Just thinking
We DO have the capacity to bring our moth balled fleet on line?
Don’t we?
I do not think the USN “moth balls” ships anymore. I think we use them for target practice and to make reefs.
Without altering down times for our active because of available yard space to do the work? I'm not sure. On the smaller surface ships yes we can bring them back because there are several yards that can do the work. The smaller ships are Diesel Engine or Gas Turbine powered. The subs? No. They have to be rebuilt from keel up. The carriers? Limited yards. Bremerton on the west coast {Long Beach was the other but is no more} and Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, VA is the other carrier yard. Newport News Shipbuilding if not doing construction could do some work. They do the carrier Ship Life Extension Program now.
But the reality is the ones in mothball are wore out. The boilers is the real issue. All but Forestall are 1200 PSI systems 8 boilers per ship. To replace the boilers would be easier and likely quicker to build a new conventional. 1200 PSI of superheated steam with a leak the size of a pencil lead can dismember you. Worse is you can't hear it and you can't see it.
JFK was the newest conventional but she's had it and is mothballed. Too much neglect due to underfunding. America the next one back was sank for data for the Gerald R Ford. She had a major boiler-room explosion in 1994 I think it was at the pier. She had done three - six month deployments in three years. She was towed Cold Iron up the river to Portsmouth, VA then patched up and made one deployment afterward. Enterprise is still active and 50 plus years in age now. Constellation and Kitty Hawk could possibly fire up but for how long? It's really asking a lot out of the boilers and would be placing the crew at substantial risk as well. But the carriers would not matter because we don't have planes for them either.
Short Term solution till we get the numbers back up on surface ships is building submarines nuclear and conventional. Conventional powered ships have one huge advantage and that is in training a crew. A conventional Snipe will be standing advanced watches before a Nuke gets out of school and will have acquired a good sum of knowledge about the ship.
One other issue is IIRC the Navy discontinued the Boilerman Rating. It was consolidated with Machinist Mate I think.