The USS George Washington (CVN-73), a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, spent 2,117 days idle in port during an extended maintenance period that ballooned well past its original schedule, becoming a symbol of the Navy’s broader struggle to keep its fleet combat-ready. The carrier’s Refueling Complex Overhaul, originally expected to wrap up by August 2021, dragged on while lawmakers and defense officials traded blame over shipyard backlogs, workforce shortages, and a maintenance pipeline that cannot keep pace with demand. As the Navy reflects on what went wrong, the episode raises hard questions about whether the service can sustain its carrier fleet at the scale required by its global commitments.
A $2.8 Billion Overhaul That Fell Behind
On September 1, 2017, the Department of Defense awarded a $2.8 billion contract to Huntington Ingalls Industries for the Refueling Complex Overhaul of the USS George Washington (CVN-73). The work, performed at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, involved replacing the carrier’s nuclear fuel rods and overhauling virtually every major system on the ship, a mid-life process designed to extend a Nimitz-class carrier’s service life to roughly 50 years. Under the original contract terms, the job was expected to be completed by August 2021, allowing the ship to rejoin the fleet on a predictable timeline and preserving the Navy’s traditional rhythm of carrier deployments.
That deadline came and went. The procurement itself was non-competitive, a reflection of the fact that only one shipyard in the country, Newport News, has the facilities and nuclear certification to perform carrier-level refueling overhauls. This single-source dependency meant the Navy had no alternative when delays mounted and little leverage beyond contract incentives to push the schedule back on track. Cost-plus-incentive-fee structures, while standard for complex defense work, also reduce the contractor’s financial exposure to schedule slips, shifting much of the risk back to taxpayers. The George Washington sat at the pier while the overhaul stretched years beyond its target, accumulating the 2,117 days of idle time that now define the ship’s troubled maintenance history and raising concerns in Congress about whether future overhauls will follow the same pattern.
Senate Hearing Exposed Fleet-Wide Rot
The George Washington’s delays did not happen in isolation. A Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Navy ship and submarine maintenance, designated S.Hrg. 116-645, laid out the systemic scale of the problem. Testimony at the hearing cited Government Accountability Office data showing that ships and submarines across the fleet were sitting idle in port awaiting maintenance, with cumulative days lost climbing steadily. Witnesses described attack submarines sidelined for years, surface combatants stuck in backlogged public shipyards, and a maintenance enterprise that had fallen chronically behind demand even as global security requirements increased.
Statements entered into the hearing record painted a picture of a maintenance system under severe strain. Limited dry dock capacity, an aging shipyard workforce, and years of underinvestment in depot-level work had created a bottleneck that forced vessels to wait months or even years before entering the yards. For a carrier like the George Washington, every additional day at the pier represents not just wasted money but lost operational availability. Carrier strike groups cannot deploy without their centerpiece, and when one ship falls behind, the ripple effects cascade across deployment schedules for the entire fleet. The hearing made clear that the Navy’s maintenance crisis was not a temporary spike but a structural condition that had been building for more than a decade, with the George Washington’s overhaul becoming one of the most visible examples.
Why One Shipyard Controls Carrier Overhauls
The concentration of nuclear carrier work at a single facility is both a strategic vulnerability and a practical inevitability. Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, is the only shipyard in the United States capable of building and refueling nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and that specialized role has been reinforced over decades of investment in nuclear infrastructure, safety procedures, and a highly trained workforce. That monopoly position means every Nimitz-class and Gerald R. Ford-class carrier must cycle through the same yard for its mid-life overhaul, competing for dock space with new construction and other maintenance work. When one project runs late, it pushes the next one back, creating a cascading delay that the Navy has struggled to break and leaving little margin for unexpected repairs.
The non-competitive nature of the George Washington contract, as documented in the Defense Department’s procurement record, reflects this reality. There is no second bidder to create competitive pressure on cost or schedule, and any attempt to shift work elsewhere would require duplicating nuclear-certified dry docks, specialized tooling, and regulatory approvals. Defense analysts have long argued that this arrangement insulates the contractor from the consequences of delays, while the Navy absorbs the readiness cost in the form of fewer available carriers and compressed deployment cycles. Diversifying the industrial base for carrier-level nuclear work would require billions in new infrastructure and years of workforce development, a prospect no administration has seriously pursued given competing budget priorities. The result is a system where the Navy’s most expensive and strategically important ships are dependent on a single chokepoint for their continued viability, and where a single yard’s performance can shape the fleet’s global posture.
Readiness Costs Beyond the Balance Sheet
The 2,117 days the George Washington spent idle represent more than a budget line item. During that period, the Navy operated with one fewer deployable carrier, tightening an already stretched rotation that must cover the Pacific, Atlantic, and Middle East with a finite number of hulls. The service typically aims to keep roughly a third of its carrier fleet deployed at any given time, with another third in training and the final third in maintenance. When a ship like the George Washington exceeds its planned maintenance window by years, the remaining carriers must absorb the gap, leading to longer deployments, shorter rest periods for crews, and reduced flexibility to respond to crises or surge forces in a contingency.
For the sailors assigned to the George Washington during the overhaul, the extended pier-side period brought its own toll. Carrier crews living aboard a ship under heavy industrial construction face constant noise, restricted movement, and limited access to normal shipboard amenities as compartments are opened, rewired, and rebuilt. The uncertainty of shifting completion dates can erode morale, complicate family planning, and create the sense that the ship is trapped in an endless project. Reports of mental strain and dissatisfaction among sailors assigned to long-running overhauls have circulated in naval circles, even if comprehensive data are scarce. The human dimension of maintenance delays tends to receive less attention than the strategic and fiscal costs, but it shapes retention and recruiting in ways that compound the Navy’s existing personnel challenges and may influence how willing sailors are to accept future shipyard assignments.
What the Navy Faces Next
The George Washington’s overhaul is not an outlier so much as a warning. The Navy’s carrier fleet includes ten Nimitz-class ships, each of which will require a similar mid-life refueling, plus the newer Ford-class carriers that bring their own maintenance learning curves and technical risks. If the service cannot shorten overhaul timelines and reduce idle days, the effective size of the deployable carrier force will shrink even if the total number of hulls remains constant. A fleet that appears robust on paper can be hollowed out in practice if too many ships are tied up in the yards for too long, leaving combatant commanders with fewer options to deter adversaries or reassure allies.
Senior leaders have acknowledged that recovering from years of deferred maintenance and industrial strain will not be quick. Efforts to modernize public shipyards, stabilize the private-sector workforce, and refine planning for complex overhauls are underway, but the George Washington’s 2,117-day ordeal shows how fragile the system remains. Each future refueling overhaul will test whether lessons from this experience have been absorbed, whether contracts are structured to reward on-time performance, whether shipyard capacity is realistically matched to the workload, and whether the Navy can protect readiness while its most important assets sit in dry dock. The answers will determine not only how often American carriers can sail, but also whether the United States can sustain the high-tempo, globally distributed naval presence that has underpinned its security strategy for decades.
More from Morning Overview
*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
