Vinson pulled out of port on August 10 and is underway training off the West Coast. As of publication. Dwight D. Eisenhower finished a 16-month post-deployment PIA and completed sea trials in April, and most recently returned home on July 27 after conducting an ammo onload with dry cargo/ammo ship USNS Medgar Evers.
Lincoln, as we noted earlier in this piece, is heading home to San Diego after leaving the CENTCOM region, but when it will return to service is unknown. There is an upcoming DPIA scheduled for the carrier, according to Fiscal Year 2027 budget documents, but the timeline is unclear. Based on the history of other lengthy carrier deployments, that could be delayed as well.
So, it’s likely another carrier strike group will be heading toward the West Pacific soon and the gap won’t be a prolonged one, but after multiple prolonged deployments, America’s carrier force may be set up for a larger availability crisis down the line.
Contact the authors: howard@twz.com; ian.ellis-jones@recurrent.io