This presentation discusses the recent backlog of maintenance in the United State Navy. With a fleet of aircraft 150% larger than the world combined, our aquatic military branch is facing issues keeping up with the growing size of its resources.

2. While American military
prowess is often depicted as
the most powerful in the
world, the question of why
largely goes unexplained.
Sure, we realize that our
capacity for technology and
budget for defense exceeds
that of other countries, but
what, really, distinguishes
the United States military
from another Western
industrialized country, like,
say, England? Well, while
there’s certainly a variety of
answers, the clearest is this:
our navy.

3. More specifically, it is truly our collection of
astounding aircraft carriers that gives us the ability to
impose our global presence. To give some context, one
of our aircraft carriers, literally a single carrier, “has a
more powerful air force than 70% of all countries.”

4. Additionally, just to operate
our newest class (the
Gerald R. Ford Class) of
aircraft carriers, it costs
$7,000,000 per day. These
aquatic portable
metropolises patrol the
open seas with seemingly
absolute authority,
tremendously housing
crews of 5,000+ technicians.

5. The United States of America boasts a
full fleet of aircraft carriers, 19 in total.
Across the rest of the planet, there are
only 12 other aircraft carriers in
existence. So, America has 150% more
carriers than the rest of the world
combined. However, all these
impressive statistics aside, we do seem
to be having issues maintaining ships,
and I do not just mean aircraft
carriers.

6. As stated on Freebeacon.com,
we are “suffering from an
inability to deploy ships to key
international conflict zones
due to rising maintenance
issues on an aging fleet, that
is increasingly being sidelined
for lengthy repairs, according
to military experts and a new
government investigation.”
Now, while I think “suffering”
may be strong language here, I
do think this poses an
interesting question, since it
does not seem like our backlog
of maintenance is likely to
grow shorter in the near
future.

7. In fact, for surface combatant ships,
maintenance was finished on schedule only
28% of the time last year, meaning that the
fleet was forced to lose a notable 391
deployment days. Essentially, the fleet lost
a year on the water simply because they
weren’t serviced in time. Clearly,
something needs to be done, especially so
considering the current state of global
affairs (think Persian Gulf and Asia-Pacific
regions). Yet, I do not, by any means,
intend to inspire fear mongering or
anything of the sort. I am merely pointing
out an issue that should be rectified.

8. Of course, we are doing
something about it. Actually,
the Navy has recently
instituted a series of reforms
that will ideally decrease
these deployment delays. That
said, these same reforms will
also take years to reach their
full effect, indicating that
current deployment delays are
likely here to stay, for the
moment at least.