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“A traditional deployment cycle has ships deploying once for 180 days in a three-year period.”

I never served in the Navy, but it seems to me that this article is arguing that our ships should be deployed only 1/6 of the time. I believe we have 11 carrier groups, so following this suggested deployment cycle would mean that we only have at most 2 carriers deployed at any given time.

I know that we have to allow time for maintenance, training and shore leave for our sailors. Perhaps there are shorter tours where the carrier is at sea for a few weeks at a time near a home port, but ready to quickly to deploy to forward position.

Somehow the expectation that our ships should be deployed only 180 days out of 3 year period seems unreasonably low to me.

Maybe freepers with experience in the Navy could educate me.

I was a Cold War sailor, the deployments were scheduled for 180 but only one of my six deployments were that short. Longest Was 11.5 months (Desert Storm). The Navy’s issues revolve around recovering from 10 years of neglect....they will recover..this is cyclical .

Somehow the expectation that our ships should be deployed only 180 days out of 3 year period seems unreasonably low to me. Maybe freepers with experience in the Navy could educate me.

It isn't entirely like this. 180 days is the deployment. Prior to deployment, there are what we call "work-ups." These are shorter underway periods that don't involve foreign travel. Stuff like carrier qualifications where the pilots practice landing and taking off. There are exercises where the entire Strike Group practices together. There's Fallon, Nevada where the whole Air Wing trains for a month. A work-up cycle prior to deployment might last a year or so where you're away from home off and on for several months. And when you're home, there's inspections to prepare for. There's an incredible amount of maintenance required on a ship, much of it performed by highly-skilled civilian contractors. An aircraft carrier is of no use if the elevators don't work, or the catapults. Or radar systems. The sea is a very rough environment and things break all the time.

So, out of 3 years, it's closer to 1.5 years that you're expected to be able to go to sea, and then it's supposed to be about 1.5 years to slow down the tempo, enjoy extensive and much-needed dry-dock maintenance, and let another Strike Group take the watch.

Even if a ship is not formerly deployed ( attached to the sixth fleet for 180 days for example ) they still go out to sea a lot. My ship spent over 200 days at sea in 1984. Not all at once. We had some port calls to keep us sane. Most of the time independent ops/ref-training/ASW.