Majority of America’s 100,000 ton Supercarriers Under Repairs and Maintenance - Not At Sea

The U.S. Navy is currently the only service in the world which deploys supercarriers, with 10 Nimitz Class ships and a newer Gerald Ford Class platform currently in service each displacing 100,000 tons. The warships are all nuclear powered, integrate advanced catapult launch systems and deploy a wide range of aircraft from E-2 Hawkeye airborne early warning and control platforms to E/A-18G electronic attack jets. While the American carrier fleet is larger those of all other military power combined, the massive costs of operating the warships, their complement of aircraft and their required escort of destroyers and cruisers has meant that a large portion of the fleet remains out of service. This is compounded by the age of many of the older Nimitz Class warships which require more maintenance than newer vessels. Of eleven supercarriers, six are currently undergoing either repairs or maintenance and are not a available for combat operations. These ships are currently based on the United States’ East Coast in Norfolk.

Maintenance issues for the American carrier fleet are unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future. The Nimitz Class carrier USS Harry Truman suffered serious issues with its electric grid in September 2019 and was forced to abandoned  its mission, returning to Norfolk, while the newer USS Gerald Ford has suffered considerable delays in its entry into frontline service due to flaws with a number of its subsystems from elevators to sensors. With ten Nimitz Class carriers set to all be replaced by Gerald Ford Class ships, it remains to be seen whether the newer warships with their smaller crews and higher levels of automation will prove easier or more difficult to maintain in an operational capacity. With China building its own supercarriers, and Russia considering a massive nuclear powered platform of its own under the SHTORM program, it also remains uncertain to what extent other operators of such large warships will be able to maintain high availability rates.