At 43 years old, the Bremerton-based USS Nimitz will soon be approaching retirement age. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has an estimated 50-year service life.
As the Navy seeks to build up the fleet to the coveted size of 355 ships, however, it could mean the oldest active-duty aircraft carrier could be around longer.
In the U.S. House of Representative's recently passed version of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, the House Armed Services Committee asked Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer to explore "the options that exist to extend the service life of USS Nimitz" as one way to help reach the desired fleet size.
The armed services committee requested a briefing from the secretary no later than March 2019, in which he would present the particulars of what a service life extension for the carrier would involve, including a cost estimate for the project and what it would take to modernize the ship's major components.
In the Navy's 30-year shipbuilding building plan released earlier this year, the Navy called for the enlarged fleet size to include 12 aircraft carriers to better meet the needs of long-term security objectives and future mission requirements.
The Navy is currently just shy of that number. There are 11 active-duty aircraft carriers in the fleet with the addition of the USS Gerald R. Ford, which was commissioned in July 2017 and is the namesake of a new class of carriers.
When the USS John F. Kennedy, the next Ford-class carrier currently under construction, officially joins the fleet in 2023, that number will surge to the desired 12 carrier level.
However, that would likely be short-lived.
"With the delivery of the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) in 2023, the Navy will reach their 12 carrier goal but will quickly lose this overall capacity with the programmed retirement of USS Nimitz (CVN 68) in fiscal year 2023," the bill states.
To achieve and maintain the desired number of carriers, the committee found the Navy will either have to find a way to accelerate the construction of future Ford-class carriers, purchase an additional carrier or find a way to keep the Nimitz at sea.
The National Defense Authorization Act passed the House at the end of May by a wide margin. The details of the Senate's companion version of the bill are currently being hammered out before it goes to a vote on the floor.
If passed by the Senate, Congress will have to reconcile both versions of the bills before it's passed along to the President to be signed into law.
Nimitz has been officially homeported in Bremerton since 2015, when it made a homeport swap from Naval Station Everett. The carrier is scheduled to stay in Bremerton until at least next year, when the Navy will revisit whether to keep the carrier at Bremerton or send it back to Everett.
