Carrier Maintenance – In March 2026 USS Gerald R. Ford had been at sea for nine months, with no fixed return date. USS Abraham Lincoln had been deployed since November 2025 in the operation against Iran. USS George H.W. Bush had just finished training and was preparing to relieve the Ford. The Navy needed those ships at sea because several others could not leave port.
A 2007 law sets the Navy’s floor at 11 carriers. The week Stars and Stripes took stock, four were in maintenance: Stennis in overhaul, Eisenhower and Reagan in planned incremental availabilities, and Truman, also in a planned incremental availability and next in line for overhaul. Nimitz begins retirement in 2026. Her replacement, USS John F. Kennedy, is expected to be commissioned in March 2027.
The gap is not new.
The audit already counted
In August 2020 the Government Accountability Office, the audit arm of Congress, published a report on Navy shipyards (GAO-20-588). It covered carrier and submarine maintenance in fiscal years 2015–2019. Of 51 periods, 38 finished late, for a total delay of 7,424 days. Carriers accounted for 10 of 18 periods and 1,128 days, an average of 113 days per late period. Submarines were worse: 28 of 33 late, an average of 225 days.
GAO broke the delay down. At least 4,100 days came from unplanned work and more than 4,000 from workforce problems. The Navy had underestimated the resource days it needed by 36 percent. Planned work exceeded what the yards could do without overtime by 23 percent, and overtime in critical shops averaged 25 to 32 percent, peaking at 45 percent. The Navy concurred with all three of GAO’s recommendations.
The report’s data stops at fiscal 2019. No later GAO figure specific to carriers turned up.
(DoD photo by Airman Randi R. Brown, U.S. Navy. (Released))
Stennis: five and a half years
The most recent data point is USS John C. Stennis. Her refueling and complex overhaul was due for redelivery in August 2025. The Navy’s fiscal 2025 budget documents moved that to October 2026, almost 14 months later and about five and a half years in all.
Rear Adm. Casey Moton, the program executive officer for carriers, told USNI News that workforce and material shortfalls caused the delay, made worse by COVID-19 restrictions. Naval Sea Systems Command cited mandatory growth work found after ship condition assessments, and industrial-base challenges. The same budget request added funds for crew berthing and off-ship apartments. USS Harry S. Truman is next in line for the same overhaul.
The causes GAO listed in 2020 appear again in the Navy’s own explanation in 2024.
Not only carriers
A December 2025 report by the Congressional Budget Office covered destroyers and amphibious ships. It excluded nuclear-powered ships, so it cannot be applied to carriers directly. It is still a reference point. DDG-51 overhauls that began between fiscal 2010 and 2024 ran 26 percent longer than the Navy’s last schedules. Maintenance events often ran “20 percent to 100 percent longer than estimated.” CBO projected that DDG-51s will spend an average of nine years out of service for maintenance, more than twice the 2012 class plans. CBO also said that, unlike its earlier findings on nuclear ships, it did not identify shipyard capacity as a driver of delay for conventional ships.
The other side
Public information on China’s three carriers comes mainly from satellite imagery and press reports, not official data.
One change is where the work is done. Liaoning and Shandong had done their major maintenance at Dalian. On 20 January 2026 Shandong entered a dry dock at Yulin Naval Base on Hainan, the first PLA Navy carrier maintained outside Dalian. The base’s two docks were begun in 2016 and completed in 2022; the larger is about 375 by 80 metres. Imagery from 19 June still showed her in the dock, about five months in. When she leaves is not known.
Fujian was commissioned on 5 November 2025. She left Yulin on 14 December and transited the Taiwan Strait two days later. Taiwan’s defence minister said she was going for maintenance; USNI treated that as presumed. Liaoning was refitted at Dalian from about August 2018 to January 2019, roughly six months. She deployed from 19 May to 22 June 2026 and put to sea again in October.
All three are conventionally powered steam ships (per Wikipedia), so none faces a refueling overhaul of the kind that has kept Stennis in Newport News for five and a half years.
Two ledgers
One navy’s delays are audited, dated and public. The other navy does not publish its maintenance schedules, so its delays cannot be counted. Outsiders can see who entered a dock and who left it.
Sources: GAO-20-588, Navy Shipyards (August 2020); USNI News, 18 June 2024 (Stennis overhaul); Stars and Stripes, 9 March 2026 (carrier status); CBO, Navy ship maintenance (December 2025), and USNI News summary, 11 December 2025; The Defense News, 20 June 2026 (Shandong imagery); Janes (Shandong at Yulin); Maritime Foundation of India brief, 6 February 2026 (Yulin docks); USNI News, 17 December 2025 and 22 June 2026 (Fujian, Liaoning); Wikipedia (propulsion, Liaoning refit).
