After Washington’s refueling woes, US Navy eyes new plans for carriers
By Megan Eckstein
Thursday, Jul 6
WASHINGTON — With the aircraft carrier George Washington back at sea — albeit two years behind schedule — the U.S. Navy is combing through lessons learned from the delay in order to apply them to two other ships.
The ship’s midlife refueling and modernization effort was plagued by the pandemic, industrial base challenges and unexpected repair work related to years worth of deployments. The Navy is now eyeing contractual changes and other reforms to both get another carrier, the John C. Stennis, out of its ongoing refueling as close to on-time as possible and to benefit the next two carriers in line for their midlife work.
Washington began its refueling and complex overhaul — a four-year event that takes place at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding 25 years into a nuclear-powered carrier’s 50-year life — in August 2017. It should have finished that work in the summer of 2021, but instead the ship departed from the site on May 25, nearly two years late.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the shipbuilder continued producing and repairing the Navy’s aircraft carriers and submarines; for the most part, delays most starkly affected construction of new attack submarines.
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2023/07/06/after-washingtons-refueling-woes-us-navy-eyes-new-plans-for-carriers/
