Navy

To Grow the Fleet, the U.S. Navy Could Recommission Retired Warships

In its desperation to grow the fleet, the U.S. Navy is considering pulling old, decommissioned vessels from “mothballs” — the inactive reserve fleet that the Navy maintains at ports on both U.S. coasts.
But reactivating old ships might prove less viable than keeping newer ships longer.

In early June, 2017, Vice Adm. Thomas Moore — head of NAVSEA, the Navy’s shipbuilding office — told the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies that Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates, logistics ships and the old aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk are all candidates for reactivation as the Navy looks to grow from today’s 277 front-line ships to as many as 355 by the 2020s or 2030s.

The Trump administration has backed the plan. Ray Mabus, the Navy secretary under former president Barack Obama, also endorsed a 350-ship fleet as one of his last acts before leaving office in January 2017. “The fleet must be larger and more powerful,” Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, wrote in a May 2017 strategy document.