Federation Fleet Composition

[Aaron]

Currently the US has these carriers active:

USS Enterprise
USS Nimitz
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
USS Carl Vinson
USS Theodore Roosevelt
USS Abraham Lincoln
USS George Washington
USS John C. Stennis
USS Harry S. Truman
USS Ronald Reagan
USS George H. W. Bush

America was decommission in 96. Shitty Kitty in May of 09. Constellation in 03 and JFK in 07. The United States was renamed Truman.

[Deepcrush]

So thats 12 big boys and we have 8 Wasp Class ships right? Each grouped to its own task force.

[Aaron]

So thats 12 big boys and we have 8 Wasp Class ships right? Each grouped to its own task force.

Eight, yes.

Whether they each have there own TF, not sure. Things are more fluid now then they have been in the past.

[Deepcrush]

I'm pretty sure they have a group assigned to them. Just not a group as what they were 20 or 30 years ago...

[McAvoy]

11 aircraft carriers in commision but no actve. Remember these ships do go into dock for an overhaul or SLEp.

The JFK was decom is 07 and vthe Kitty Hawk in Jan 09 after the commissioning of the Big Grey Bush.

Mini flattops operate in their own group. Keep in mind these mini flattops are equals to the one or two only arcraft capable carriers in most country's fleet. Example the British Invincible class. Ironically the French operate the only conventional aircraft carrier outside the US.

[Deepcrush]

11, 12, 192 ... someone make up a number already...

[Sonic Glitch]

11, 12, 192 ... someone make up a number already...

47 (this is a Trek site after all )

[McAvoy]

11 carriers. There is even talk about decom the Enterprise now to reduce the fleet down to ten until the Ford is ready in 2015.

[Aaron]

11, 12, 192 ... someone make up a number already...

Roughly a third of a ships time in service is spent in refit and another third on workups, leaving a third for actual active duty. What the ratio is for SF, who knows.

[BigJKU316]

11, 12, 192 ... someone make up a number already...

Roughly a third of a ships time in service is spent in refit and another third on workups, leaving a third for actual active duty. What the ratio is for SF, who knows.

My guess would be that can do better than that primarily because space is not an inherently corrosive environment while the ocean is. A lot of refit time is simply fighting off the danger of rust and corrosion on electrical equipment. There also seem to be far fewer moving parts that would need maintenence on a starship. Say what you will about them but neither warp nor impulse engines have any props or shafts that need to be maintained. If you made me hazard a guess I would go with a 1/5th ratio instead of the 1/3rd. 1/5th on refit, 1/5th on workup and 3/5ths on duty. That would fit well with what we see from the Enterprise D where it really only has major maintenence items performed a handful of times over an 8 year period.

[SomosFuga]

11, 12, 192 ... someone make up a number already...

Roughly a third of a ships time in service is spent in refit and another third on workups, leaving a third for actual active duty. What the ratio is for SF, who knows.

Does that mean that 1/3 of a fleet is in refit and 1/3 on workups at any given moment?

[Captain Seafort]

Give or take a few, yes.

[BigJKU316]

We are way off topic but the old 1/3rd structure for the USN was really as much a function of the Cold War as it was anything. The idea was that no more than 1/3rd of the Fleet would get caught in an initial nuclear laydown. That was coupled with a doctrine of power projection with the Carrier Groups which had them deploying damn close to Soviet territorial waters much of the time where the idea was to put pressure on them from as many angles as possible in the event of a conflict.

The USN finally backed away from that and returned to a more traditional surge approach towards the end of this decade where the goal is that 6 of the 12 can deploy within 30 days and 8 can deploy within 90 days. The reduced nuclear threat and the end of needing to keep groups really far from home allowed this change.

[Captain Seafort]

That, however, can only be sustained for limited periods. To sustain a long-term deployment, such as the 5th or 6th Fleets or the bomber patrols, the 1/3rd rule still holds true.

[Deepcrush]

Then could we take 1/3 rule and apply it to our ideal of the newer UFP fleet? It would make sense to me.

That would allow a pretty simple rotation. If we take the 500 ship fleet idea. Have three dedicated combat fleets. 1st, 2nd, 3rd fleets.

1st fleet starts in Core defense.
2nd fleet starts in Border defense.
3rd fleet starts in the docks.

Then just rotate them. 1st goes to the border. 2nd goes to the docks. 3rd goes to the core worlds. So on and so forth. That would also leave the rest of the SF to do damn well whatever it wants.