November 12, 2025: The U.S. Navy is having problems retaining its skilled pilots and aircraft maintainers. It was easy to find out why. Talking to the pilots and their families revealed that for the pilots the biggest problem was being able to train with all the elements of their Carrier Air Wing/CAW. There are over two thousand officers and sailors in a CAW. About half of them are married and that means the availability and suitability of family housing, schools and employment opportunities for spouses are an important factor in crew morale and willingness to stay in the navy.

The Naval Air Facility Atsugi is the Japanese base the air wing personnel and their families particularly like. All elements of the air wing are in one place and that makes flight training more effective. The housing for families is among the best among naval bases outside the United States. Carrier Air Wing Five is currently operating from CVN-73 USS George Washington. Aircraft on board consists of eight squadrons, three with twelve F-18s and one with F-35Cs. There is one squadron each of E-2D early warning aircraft, one squadron of EA-18G Electronic Warfare aircraft, one squadron of CMV-22B tilt-wing transports, and two MH-60 helicopter squadrons. There is also one fleet logistics detachment.

CAWs move around a lot. For example, fourteen years ago the U.S. Navy disbanded one of its ten Carrier Strike Groups/CSGs, leaving only nine of them for the eleven aircraft carriers in service. This was a money saving measure, as nuclear powered aircraft carriers spend twenty percent of their time out-of-service having maintenance done. Thus only 8-9 CSGs are needed at any one time.

The CSG is actually a complex organization. There is the CVN and its crew of about 3,200 personnel, and the Carrier Air Wing, with 2,500 personnel that includes all the aircraft, pilots and support personnel. The CAWs do not stay with the same CVN, but move around. When a CVN goes in for maintenance, its CAW will move ashore and then to another carrier, usually one coming out of dry dock. Also part of a CSG are the escort ships, usually a destroyer squadron of 2-4 destroyers, cruisers or frigates and one or two SSNs nuclear attack subs. There are also one or two supply ships carrying spare parts and maintenance personnel for all ships, as well as fuel for the escort ships.

Until a few years ago, the U.S. had twelve carriers, but new ones are not being built quickly enough to replace the older ones that must retire because of old age

The most lengthy and expensive down time for CVNs are those shipyard trips that involve refueling the nuclear reactors. Those operations can take nine months and include lots of repairs and upgrades all over the ship. There is a lot of maintenance involved with CVNs, enough to keep these carriers unavailable for over 20 percent of their career. Over its fifty years of service, each Nimitz class carrier has 17 planned trips back to the shipyard. There are twelve Planned Incremental Availability or PIA operations in which new gear is installed, worn or damaged stuff is replaced and any heavy duty work needed is completed. The duration of a PIA varies with the amount of work to be done, but it can take several months, or a year or more.

Even more lengthy are the four Dry-docking Planned Incremental Availabilities DPIA operations, which are more extensive PIAs that include putting the ship into dry dock. These efforts can last a year or two. The one Refueling and Complex Overhaul RCOH is like the DPIA, except the ship is partially dismantled so that the spent nuclear fuel can be replaced. This takes a little longer than your usual DPIA, and often costs over half a billion dollars.