Maintenance, morale and money: USS Gerald R. Ford’s record-setting deployment presents many questions

USS Gerald R. Ford returned to Norfolk Naval Station, Va., on Saturday, 326 days after leaving for what was supposed to be a standard deployment to Europe.

Instead, the Ford and its crew of 4,500 were at sea longer than any U.S. Navy carrier in over half a century. It crisscrossed the Atlantic four times, led attacks on two continents, launched hundreds of sorties, and its strike group fired scores of missiles.

A laundry room fire that burned for 30 hours left only minor injuries but forced 600 sailors out of their bedroom compartments and a port visit for repairs. The fire is still under investigation.

Saturday, however, is for celebration, said Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations.

“We’re going to give our heroes a welcome back … and it’s just an extraordinary ship, extraordinary crew, an extraordinary strike group,” Caudle told the House Armed Services Committee this week. “And the sailors, I could not be more proud of.”

Navy officials in Norfolk on Saturday focused on the homecoming and deflected questions about what is next for the Ford.

But the end of the deployment leaves the Pentagon with plenty of questions:

• How much repair and maintenance will the fleet’s $13.3 billion carrier require?

• How should the Navy reward and retain a crew that was away from home for the better part of a year?

• How will it pay for it all?

The money is mostly folded into the $30 billion-and-rising cost of the war against Iran. The Navy has also asked for about $377.5 billion of the more than $1.5 trillion in military spending the Pentagon requested for 2027.

Mark Cancian, a Marine veteran who is an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that though there may be questions about the policy rationale for the missions the Ford was ordered to undertake, the ship and crew did their part well.

“It showed how skilled they are at fighting a war,” Cancian said. “That may well help with deterrence in other areas of the world, for example, China.”

Bryan Clark, an analyst for the Hudson Institute, said the extra-long deployment scrambled the Navy’s timetable for ship repairs.

“The impact of the Ford isn’t just wear and tear,” Clark said. “They are late for their maintenance availability, which will have a cascading effect on the shipyards, which are already overtaxed and oversubscribed.”

Under the Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan, each of the 11 carriers is plotted into a staggered 36-month schedule divided into deployment, sustainment, training and maintenance.

Aircraft carriers are designed to deploy for up to seven months, but the Ford was at sea for 11.

Though a confluence of events, including the war with Iran, led to the longer-than-expected deployment, Caudle doesn’t “want that to be a precedent,” he told CNN.

“We really want to deploy our ships for the length of time they’re designed to,” he said.

Michael Fabey, an analyst for London-based defense analysis firm Janes, said that because the Gerald R. Ford is the first ship of a new class, repairs are more difficult.

“Lord knows what problems they will find,” Fabey said. “There are a lot of unknowns. And not a lot of extra spare parts around for repairs.”

The impact on sailors’ recruiting and retention is another issue to monitor.

“I don’t think that the Ford deployment will have much of an impact on recruiting,” Cancian said. “There’s always going to be some 18- or 19-year-old who sees all this and wants to go to sea. But retention is different. They ask themselves, ‘Would I want to do that again?’ “

Dr. Steven Wills is a 20-year naval officer who is now a naval analyst for The Center for Maritime Strategy. He worries about the Navy retaining experienced sailors whom the service has invested time and money in training.

“When we used to over-deploy, people voted with their feet — ‘I’m out of here,’ ” Wills said.

Wills said the Navy needs to invest in retaining top performers on the Ford crew.

“We can’t afford to lose them,” Wills said. “There has to be some sort of benefit. Hand out awards, get them into the preferred Navy schools and training.”

With a long maintenance period expected for the Ford following a historically long deployment, sailors will have plenty of time to reflect on their lives and careers.

“I hope the Ford sailors get rewarded,” Wills said.