A Pentagon questionnaire sent to NATO allies to assess their support for the US administration has ruffled some feathers in Europe, with a senior Estonian lawmaker telling Breaking Defense it’s a “novel” but flawed strategy that could divide the alliance and give adversaries an opening to exploit. Bloomberg first reported on the document on Aug. 14, saying that it included questions about governments’ public support for US policy, their level of engagement with US defense contractors and their position on the use of US military bases in-country, including whether use of the bases was allowed for Iran conflict operations. The questionnaire was reportedly linked to the ongoing US force posture review for the continent. “It is an unnecessary stress test and way to handle this,” Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Estonian Parliament, told Breaking Defense this week. “To do your review on force posture, you can handle it in a way that serves both US national interests and those of allied countries. I don’t see the questionnaire as doing or serving this.”

damn, almost as if your interests don't actually matter to the Americans... wonder what word we have for that, when a country's interests are subordinated to those of another, hmm...

It is not unusual for NATO countries to receive questionnaires, Mihkelson said, but they usually come from NATO headquarters rather than being sent unilaterally by one nation. Still, news of the survey was not a huge surprise, he said, considering “the way the current [US] administration there handles things.” The Estonian lawmaker added that a better approach would have been to raise these issues at a NATO North Atlantic Council (NAC) meeting, where every ally sends one or more leaders to discuss the alliance’s collective security decisions. Mihkelson said he hasn’t personally seen the questionnaire, but said he understands it requires answers by Aug. 27, when the next NAC meeting is expected to take place at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels and be attended by the US Under Secretary for Defense Policy Elbridge Colby. Bloomberg and Al Jazeera reported that some current European officials have criticized the questionnaire, though most appear to be taking a more circumspect public approach.

A NATO official confirmed to Breaking Defense that Washington is working with allies on its force posture review but deferred to US authorities on specifics regarding the document. A spokesperson for the Norwegian Ministry of Defense told Breaking Defense that they were informed at the ministerial meeting in Brussels in June that such a request would be forthcoming and that they were “reviewing the questions and will respond to the US on the issues raised.” The Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a press conference on Monday that he did not view the US move “as pressure, [as] it is the way the current US administration operates,” according to a Bloomberg report.

??? what is this guy even saying? it's not pressure since, well, they just do it to everyone!

Additionally, a spokesperson for the German Ministry of Defense said in an email to Breaking Defense that Berlin “has also been invited by the US to take part in its force posture review.” The spokesperson added that it has provided the European country with an opportunity “to continue its already close and trusting dialogue with the US” on common defense policy interests. Several other NATO nations did not respond to a request for comment. One vocal critic was Ivo Daalder, former US ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013. He said on X that the questionnaire “puts fealty above common interests,

DANG, what was the word for someone who has to swear fealty to another guy! Ugh, I really wish I could remember...

divides allies among themselves, weakens collective defense, and ultimately could destroy NATO.” A US official declined to directly address the questionnaire but told Breaking Defense, “President [Donald] Trump has made clear his deep disappointment about NATO allies’ lack of support throughout Operation Epic Fury, which is making the entire world safer by denuclearizing Iran. “The United States has thousands of troops stationed in Europe to protect Europe, but requests to use NATO bases during this conflict were denied,” the official said. “The United States expects to be able to use its bases in Europe to advance global and European, security.” An unnamed senior European defense official pushed back on that logic on Wednesday, telling Al Jazeera, “This administration has been confusing NATO topics with unilateral US military operations. … This questionnaire also reflects this confusion. NATO has nothing to do with the Middle East.” In the meantime, as European capitals weigh how to answer America’s queries, Mihkelson said other capitals will be watching closely: Moscow and Beijing. “It is critically important for us in this time, a time of not living in peace time, with a major war waging in Europe, that both in words and deeds to not make any steps to create an image that would indicate to Moscow or Beijing that NATO is not united or focused on deterring threats growing on our borders,” he said. “This is critical to avoid a miscalculation by either of those countries on visible division lines.”

The aircraft carrier USS George Washington transited the Arabian Sea today after arriving in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) region yesterday, the command announced via X. The move was designed to relieve the overworked USS Abraham Lincoln and comes as the U.S. continues to maintain a naval blockade of Iranian ports amid ongoing tensions with Tehran. However, the deployment also leaves the U.S. bereft of aircraft carriers in the western Pacific, at least for the moment, highlighting the strain on one of its most important assets for American power projection. Extended deployments across multiple carriers are putting extreme stress on the carrier force and could have major cascading effects as maintenance required to reset these ships after deployments draws on longer than originally planned. At the same time, delays in carrier production could also exacerbate the future availability of the force. The need to redeploy the Washington from Yokosuka, Japan, where it is based, to the CENTCOM region was sparked by concerns about the condition of the crew of the Lincoln. That carrier reportedly endured grueling conditions amid round-the-clock operations without any liberty port calls since deploying last year. The issue sparked outrage from those worried about the mental and physical health of the sailors and Marines aboard, as well as pushback from U.S. officials who claimed the media was blowing the situation out of proportion. The addition of the Washington comes as the Lincoln has departed. That means there are now two carriers in the Middle East at the moment. The USS George H.W. Bush arrived in the region on April 23. While the U.S. and Iran have stopped firing at each other, the region remains a tinderbox. Both Washington and Tehran are claiming control over the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations to end hostilities have broken down.

With the ongoing blockade, as well as CENTCOM’s efforts to move millions of barrels of oil through its preferred southern route close to Oman, there is still a need for the aviation assets provided by carriers and the strike and defensive missile capabilities provided by their escort ships. This is especially true for contingency operations, deterring Iran, and pressuring them to conform to Washington’s demands. As we noted earlier in this story, all this leaves Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), with no carrier coverage in theater to deter or counter potential PRC or DPRK aggression. Carrier gaps in the Pacific were rare up until 2024, which marked the first time in decades that the U.S. had no flattops in Asia. Though the U.S. military has been largely focused on the Middle East, the PACOM region remains the top concern among many within the national security apparatus, as China is America’s top pacing threat and North Korea remains unpredictable and dangerous. Russian operations in the Pacific are another issue, among a slew of others. The extended deployment of the Lincoln, and the need to replace it, didn’t just create an issue, albeit temporary, for PACOM. Typical carrier deployments last about six to seven months, a period designed to ensure the ships can maintain readiness and the crews do not get worn out. When that doesn’t happen, it creates a cascading series of problems that affect not just the ships and crews, but the facilities that have scheduled repairs and lined up workers to make them happen.

The bottom line is that the longer these vessels stay out on cruise, the longer they have to stay in on deep maintenance, and past a certain point, the magnitude of this relationship skyrockets. Extra days out can turn into extra weeks in the yard, and so on. With yard facilities at a premium, especially those capable of dealing with a supercarrier, critical schedules can quickly implode, with work stacking up across multiple vessels, resulting in them being sidelined much longer than planned. You can read all about this in our past feature linked here. For instance, after returning from a historic 11-month deployment, USS Gerald R. Ford transited to Pier 5N at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in July to begin its first post-deployment Planned Incremental Availability (PIA). Ford’s PIA will take longer than initially expected due to the stress from its journey, including a fire in the laundry room that raged for more than 30 hours and will require an additional, concurrent availability. This will likely extend its time in dry dock, a situation experienced by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower after it had an epic deployment. Of note is that the damage to the Ford meant it had to depart the CENTCOM region in March at the height of the war on Iran. That left just one carrier on station, which, ironically, was the Lincoln.

There are several other issues being faced by the carrier force as the Navy has had to juggle maintenance schedules to make up for construction delays. The future Ford class USS John F. Kennedy is not scheduled for delivery until March 2027. JFK just completed Acceptance Trials Aug. 15, following a four-day underway period off the Atlantic Coast. The Navy had originally planned to take delivery of the Kennedy in 2022, but that was delayed until March 2027 “to support completion of Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) certification and continued Advanced Weapons Elevator (AWE) work,” according to the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget request. To offset that, the decommissioning of the USS Nimitz was pushed back. The entire Ford class program has been running years behind schedule and now the U.S. Navy is reportedly evaluating changes to the Ford class that could add further delays. This includes moving the island superstructure further forward on the flight deck and abandoning the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) catapults and Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE) on the Ford class, starting with the future USS Doris Miller. As for what carrier capacity is actually available today, four are currently offline or waiting to enter maintenance availabilities.

The USS John C. Stennis moved to complete a Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH) period at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia in May 2021. When the contract was awarded to Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) in February 2021, work was expected to be completed by October 2025, and the downstream effects of the extended delay have rippled across the fleet. Nimitz class aircraft carriers typically complete RCOH, a lengthy modernization and maintenance period that includes a nuclear refuel, at the halfway point of their expected 50-year service life. The Navy is rethinking its approach to speed up future such overhauls and cut down on labor requirements, beginning with USS Harry S. Truman. Truman is pierside in Norfolk, Virginia, waiting to enter RCOH following the Stennis, as only one shipyard on the East Coast is capable of conducting such invasive maintenance. USS Ronald Reagan is the only carrier on the West Coast that is unavailable to deploy today. It was previously forward-deployed to Yokosuka, Japan, completed a hull swap with USS George Washington in mid-2025 and is currently in dry dock at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Bremerton, Washington. When the contract for the Drydocking PIA (DPIA) was awarded in 2025, work was expected to be completed by August 2026, and the timeline appears to be on schedule. According to Stars & Stripes, Ronald Reagan is expected to wrap up the 17-month DPIA and return to service by the end of the month.

This leaves three carriers that could be pushed toward the Pacific in an emergency, one of which is largely ready for deployment. The USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS Carl Vinson, and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower are in various states of readiness and working up in preparation for future deployments. Theodore Roosevelt, which completed COMPTUEX in May before participating in large-scale exercise RIMPAC 2026 over the summer, is expected to deploy in the very near term, and is the most likely to be sent to the Pacific. Also homeported out of San Diego, Carl Vinson pulled out of port on August 10 and is underway training off the West Coast. As of publication. Dwight D. Eisenhower finished a 16-month post-deployment PIA and completed sea trials in April, and most recently returned home on July 27 after conducting an ammo onload with dry cargo/ammo ship USNS Medgar Evers. Lincoln, as we noted earlier in this piece, is heading home to San Diego after leaving the CENTCOM region, but when it will return to service is unknown. There is an upcoming DPIA scheduled for the carrier, according to Fiscal Year 2027 budget documents, but the timeline is unclear. Based on the history of other lengthy carrier deployments, that could be delayed as well. So, it’s likely another carrier strike group will be heading toward the West Pacific soon and the gap won’t be a prolonged one, but after multiple prolonged deployments, America’s carrier force may be set up for a larger availability crisis down the line.

In December 2025, high-intensity Chinese military exercises around Taiwan featured, for the first time, a mock comprehensive air and naval blockade of the island. Weeks later, a pair of US naval vessels entered the Taiwan Strait to carry out the first naval transit of 2026. While the transit provided reassurance to some regional capitals, especially Taipei, it remains the only publicly declared transit the US Navy has initiated in the Taiwan Strait this year, and one of only three since the start of the second Trump administration. That marks a substantial decrease from prior years, which — at a time when Chinese military coercion has intensified — raises some serious concerns. Our analysis of Taiwan Strait transits — which draws data from official statements of both the US government and foreign governments, news reports, US naval press reports, and existing databases, including the Taiwan Security Monitor — tracked 28 naval transits under the first Trump administration and 32 under the Biden administration. In contrast, current rates project only 14 publicly reported transits for the entirety of Trump 2.0 — in what would amount to a 50 percent decline from Trump 1.0 and a 56 percent decline from the Biden administration. If America’s presence in one of the world’s most contested waterways is quietly fading, the strategic ramifications could be serious.

Rarely out of the headlines, the Taiwan Strait has long been a site of sporadic flare-ups caused by competing territorial assertions. China has declared the Strait to be its territorial waters, but virtually no other country, including the United States, recognizes that claim as lawful or legitimate. Military transits through the Strait have become an important tool in preventing the normalization of Beijing’s illegitimate claims.

In the Strait, these operations deliberately challenge unlawful assertions by sailing through unilaterally declared zones to contest unrecognized authority. More importantly, transits project American military presence at a time when Chinese warships and aircraft have become routine fixtures around Taiwan. Since 2022, when then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, Chinese air and naval presence has become alarmingly commonplace, with incursions into Taiwanese airspace and the island’s surrounding waters happening on a near-daily basis. On any given day, roughly five or six warships surround Taiwan at all times. China’s “daily activity around the island, near weekly joint combat patrols, and response exercises conducted during periods of heightened political tensions,” the US Department of Defense’s 2025 China Military Report assessed, have all set successive yearly highs. The severing of undersea cables and lately the unlawful stops and inspections of Taiwanese vessels are part of Beijing’s “salami-slicing” tactics aimed at draining the vigilance of Taiwan’s government. Still, Beijing has held off on launching an all-out invasion of the island for now. The prospect of US involvement — a perception partly sustained by routine naval presence — threatens to complicate China’s effort to achieve the “strategic decisive victory” that Chinese President Xi Jinping envisions.

Transits give the US Navy practical experience navigating the Strait and if there is a prolonged decline in Taiwan Strait transits, Washington loses that operating experience and could possibly embolden Beijing to pursue coercive, illegal and destabilizing military activities with greater confidence. Of course, some analysts disagree with the importance of these transits. Taiwan Strait transits “are just one aspect of U.S. military presence,” former Pentagon official Drew Thompson argued, “so they should be judged qualitatively, not quantitatively.” While true, naval transits play an outsized role in signaling non-recognition of unlawful Chinese maritime claims precisely because of their visibility and regular occurrence. Following a joint passage of US and Canadian warships through the Strait in October 2024, for instance, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs lauded the transit as demonstrating “concrete actions to safeguard Taiwan Strait peace,” noting it was “the fourth joint transit in under two years.” These transits are among the clearest ways for the US to express its commitment to navigational rights in both word and deed. Some observers posit that the dip since the start of Trump 2.0 is the result of the US Navy engaging in “silent transits,” in which the Pentagon declines to publicize passages to dampen tensions with Beijing. China has in the past publicly denounced Taiwan Strait transits and urged Washington to stop creating “public hype.” Taken together with President Donald Trump’s expanding receptivity to greater diplomatic and economic cooperation with Beijing in his second term, this explanation certainly seems plausible: The transit of the USS Higgins and HMS Richmond in September 2025 was not publicly advertised but later confirmed through a Pentagon official. No press release was provided by the US Navy.

While these “silent transits” are preferable to no activity at all, publicly declared naval operations send a broader signal to allies and the international community. A sudden drop in them can degrade perceptions of American priorities and credibility in both friendly and hostile capitals. It’s also not the time for long-running demonstrations of US presence, commitment and deterrence to be decreasing. It’s not as if China’s maritime coercion has been shrinking in a cycle of mutual de-escalation; to the contrary, it has been accelerating. Fewer public transits are taking place under Trump 2.0, at a time when Chinese maritime forces have grown more bellicose. While undeclared transits may be filling this gap, there is a real risk that American allies and partners—let alone Beijing—could misinterpret the Trump administration’s strategy as a retreat on American commitments. Perceptions of that kind, once formed, can become difficult to reverse. The Pentagon, therefore, should return to the standard tempo of publicly announced routine transits established across the last two administrations.

good thing the Iran war's shown how excellent of a state the US Navy's in!

Political Challenges: White House, Congress Clash Heats Up

Despite the Trump administration’s hardline efforts, there are lawmakers on both sides of the aisle staunchly opposed to hiring foreign shipbuilders to construct ships for the Navy — even though some have acknowledged that the Navy needs more ships, faster. For example, the House’s version of the FY27 NDAA that passed in July includes a provision barring the construction of both warships and those that make up the combat logistics fleet in a foreign shipyard. In response, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a statement blasting the move, claiming that the prohibition is “inconsistent” with the administration’s legislative proposal for lawmakers to include in the NDAA to permit the Navy to contract construction of two surface combatant vessels and two non-combat auxiliary vessels overseas “for the purpose of driving significant and direct foreign investment into our domestic shipyards.” “This bill’s prohibition and lack of authorization of this requested authority is a direct decrement to the safety and security of the American people and our national economy for which this Administration is directly responsible, and impedes the Administration’s efforts to expand domestic shipbuilding competition and capacity,” OMB said in a statement in July. “In addition, it limits the flexibility of the United States in leveraging foreign shipyards that have specific advancements, strengths, and technology that serve a specific Department of War need.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the NDAA that passed in June also restricts building warships abroad. However, the measure does approve the procurement of up to two auxiliary ships from foreign shipyards — provided they invest in the US maritime industrial base for production of additional vessels. (Senate Democrats have halted the legislation from advancing to the floor, citing reservations with defense spending and the ongoing conflict with Iran.) The Navy’s budget request also includes $1.85 billion in reconciliation funding to study using foreign yards to build US warships, and potentially foot the bill for an initial vessel built in Japan or South Korea, Breaking Defense previously reported. Prior to Thursday’s memo, Labs said that for foreign ships appropriated under the reconciliation process, Trump would simply issue a waiver of US Code 8679 that limits construction of vessels for the armed forces in foreign yards, justified on national security grounds. That was the same process used in the icebreaker deals with Finland.

Members of Congress aren’t the only ones voicing opposition to the administration’s proposal. The Shipbuilders Council of America, a national trade association representing US shipyards, urged the administration to “reverse course and redirect this funding to qualified U.S. shipyards,” following the new memo. “While foreign investment into the U.S.-based shipyards and facilities is lauded to reach the Administration’s goals of revitalizing the shipyard industrial base, directing the DoW to build overseas only undercuts the federal Maritime Action Plan and generational investment into commercial and government shipbuilding,” the council’s president, Matthew Paxton, said in a statement Thursday. “Every hull built abroad is demand, jobs, and industrial capability diverted from American shipyards this Administration pledged to rebuild.”

In a new memo certain to make significant waves for the future of US Navy shipbuilding, President Donald Trump on Thursday called for the US to outsource the building of at least a few Navy ships to foreign shipyards. The new National Security Presidential Memorandum urges the expansion of the so-called “Finland model” currently employed to build the Coast Guard’s Arctic Security Cutters where initial vessels are built in Finland by foreign yards and subsequent vessels are constructed domestically. The memo says that as long as foreign shipbuilders agree to some stringent conditions on-shoring future work to the US, they would be allowed to build up to two ships in three different ship classes at their parent docks, which would then be transferred to the US. These ship classes include surface combatants with “sufficient inherent capabilities to perform anti‑submarine warfare, surface warfare, and convoy escort duties,” as well as those that meet “the requirements for Consolidated Cargo Replenishment at Sea (CONSOL) Tankers and — separately — Roll-On, Roll-Off Vessels,” according to the memo. Prior to Thursday’s directive, the Trump administration had already been pushing Congress to sign off on the Navy hiring foreign shipyards to build four vessels in the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, and also had been requesting reconciliation funds go toward studying — and potentially procuring — an initial vessel from overseas. Congress has pushed back though, and each chamber has imposed their own restrictions in their respective versions of the NDAA.

But should the White House overcome barriers on Capitol Hill seeking to curb employing foreign yards, the path towards integrating foreign-built ships into the US is hardly cut and dry. Designing, integrating and maintaining foreign ships as part of the US Navy’s fleet would be effectively unprecedented — meaning the hurdles associated may be numerous, according to analysts who talked to Breaking Defense. “The main difficulties would be first off, we just never really have done that with … a combat-type ship,” said Bradley Martin, a senior policy researcher at RAND and retired Navy captain. “Another is that the standards would be different, and the US would have to make a decision that some things just aren’t as important.” Those hurdles, analysts said, can be put into two pots: technical and political. And it’s not clear which would be easier to overcome. At stake may well be the force makeup of America’s future navy.

Technical Challenges: Learning To Speak The Same Language

The challenges on the technical side are myriad, in part because annual defense appropriations measures have historically barred constructing US Navy ships abroad. According to Martin, getting the design right for a foreign-built warship early on would prove paramount. Specifically, he said that the ship must be engineered from the get-go to accommodate the weapons systems if the US wants to avoid problems on the backend, in the event the ship were built overseas and then outfitted with weapons systems in the US. “The US Navy has some survivability requirements and some requirements for redundancy and so forth that most foreign ships don’t satisfy, so they have to be modified from the beginning,” Martin said. “Another is that the types of combat systems and so forth that go into the ship — the ships are not engineered with those necessarily in mind. So putting two things together would be very difficult.” “The best outcome would be: Buy a ship and build it from the keel up, with the ability to integrate these systems,” Martin added. “If we don’t do that, we try to do it with a back-fit — that’s not going to work out real well, all kinds of delays.”

Comms gear with allied navies has previously presented challenges — although there are options to mitigate such barriers and compatibility issues in combat systems would be more difficult to address, according to Bryan Clark, director of the Hudson Institute think tank’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology. While the US Navy already operates routinely with foreign ships in carrier strike group formations with NATO and Asian allies, these integrations typically aren’t “seamless” because the foreign ships aren’t outfitted with many of the communication networks on US ships, Clark said. Communication networks absent on NATO ships include Cooperative Engagement Capability that the US Navy utilizes to share missile defense targeting data. However, the US could outfit a foreign-built ship with “compatible” networks and datalinks, Clark said. “The more significant challenges will be commonality in combat systems,” Clark said. “Although Spanish, Korean, and Japanese ships use Aegis, it is a different version and configuration than on US ships. And other combat systems, such as for undersea warfare, are completely different. The US would also need to integrate the parts and logistics needed for the foreign ship’s hull, mechanical, and electrical systems into the US supply system.”

US Navy ships are also required to undergo extensive post-delivery testing and certification to gauge things like how the ship would weather in a combat environment — and a new playbook would have to be sorted out for any new, foreign vessel entering the fleet. For example, Clark said the bulk of the certification process for US ships stems from US technical standards for design and construction. “Since they would be built to different technical standards, the Navy will need to determine which standards to keep and which to revise,” he said. Clark noted that this process hampered the Constellation-class frigate program, which was based on a design from Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri. Wisconsin-based Fincantieri Marinette Marine secured an initial contract for the frigate in 2020. However, the Navy announced in December 2025 it would cut the program and only accept the two frigates already being built amid a series of cost overruns, delays and design changes. Eric Labs, a senior analyst for naval forces and weapons at the Congressional Budget Office, said that although he expects foreign ships to meet the same standards as US ships, including trials designed to test a ship’s shock hardness, ultimately the Navy, the administration and Congress would determine the degree of testing needed. “We could certainly choose not to do that and accept whatever risks would be associated with the specifics of the case,” Labs said. Additionally, Labs said that maintaining foreign ships would prove expensive if the US only chose to purchase two or three of them, and ended up with essentially an “orphan class,” like the three Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyers.

But, Labs said, if the Navy purchased between 10 to 20 foreign ships, maintenance and training pipelines would function similarly to any other new class of ship introduced to the fleet. (Labs spoke to Breaking Defense prior to the release of the memo, which directs all ships after the first two to be built in the US.) “It will need training equipment that is unique to the class and it will have a maintenance and spare parts program that will be unique to the class,” he said. “It would likely be a bit harder because there is less potential for overlap with existing US ship programs if the ship is sourced entirely to foreign suppliers but it is possible US suppliers could be brought, to some degree, into the process.” Even so, Labs said the Navy should invest “heavily in an upfront supply of spare parts that would be critical or merely important to maintain the class.” Separately, Labs said that a foreign vessel could be designed intentionally in a way that’s easier to maintain. “The Navy does not always invest as heavily in designing for maintainability as perhaps it should,” Labs said. “Some foreign ship designs and shipyards are better at that, so it would depend on who and what ship.” However, Clark said foreign ships would likely encounter difficulties on the maintenance front once operating at the rate US Navy ships do. “The challenge will likely be wear and tear given the US Navy’s operating tempo,” Clark said. “Foreign ships are often built to commercial vessel technical standards because they only operate a small percentage of the time.” In contrast, the Navy currently employs a 36-month Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP) to accommodate maintenance, training and typically a seven-month-long deployment. Under this three-year cycle, ships could be at sea half the time, Clark said.