Why the Navy Should Decommission the USS John C. Stennis
The U.S. Navy must use the painful delays in the RCOH overhaul of the USS John C. Stennis as an opportunity to fundamentally reform its surface warfare fleet.
The United States Navy is in a budgetary and strategy quandary. As a supposedly global force, the Navy is required to have the capabilities to deploy meaningful force anywhere in the world, with a relatively short amount of notice. For decades, the Navy could do this.
Ever since the end of the Cold War, however, the Navy’s capability to maintain a large enough fleet to achieve its globe-spanning strategic objectives have been steadily declining. Today, the Navy cannot reliably design and build warships in an affordable or timely manner. Nor, apparently, can the Navy maintain the warships it has.
Consider the complications that have arisen within the limited U.S. Navy shipyards. Once known as the mighty “arsenal of democracy,” America’s shipyards struggle to maintain and build new warships and submarines while repairing and refitting other systems. The USS George Washington (CVN-73) took an extended period of time to undergo its costly midlife Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH) operation. After five grueling years and delay upon delay, the George Washington finally left for the open sea in 2023. It went into port for its RCOH overhaul in 2017 and was originally planned for a return to service date of August 2021—a delay of two years.
The Navy, as so many organizations did at the time, blamed COVID-19 for the delay. It should have instead done real soul-searching to find the true cause of the delays. Left unattended, the problems have only worsened since the pandemic, and are thus far going unaddressed by the new Trump administration—though some of its appointees, notably Brent D. Sadler, are in positions to enact real reforms.
The USS John C. Stennis RCOH is a Disaster
Blaming COVID-19 for the delay of the USS George Washington’s RCOH overhaul was probably an obfuscation on the part of the Pentagon. If the George Washington’s delay were a one-off, the result of a once-in-a-century health crisis, one would expect that the Navy’s other RCOH overhauls would perform better. But another Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74), has struggled with a five-and-a-half-year delay during its ongoing overhaul.
An average RCOH overhaul takes around four years. In both the George Washington and John C. Stennis examples, their RCOH overhauls took longer. The Navy argues that, beyond complications from COVID-19, both the George Washington and John C. Stennis have suffered what’s known as “unplanned growth work” as both carriers had serious damage to their generators and steam turbine. And there was great damage to the propulsion systems.
But this is merely a distraction from the reality that the U.S. Navy cannot reliably maintain these carriers for the remaining duration of their lifespans. Other complications will arise, and the naval shipyards will be unlikely to maintain these ships.
For a cost of nearly $3 billion, the RCOH being conducted at the Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding Division has lagged on. And with the COVID-19 pandemic long sine concluded, what does the Navy blame now?
Still, no one in Congress has apparently thought to form a committee investigating these dangerous delays. Few have dared to publicly question America’s poor naval shipyard capacity. Even fewer people have attempted to ask the most pertinent question: are massive, city-sized nuclear-powered aircraft carriers even worth the expense anymore? This question is doubly important when there is no capability—or even political will on the part of elected officials charged with overseeing naval shipbuilding programs—to rein in the waste and inefficiency of America’s shipyards.
The Stennis Is a Terrible Burden on the Taxpayer
The USS John C. Stennis cost $1.9 billion to build in 1975—or around $12.1 billion in 2025 dollars. An additional $3 billion has been spent for the RCOH overhaul. Once the Stennis is supposedly finished with its RCOH overhaul next year, the carrier will serve for another 50 years, into the 2070s—assuming it remains afloat, an increasingly dubious proposition in an era of sophisticated anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems.
Over the course of its lifetime, this warship will have cost the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
What will that money have gotten us?
A platform that, in today’s highly contested and complex battlefield, is more of a vanity project—a wasting asset—than anything meaningful. In the modern era, carriers have become more useful as political symbols than actual strategic assets.
Don’t take my word for it. Just ask anyone who has served aboard warships operating in the Red Sea or Strait of Bab El-Mandeb how powerful they felt in the face of the Houthis’ growing anti-ship ballistic missile threat.
Then contemplate what a war with China would really look like for a U.S. carrier when faced with the world’s most advanced, complex network of A2/AD systems in the Indo-Pacific.
Decommission This Weapon of the Past for a Better Future
Imagine, for a moment, how much money the taxpayer could be saved if Congress decided to decommission the Stennis—and claw back as much of the $3 billion it gave Huntington Ingalls Industries for their botched RCOH overhaul.
More importantly, think about how much money decommissioning the USS John C. Stennis, rather than completing its seemingly interminable RCOH, would free up for the Navy to spend on actual systems that have real strategic impact today.
After all, as every technology expert outside the Pentagon knows—from Elon Musk to Palmer Luckey of Anduril to Eric Schmidt, formerly of Google—has told the Pentagon in recent years, manned systems are yesterday’s platforms. Drones are the future…and that future is here.
The glorious thing about these unmanned systems is that they are highly complex yet are extraordinarily cheap. For half the cost of a single U.S. flat top, armadas of unmanned systems could be built that would perform the same mission of the carriers.
Breaking Some Eggs—Or How to Get the Navy Out of Its Strategic Rut
America is stuck in a strategic rut. Its major defense contractors are insulated by the government—and protected by a parasitic relationship with the people charged with regulating these industries. Predictably, they are no longer competitive—producing questionable systems that are far too expensive, or forcing the military to rely on increasingly vulnerable legacy platforms.
The only way the U.S. military will adapt to a radically, permanently changed modern battlefield will be if it begins acting boldly. The Navy must use the painful delays in the RCOH overhaul of the USS John C. Stennis as an opportunity to fundamentally reform its surface warfare fleet.
Canceling the Stennis’ RCOH overhaul now and initiating its decommissioning will allow for the Navy to start saving money, while at the same time investing in unmanned platforms that will win the next war.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a contributor at Popular Mechanics, who consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
Image: Shutterstock / Jeff Whyte.