Great article for the concerns regarding the Fleet.
Anyhow, here's a recent photo of me.
I'm in the red shirt.
206 days at sea without a port call. COMTUEX and go. Left Norfolk. Returned to Norfolk 206 days later. No stops in between. After 30 days, many people lost the music on their iPhones because there had been no internet update. The only land we saw were the Straits of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, and a few islands off Yemen during the Bab-el-Mandeb transit.
Had a few beer days though!
It happened to the Army too after the reduction to 10 divisions. I may have had issues with General Shinseki but he was correct to address this with Donald Rumsfeld.