Retired U.S. Navy admiral from Mansfield concerned about aircraft carrier tasking

MANSFIELD — Timothy Beard has seen U.S. Navy operations at every level, including as skipper of the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) supercarrier.

The retired two-star admiral, a Mansfield native, said this week he is concerned about the pace of work being asked of the nation’s 11 aircraft carriers, the ship’s crews and their air wings.

“The oldest carrier (the USS Nimitz) is about to be retired. It’s 51 years old,” said Beard, who retired in 2000 after a 34-year naval career.

“And we are running our carriers effectively into the ground with the operations that are going on today,” Beard said in remarks to Rotary Club of Mansfield members and guests.

“I don’t agree with the amount of deployment that’s going on, but we have got to do what we’ve got to do. We are meeting the commitments, though it is quite a strain on the carrier fleet,” he said.

Pace of deployment quickened in 2026

To maintain a healthy force without burning out crews and ships, the Navy uses rotations that call for standard nuclear-powered carrier deployments of six to seven months, according to published reports.

Those deployments are part of a three-year plan that includes maintenance in port, testing of new repairs and re-integration of the ship’s crew and qualifying of the air crews before another deployment.

Once the ship is re-certified, it enters a 14-month “sustaining phase,” which begins with a standard seven-month operational deployment to forward areas of responsibility such as the Indo-Pacific, Mediterranean or Middle East.

Following deployment, the carrier returns to its homeport for the remaining seven months of the phase, maintaining a readiness that allows it to redeploy on short notice if needed.

However, ongoing crises in the Middle East and elsewhere — including a war with Iran that began in late February — have tested those schedules.

Since then, multiple carriers have been deployed into the area, including the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Gerald R. Ford, the USS George H.W. Bush and the USS George Washington.

(Retired U.S. Navy Admiral Timothy Beard speaks to members of the Rotary Club of Mansfield and guests on Tuesday at Kingwood Center Gardens.)

Beard’s speech touched on his entire career, including being stationed and/or deployed around the globe. He is fiercely proud of the U.S. military, including Marines he once commanded as deputy to the head of U.S. Marine Corps Aviation.

He flew 155 combat missions over Vietnam in an A-4 Skyhawk while aboard the USS Bon Homme Richard during two deployments from 1968 to 1971.

Beard had more than 4,000 flight hours and 1,040 carrier landings during his naval aviation career. He served in many senior commands, including deputy commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet.

His post-military career with the Northrop Grumman Corp. kept him close to the Navy — with a new technology. He helped develop unmanned combat air systems and now lives in Dallas, Texas, in retirement.

USS Abraham Lincoln expected home Thursday after 321-day voyage

After his speech, the first question from the audience concerned the carrier deployments to the Middle East and public controversy about the lengthy mission of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The Abraham Lincoln is expected to sail Thursday into its port in San Diego after a 321-day deployment, breaking the Navy’s modern-day record for most continuous days at sea without a port call.

It’s not the only ship exceeding the typical seven months at sea.

The Gerald R. Ford returned to port in Norfolk, Va., in May, after an 11-month mission that included operations in the Caribbean, Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt left San Diego on Sept. 27 for an extended deployment in the Middle East region. Its arrival will mean almost half of the Navy’s carrier force will have served in the region since the conflict began eight months ago.

Beard said he believes the Roosevelt will replace one of the current carriers now on station.

He said the George H.W. Bush recently went into port in Thailand for a respite, leaving the George Washington the only carrier in the Arabian Sea.

“The (Bush crew) are getting a break and then they will go back out,” Beard said. “I don’t know if the Theodore Roosevelt will relieve (the Bush or the Washington), but I am fairly certain that’s in the cards.

“The news has got it that we’re sending a third carrier to the gulf. I really don’t think so. I think we are deploying a third so one can go home,” he said.

U.S. presidents often ask when crisis begins: Where is the nearest carrier?

Beard, the captain of the John F. Kennedy in 1993-1994, certainly understands the importance of aircraft carriers and their accompanying strike groups of guided-missile cruisers, guided-missile destroyers, attack submarines and logistical support ships.

A powerful force such as this projects U.S. foreign policy and military strength, with more than 7,500 personnel anywhere in the world. The carrier itself, with its 70 to 90 aircraft, is 4.5 acres of sovereign territory.

Just maintaining a carrier is big task. A Nimitz-class carrier is 1,092 feet long — nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall. Its flight deck is 252 feet wide. The carrier is roughly 24 stories tall from keel to mast. Its engines can produce speeds of 30 knots (or 35 miles per hour).

It was during Beard’s time commanding the Kennedy that former President Bill Clinton, while aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, said that when word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it’s no accident that first question many people ask is: “Where’s the nearest carrier?”

Is the question now asked too often? Beard is concerned about sustaining the current operational tempo.

The U.S. Navy operates 11 supercarriers (10 Nimitz-class and 1 Gerald R. Ford-class), but standard operational maintenance cycles dictate that only a fraction can be at sea at any given time.

“It is quite a strain on the carrier fleet. We have 11 authorized. There’s always at least one in overhaul (undergoing maintenance work). Right now we have two in overhaul, one going into overhaul and one about to be retired,” he said Tuesday.

Keeping just one carrier continually in Middle Eastern waters is a challenge with a standard deployment and maintenance schedules, he said.

“It takes five aircraft carriers to do that. It’s almost 30 days (sailing) each way. When you start doing that, now you get an idea of why we’re being extended a little bit more because we just don’t have the ships available to do that,” Beard said.

“It wears and tears on ships like the Abraham Lincoln and Bush and so on. But that’s a fact of life today. That’s the price we pay in doing that,” he said.

Congress has authorized the construction of four new carriers and construction is underway on two, according to Beard. The cost to build a Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier averages $13 billion to $15 billion per ship in procurement costs alone, making them the most expensive warships ever constructed, according to a published report.

“We’re going to be able to stay at 11. But if we try to keep doing stuff like this, it’s going to string us out considerably. Aircraft carriers are maintenance intensive. You just don’t sail them away.

“It’s like a house. A house gets to be 10 or 15 years old, you’ve got to keep taking care of things go wrong in the house. The same thing goes in this complex machinery. Then we beat the heck out of them on the flight deck and all the stuff that’s going on with 5,000 guys running around,” Beard said.

Extended supply chain made it more difficult for Abraham Lincoln crew

The issues aboard the Abraham Lincoln were worsened by a longer supply chain to get supplies aboard the ship while at sea.

Beard is familiar with at-sea logistics. The first ship he commanded was the USS San Diego (AFS-6) in 1991-1992, a combat stores ship.

The USS San Diego was deployed to the Middle East for five months to support the Gulf War. Equipped with two UH-46 helicopters and a specialized support crew, it provided underway replenishment—delivering food, fuel, munitions and technical parts—to the Navy’s battle group and allied warships.

“We were in port every week and it was a short jaunt to get out to the carriers,” Beard said.

During that deployment, ships like the San Diego docked at gulf ports, picked up supplies and quickly ferried them to the ships in need. Given the situation in the Middle East, those kinds of quick resupply missions have not been possible.

According to published media reports, normal logistics hubs in the Persian Gulf (specifically in Bahrain) were severely disrupted or damaged during combat operations with Iran.

As a result, the Navy was forced to rely on exceptionally long supply lines running from distant outposts like Diego Garcia — an island in the Indian Ocean more than 2,200 miles away.

Beard showed the audience maps showing resupply routes coming from Singapore and as far away as Diego Garcia, which made routine resupply of fresh food, mail, and vital mechanical parts incredibly difficult.

“You can see how long it takes to get out there. We didn’t have enough ships to move the amount of material and weapons (needed quickly). When you think about it, the bombs come first … the parts for the airplanes and the ships come second.

“The food comes third. The ‘nice to haves’ like toothpaste and everything you read about (in the media), they didn’t have enough of. There’s priority in the shipment and with so many ships unavailable and the long transit distance, they just got behind in the logistics of supporting the Lincoln out there,” Beard said.

(Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visited with the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday as the carrier approached the west coast and its home port of San Diego.)

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth flew out to the Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday to speak with the ship’s crew ahead of its docking in San Diego.

He presented the highest unit award, the Presidential Unit Citation, to the carrier strike group crew, according to a story published at The Hill.

Hegseth praised the crew for supporting the U.S. military’s operations against Iran and helping enforce the naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, saying the strike group “projected decisive combat power and established maritime advantage to achieve the president’s strategic objectives and strengthen the security” of the United States.

According to The Hill article, Hegseth praised the crew for putting their lives on the line and slammed news report about the conditions aboard the vessel, accusing outlets of trying to “turn the USS Abraham Lincoln into some sort of a symbol of dysfunction or a symbol of low morale, or a symbol of a failed mission.”

“When I talk to your leadership, and I have had a chance to talk to a number of you, I know it’s the exact opposite, which is actually what the media does so often,” Hegseth reportedly said. “They see success, and they see excellence, and they see difficulty and challenge that needs to be overcome, an extension, a challenging environment, and they want to point to it as a symbol of something that was missed or wrong.” 

Naval leaders appear to have learned lessons

No sailors starved during the long deployment, though published reports describe difficulties for some, including food shortages, lack of toiletries (soap, toothpaste, deodorant).

But the Navy appears to have learned a lesson.

According to multiple media reports, the Theodore Roosevelt sailed from San Diego with “significantly more” food and supplies than the USS Abraham Lincoln carried, in part due to the damage to the logistics base in Bahrain.

“Theodore Roosevelt is loaded with significantly more food stores and on-hand retail ship store inventory than previous aircraft carriers,” a Pacific Fleet spokesperson told Task & Purpose.

“This sustainment depth is further backed by pre-staged retail and personal hygiene orders to be delivered to the carrier as it conducts operations,” the spokesperson said.

The Navy also established a logistics chain to sustain two carrier strike groups on station in the Arabian Sea, according to a story published in late August by the U.S. Naval Institute.

“There was a period of time in the early stages where we had to actually get the combat logistics force train coming out of Diego Garcia and parts moving from Singapore, parts moving from Japan and the Philippines and from the [U.S], getting that process in place so that we were really replenishing at sea in an effective and systematic way. I think we have got that cracked now,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said.

“Because I’ve got the combat logistics force treadmill, as I call it, now in a better place for resupply than some of the challenges that we saw early on with Abraham Lincoln that I don’t think we’ll see again,” Caudle added.

“I would prefer, you know, seven-month deployments. I typically am not a big fan of extensions, and I push back hard on that. But the enemy gets a vote,” Caudle said in the USNI article.