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Here's more food. Basically we have left two shipyards one on each coast that are set up to do overhauls and maintenance on carriers. One is located across the river from our only carrier builder left.

What doesn't get discussed is things like when the Base Closures starting in early 1990's began key defense production facilities as well as various military bases weren't just simply mothballed. They were tore down, land sold, tooling sold or destroyed, and no replacement. Russia wasn't even this stupid.

Before WW2 we went from 790 active duty ships in Dec 1940 to 6768 in August 1945. We were able to do so because we already had factories set up which could easily be adjusted to defense production use. Today much of our production capability comes from the very nation we will one day be going to war with which is China.

Shipbuilding is a learned trade that takes years to perfect. Next real major all out war we won't have the time margin we did in WW2 to allow us to catch up. We won't even have fuel to power transportation.

There is also a false notion that a nuclear powered ship can deploy indefinately. That is not true realistically. Their required downtime is much the same as a conventional. The reason being the downtime is also for replacing and repairing things like pumps, galley equipment, repair/replace steam pipes, repair/replace air conditioning plants, hull painting/repairs, etc. This involves cutting through several decks to accomplish and it takes a few months to do it right.

Generally after an six month deployment every surface ship needs a shipyard period for repairs that are not safe or able to do else where. Anything less greatly shortens the ships service life.