Nothing short of a crime.

Amidst all of the recent political news in the United States, a few Navy related headlines from defense trade papers may have escaped your attention. However, you really should pay attention to them. Your Navy, MY Navy, for which I gave decades of service, is being ground into the dirt.

For me, the recognition of this problem began when I read this:

“There’s a lot of pent-up frustration with Big Navy,” said one TR spouse, who along with others interviewed for this report requested anonymity to avoid repercussions against their sailors. “Like, what are you doing?”

The “double pump” of the TR — sending it out on two deployments in the same 36-month readiness cycle — follows news that the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower will be doing the same thing soon from the East Coast early next year.

Ike completed a record-breaking 206 consecutive days at sea and only returned to Norfolk on Aug. 9.

A second double-pump deployment raises questions about what is driving the need to make such demands of sailors and their equipment. Roosevelt completed her midlife overhaul and refueling seven years ago, meaning overuse is sapping its planned 50-year hull life.

Do you think? It begs the question they used to say the President always asked, where are the carriers? The train wreck that so many of us saw happening in 2002 – when some damn fool came up with the idea of deploying six carriers to the Gulf for Operation Iraqi Freedom- is here.

Actually, that train wreck arrived several years ago – this is just the chain-reaction collision that followed the original accident.

So again – one should ask the question, where are the other carriers? And why isn’t there an equitable rotation scheme that does not have to keep ships at sea for 207 days straight?

Like this vessel:

That’s USS Stout which recently set the record for most days at sea with 207 days coming home. To say she is looking “weather beaten” is an understatement.

The ship didn’t pull into a single port between early March and her arrival in Rota, Spain on October 3rd. In that period of time, she spent her time escorting ships, including Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD-5) and the Nimitz class aircraft carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) and USS Nimitz (CVN-68), as well as executing a slew of other tasks in the 2nd, 5th and 6th Fleets’ areas of responsibilities. In that time, Stout executed three dozen consecutive underway replenishment cycles and executed maintenance that is usually done in port, while remaining at sea. The Navy stated the following in a release:

“As COVID-19 made frequent port visits unsafe, Stout competed the first modern Mid-Deployment Voyage Repair (MDVR) period at sea, spending a week executing scheduled maintenance and preservation to maintain mission readiness while deployed. Throughout the deployment, Stout’s technicians executed depot-level repairs on vital engineering and combat systems equipment.”

This cannot and should not be an acceptable explanation – ever. Especially for those who remember when the Navy actually took PERSTEPO/OPTEMPO seriously and it required approval from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff himself to deviate from six months portal to portal.

Oh, and lest we forget – there is this fact that should be remembered.

USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) was commissioned on 22 July 2017.

It’s 2020 and the earth is turning beneath our feet. She still has not left on a deployment.

There is and was a bill to pay for this kind of madness – and let’s be blunt-short of an actual war with China or Russia there is no need to keep ships on this type of operational tempo. Especially in the Middle East, where conditions have been static now for many years. The “forever war” is killing the Navy.

Sometimes literally.

And even with COVID – there are ways to get ships into port, especially into US possessions or US-controlled bases. It requires effort and imagination, but taking care of our sailors is worth it.

Let me reiterate – There is no reason for this kind of OPTEMPO. None.

Will Sailors meet the need? Yes – but you can be damn sure some of them are rethinking whether to stay or go. And retention rates will show the cost in a couple more years unless something is done to change this.

This is a self-created problem by the Navy stemming from our foolhardy decision to invade Iraq on March 19, 2003. The Navy has been in this situation before – in the 1970s. Clearly, we have not seemed to have learned our lesson from those days.

This is nothing short of a crime.