USS Harry S. Truman starts major midlife overhaul

Work began this week on a three-year, $5.1 billion midlife overhaul of the 28-year-old aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, the Navy said Thursday.

Truman on Wednesday moved from its homeport at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., to the nearby HII Newport News Shipbuilding yard for a Refueling and Complex Overhaul.

“RCOH is a once-in-a-carrier-lifetime maintenance and modernization period designed to prepare Truman for the second half of its planned 50-year service life,” the Navy said in a statement.

The work represents a “full recapitalization of the ship to ensure warfighting relevance,” the Navy said.

The RCOH is scheduled to last until November 2031. When the work is done, Truman will be “the most technologically advanced Nimitz-class aircraft carrier,” the Navy said.

The ship is expected to serve into the 2050s.

The key maintenance of RCOH is to refuel the carrier’s two Westinghouse A4W nuclear reactors. The reactors provide power for steam turbines connected to propeller shafts that can push the ship at speeds above 30 knots.

Other work will include abrasive blasting and painting, and repairs to Truman’s shafts, propellers and rudders.

The carrier has been at Norfolk since returning in June 2025 from a 251-day deployment to the Middle East where it launched more than 13,000 aircraft sorties against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Truman was involved in a Feb. 12, 2025 collision with the Panamanian-flagged merchant ship Besiktas-M near Port Said, Egypt, at the northern end of the Suez Canal. The starboard aft section of Truman was damaged, but the Navy reported no injuries, flooding or impact on the power plants.

Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman departs Naval Station Norfolk for Newport News Shipbuilding on Sept. 30, 2026, to begin the shipyard phase of its Refueling and Complex Overhaul. (Jason Wernegreen/U.S. Navy)

Truman also lost two F/A-18 Super Hornets overboard and a third was shot down in a friendly-fire incident during the deployment.

The Navy relieved the ship’s commanding officer, Capt. Dave Snowden, after the collision. An investigation found the collision was likely avoidable with better leadership and training.

The Navy said the RCOH represents nearly one-third of the maintenance and modernization the carrier will receive throughout its service life.

Truman is the eighth of 10 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers to undergo RCOH at Newport News Shipbuilding. USS John C. Stennis began a RCOH there in May 2021 and is scheduled to depart shortly. The Navy says more than 25 million man-hours of work have gone into Stennis at the shipyard.

Truman weighs 103,900 tons, with a total length of 1,092 feet, and can accommodate a crew of more than 3,500 along with an air wing element of up to 90 aircraft and nearly 2,500 crew.

USS Ronald Reagan (commissioned in 2003) and USS George H. W. Bush (2009) have not undergone RCOH, which will likely occur in the next decade.

The Navy commissioned its newest carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, in 2017. The second Ford-class carrier, USS John F. Kennedy, received “preliminary acceptance” Tuesday by the Navy, the last major step before its official commissioning, expected in March 2027.

Two other Ford-class carriers, USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller, are under construction at Newport News.

The Navy has announced that when Kennedy is commissioned, it plans to retire USS Nimitz, the original ship of the class, which was commissioned in 1975. Nimitz is currently homeported at Norfolk Naval Station.