Summary and Key Points: The USS John C. Stennis's overhaul and refueling, initially set to be completed by August 2025, has been delayed by 14 months and is now expected to finish in October 2026.

-The delay is attributed to COVID-related workforce and material shortages, as well as unforeseen mandatory growth work following ship conditions assessments.

-This delay follows the challenging overhaul of the USS George Washington, which took six years and was marked by difficult living conditions for sailors.

-The Navy aims to avoid repeating these issues by securing additional funds for better off-ship housing and improved living standards for the Stennis crew.

Nimitz-Class Aircraft Carrier USS John C. Stennis Has a Problem 

The U.S. Navy’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget revealed USS John C. Stennis’s overhaul and refueling will be delayed another 14 months. The ship’s overhaul began in 2021 and was supposed to be finished by August 2025, with Stennis ready to rejoin the fleet. But the budget report indicates Stennis will not be available until October 2026. 

According to Rear Adm. Casey Morton, the extended rehaul time is a result of COVID-related workforce and material shortfalls. NAVSEA, meanwhile, says the delay is “due both to mandatory growth work following ship conditions assessments, as well as industrial base challenges.” So the Navy is being pretty vague about why Stennis will need an extra 14 months – and blaming COVID, which is becoming the default excuse across sectors.

Hopefully the Navy can apply lessons gleaned from USS George Washington’s delayed and exceedingly difficult overhaul as work on Stennis proceeds. George Washington underwent its RCOH (Refueling and Complex Overhaul) for six long years, during which the sailors worked at the shipyard in what a report would later find were extremely difficult conditions. The report was conducted after several George Washington sailors committed suicide during the overhaul.

Stennis is expected to be overhauled more quickly than George Washington, and under better workforce conditions with a higher quality of life. Yet once completed, this will be the second-longest carrier overhaul since 2001.

A Worrisome Trend

The Navy has overhauled carriers seven different times since 2001. The most expedient was USS Nimitz, an overhaul that took 1,129 days. Four of the overhauls took between 1,338 and 1,506 days: USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS Abraham Lincoln, and USS Carl Vinson. Stennis and George Washington are outliers. The Stennis overhaul is scheduled to last for 1,990 days, while George Washington’s lasted a remarkable 2,120 days. 

To improve quality of living relative to the George Washington overhaul, the Navy has requested additional funds for Stennis sailors to live off-ship while the overhaul is completed. The funds will be used for “additional months of crew berthing and to provide more off-ship housing in apartments vice barracks for sailors,” USNI reported. “Beginning with [Stennis} RCOH, no on-board housing is use for crews berthing for sailors during the RCOH. In previous RCOH availabilities, crew move-aboard occurred nearly a year before the ship re-delivered.”

The funds are a direct result of a report that found the overhaul caused George Washington sailors to experience the “toughest living standards in the U.S. military.” The report also found that George Washington sailors lacked parking, adequate housing, reliable Wi-Fi, and healthy food options – all of which exacerbated their suffering. Hopefully, conditions aboard Stennis are improved, and hopefully the overhaul can be completed as planned, so that she may rejoin the fleet at sea.

About the Author: Harrison Kass, Defense Expert 

Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.