The Chicken of the Sea

[Occhidiangela]

"Mothball" is a term reserved for a ship that is sitting at the pier rusting, not one that is in either a maintenance availability, in a pierside ready surge status, or working up to deployment (training period where the battle group and the carrier's embarked airwing work together before deploying). Calling one of our current commissioned aircraft carriers "mothballed" would get a few sailors' ire.;)

Around PG1 we actually had 15 carriers commissioned--that ~used to be the number stated as the requirement needed to meet the DoD warfighting requirements. That number has dropped to 12 since around 1996. Part of that is due to the cost of keeping 15 carriers around, but more of it is due to the cost of having 15 airwings--the Navy's running about 10ish now, IIRC. Been a few since I was actively working with the air planners, so I may be off by one or two airwings.

And during DS1, six carrier battle groups were deployed in the Persian Gulf/Red Sea.

FWIW:

Lissa was confusing the CV's and the CVN's, I think.

The Navy has "mothballed" or decomissioned a number of the CV's over the past 10 years:(Ranger, Independence, Midway, America, and Constellation), which are run by DFM/petroleum fired steam turbine power plants. I think the Kennedy is one of the last CV's left. She was in the Gulf when I was over there a few years ago, and as I understand it, the decomissioning of it (which the Navy wants due to its high up keep costs) has run into some political snags. USS Kitty Hawk CV 63 is in Japan, and is due to be relieved by a CVN in 2008. Or, so the story went a few months ago.

Occhi