In an emergency of extreme nature, how many "retired", decommissioned old carriers/museums could be activated, floated, or even towed in order to maintain some level of sea power, say if our 12 current carriers were out of action?Now my point. Under previous administrations like when I served four out of those six would have been on station in that area IN REGULAR ROTATION. Two Med Sea & Two West Pac 7/24/365 and indeed it was done efficently. Two carriers one from each coast interupted was all it would have taken JUST AS IT WAS DONE in the Iranian hostage situation. Meaning just two not the whole blasted bunch missed a yard period.< By the time of the Gulf War we were allready in deep trouble calling up reserves ect.
Yard time is indeed very important. It saves money and drastically extends the live of any ship not just a carrier. A nuke reactor may take those deployments but there is far much more to a carrrier than that. There's fire pumps, galley equipment, Chillers, Walk in coolers, Switchboards, generators, Potable water equipent a very biggie, the Catapuls, Arresting gears, stearing gears, elevators, avionics, guidance equipment, and so on that can not take that abuse year after year with messed up rotations. Read the article three six month deployments in three years.
You just don't pull up to the pier or worse underway cut a hole three decks down to replace equipment.
Yes a nuke refuels once but the idea a carrier or for that matter any other ship can take long term over extensions without a significant price being paid is insane. BTW wasn't it Cheney as well who broke the F-14 mold? That was perhaps the most insane move in Naval aviation. Money could have went into better Avionics and the planes general desing was among the best.
Cheney pulled the plug on NAVAIR after NAVAIR was caught lying to him about the A-12. Not only did they lie to him about the Avenger, they also came in and said, "Oh, by the way, Dick, we're going to go a wee bit over budget on the F-14D conversions. Got another 500 megabucks we can have?" At this time, the prime reason for the F-14s to be in large numbers on the flight deck--Soviet Naval Aviation--was going out of business.
Remember, back then, the F-14 was only for air-to-air work--and the Tomcat community was united in opposing any plans to use their planes for air-to-mud efforts. It was only AFTER the Soviet Union went out of business that the Turkey drivers got religion and started pushing for LANTIRN pods (they'd actually REFUSED them in the 1990 budget request--not a smart move).
As for the issue of rotation: once it was clear that we were going to fight Iraq, the USN uniformed leadership decided to keep all six carriers on station in the Arabian Sea, Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. This wasn't because of any pressing need for firepower--it had everything to do with the postwar budget battles that were going to be fought. The civilian leadership didn't like it, but Congress pretty much ordered the Administration (via the funding bills under the watchful eyes of Dick Gephardt and Tom Foley) to keep the carriers on station, because the brass went to the Hill behind the administration's back on this issue.
The Navy decided to maximize their Desert Storm involvement at the expense of future carrier availability.
In an emergency of extreme nature, how many "retired", decommissioned old carriers/museums could be activated, floated, or even towed in order to maintain some level of sea power, say if our 12 current carriers were out of action?