Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash., has repaired Navy ships in the Pacific Northwest since 1891. (Defense Department)
BREMERTON, Wash. — The Navy has begun a $145 million overhaul of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard’s “electrical backbone,” the first step in preparing Naval Base Kitsap to homeport the new USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier.
“This project represents a huge infrastructure investment, supporting both increased capacity and reliability,” said Dave Sweet, the project director at the shipyard.
The 179-acre shipyard, which is part of Naval Base Kitsap, is the Navy’s largest shore facility in the Pacific Northwest, with 15,000 military and civilian workers.
The new project is part of the service’s more than $20 billion Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program.
The program would modernize four public shipyards — Puget Sound, Norfolk, Va., Portsmouth, N.H., and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii — that by mid-century would include advanced power transmission systems and renovations or replacement of dry docks.
The Navy so far has completed 44 projects costing $1.2 billion and has another 48 projects authorized with a projected cost of $6 billion, including the renovation or replacement of four dry docks. Nearly 250 pieces of shipyard equipment have been replaced at the four yards.
“We’ve had work at the other three shipyards, but this is the first SIOP project at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard,” said William Couch, a spokesman for Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command in Washington, D.C.
The work will replace an electrical substation officials said has become “degraded” by age and cannot support Ford-class aircraft carriers.
The Kennedy is the second of the Gerald Ford-class carriers to be built for the Navy. Each features advanced electronics, automated defense systems, and electromagnetic-driven aircraft elevators and launch systems. All require three times the electricity when in port compared to the Nimitz-class carriers that now account for 10 of the Navy’s 11 carriers.
Only Norfolk Naval Station and its shipyard have had the electrical upgrade to homeport Ford-class carriers.
Upgrading the electrical system will allow the Defense Department to place its most technologically advanced aircraft carriers on the Pacific Coast at Kitsap, which is adjacent to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, at a time when concerns about conflict with China have been on the rise.
“The Navy’s ability to deter adversaries and project power in the Indo-Pacific depends on our ability to maintain and modernize the fleet at home,” said Capt. Preston Taylor, commanding officer, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Northwest.
The USS Nimitz at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in 2018. The Nimitz, now deployed in the East China Sea, is scheduled to retire in 2026. (Puget Sound Naval Shipyard)
Kitsap is now the homeport of two carriers — USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz.
Sweet, the project director at the site in Bremerton, said the shipyard and Navy base will be able to operate normally during the electrical overhaul.
“The project isn’t displacing anything,” he said.
The Reagan recently began 17 months of maintenance at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
The 50-year-old Nimitz is deployed in the South China Sea, but the Navy plans to bring it back to Kitsap for a short stay before its permanent change of homeport to Norfolk no later than April 2026. The move to the East Coast will mark the beginning of the ship’s decommissioning.
The Nimitz would be replaced in the fleet by the Kennedy, which would move from Norfolk to Kitsap by 2029. That would give the Navy one Ford-class carrier on each coast.
Congress has authorized six Ford-class carriers, though plans call for replacing all 10 of the Nimitz carriers with Ford-class ships by 2069, when the youngest of the class — USS George H.W. Bush — would be 50 years old.
USS Gerald Ford was commissioned in 2017 and is homeported at Norfolk. The Kennedy is nearing completion at HII-Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia and is scheduled to join the fleet later this year.
The future USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller are under construction at Newport News with commissioning scheduled in 2029 and 2032, respectively. Congress recently approved the purchase of two more carriers — the USS William J. Clinton and USS George W. Bush. The carriers would be commissioned at some point after 2036.
Due to delays in the delivery of the Ford-class carriers, the Navy has extended the projected service of some of the Nimitz-class carriers. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the second-oldest Nimitz-class carrier, commissioned in 1977, was scheduled to be decommissioned in 2026. The Navy announced last year that the Eisenhower will serve into the early 2030s.
