By Zachary Keck
Even as China moves to quadruple its carrier fleet, the US may reduce the number of carriers it fields and deploys.
Earlier this week, Defense News reported that, while no decisions had been made, the Pentagon is actively considering eliminating one of the eleven aircraft carriers the U.S. Navy currently fields as part of its 2015 fiscal year budget request. The report, which cited numerous unnamed sources “in the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill, [and] in the defense industry,” said that a carrier air wing could also be eliminated as part of the FY 2015 budget.
The report came just days after the U.S. Fleet Forces released a detailed outline of its new Optimized Fleet Response Plan (O-FRP). The plan calls for reducing by at least one the number of aircraft carriers the U.S. would have deployed at any given time. Under the new O-FRP, the Navy’s carrier strike groups will operate under a 36 month training and deployment cycle. Within each 36 month cycle, each carrier strike group would be deployed for eight months.
Under the previous carrier strike group operation schedule, which ended January 13 due to fiscal constraints, each CSG is deployed for 14 of every 36 months. This allows the U.S. to have three to four CSGs deployed at any given time. Under the new plan, which will begin with the USS Harry Truman in November of this year, the U.S. will deploy just two aircraft carriers at sea. It does enable the U.S. Navy to have a surge capacity of between one and two additional CSGs in case of national emergencies, assuming the U.S. maintains its current 11 carriers.
Read the full story at The Diplomat