2nd Fleet Focus: The GW Shifts East

The next aircraft carrier to deploy will leave on April 7th. This will be interesting to observe.

The USS George Washington aircraft carrier and its 3,200 sailors will pull away from Naval Station Norfolk for the last time Monday.

After more than a decade of calling Hampton Roads home, the 15-year-old aircraft carrier is heading to Yokosuka, Japan to replace the aging USS Kitty Hawk as the only permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier.

The Washington is scheduled to arrive at its new Pacific post by August, following brief detours near South America where it will participate in training exercises.

The Kitty Hawk will be decommissioned later this year.

The USS George Washington (CVN 73) will be rounding South America on its way to Japan, and will do some exercises along the way. It will be escorted by the USS Farragut (DDG 99) and USS Kauffman (FFG 59). I encourage everyone to check out those links. There is a really nice pattern emerging, it seems lately whenever we observe a ship get deployment orders, this really snazzy new website pops up for the ship. BRAVO ZULU.

One final thought. All this talk about the Kitty Hawk being decommissioned later this year is hogwash. I don't see it being decommissioned until next year at the earlist. The Navy cannot decommission her under the law until the USS George H W Bush (CVN 77) is commissioned, and that won't happen until next fiscal year. This USS Enterprise (CVN 65) retirement notice to Congress is starting to get attention, and the Navy will not retire the Kitty Hawk early. If the Bush commissioning is delayed for any reason, the Kitty Hawk decommissioning will be too. We have heard talk the Kitty Hawk decommissioning is already being pushed back until summer of 2009.