Two Norfolk-based carriers have swapped places in the deployment cycle, Fleet Forces Command announced Monday.
The carrier Truman will deploy in the fall of 2015, nearly half a year ahead of schedule, as the Navy tries to fix the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and ensure its new deployment plan has a strong start. The Eisenhower undocked from a year-long drydock overhaul in late August, but is still in the yard.
The Truman was to anchor the new Optimized Fleet Response Plan, which is designed to provide predictability in deployments and yard time. It requires the entire carrier strike group be primed and go through work-ups in sync. The Eisenhower is more than two months delayed coming out of the yard, and officials confirmed that the repairs arelikely to extend weeks, if not months, into the future.
Carrier maintenance schedules are phenomenally tight. When Ike can leave the yard, Truman go straight in for a maintenance availability. There is only a three week break before the carrier George H.W. Bush is scheduled to follow Truman. Therefore, any delay — and every gray hull has had a delay due to unexpected maintenance caused by the high op tempo — throws a wrench in the Navy's plans.
Officials recognized the need to make the carrier switch while "looking very long range for the best way to do maintenance and operational support schedules, said Lt Cmdr. Cate Cook, Fleet Forces spokeswoman. The switch will ensure national requirements are met by Truman, while Ike will be poised and ready to launch the OFRP program.
"As USFF implements the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, a careful analysis of fleet maintenance, training and operational schedules determined that changing Truman and Eisenhower's long-term schedules would better enable the Navy to provide ready forces for national security taskings," FFC said in the Monday news release.
The Truman carrier strike group had been slated to be the first CSG to go through the new deployment plan, which extends each cycle from 32 months to 36 months. Now the plan is for the Eisenhower to be first.
"OFRP offers more stability and predictability for sailors and families by aligning carrier strike group assets to a 36-month training and deployment cycle," the release stated. "While changing Truman and Eisenhower's schedules impacts the ships' sailors and families, the change ultimately provides better predictability Navywide."
The staff of Carrier Strike Group 10, who had been embarked on the Truman, will shift to the Ike. The schedule change doesn't affect other ships or squadrons, FFC said.
