3 Years of Middle East Combat Altering How Navy Supplies, Maintains Fleet, Leaders Say

USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) departs following a replenishment-at-sea with fleet replenishment oiler USNS Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO-187) during Operation Epic Fury, March 18, 2026. US Navy photo VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The ongoing U.S. conflict with Iran is morphing how the Navy fixes and supplies ships operating thousands of miles from logistics hubs as extended time at sea and the prospect of an extended naval commitment in the Middle East are creating a maintenance wave back home, service officials said this week.

As of Monday, there were more than a dozen guided-missile destroyers supporting carriers USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) and USS George Washington (CVN-73) and the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, according to Monday’s USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker. USS Spruance (DDG-111) and USS McFaul (DDG-74) have been deployed since November – 10 months deployed.

Combined with the expanded U.S. presence in the Red Sea in response to Houthi attacks in 2023, the Navy has been sailing ships into conflict for three years.

“We are sustaining 15 warships in the [weapon engagement zone]. That’s almost four carrier strike groups’ worth of destroyers,” Capt. Eric Kellum, the chief of staff of Naval Surface Force Atlantic, said Wednesday during a panel at the American Society of Naval Engineers Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium.

Now that the Navy has lost access to previous logistics ports, parts and supplies travel from as far away as Diego Garcia – a remote island in the central Indian Ocean – to keep the ships provisioned as the Military Sealift Command has beefed up its presence to keep the fleet moving.

Back in the U.S., the Navy is planning for a wave of maintenance for ships that will return from extended deployments and manage the yards that are currently empty, Adm. Karl Thomas, the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces, said on Wednesday. The Navy has extended deployments for several surface ships and pushed them to U.S. Central Command and, in the case of some, skipped planned maintenance periods, Thomas said.

“For years, when operational commanders were faced with these tough decisions and these urgent operational requirements, the response was often to defer depot maintenance and keep the hull on station,” he said. “The current operational pace has forced us to also address this really difficult decision. But as every naval engineer and every tradesperson in this room knows, you can’t defer maintenance indefinitely without paying the bill.”

To support the buildup in the Middle East, guided-missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner (DDG-116) and USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) and Littoral Combat Ship USS St. Louis (LCS-19) were extended. Their major maintenance availabilities were pushed from 2026 to 2027.

USS Ross (DDG-71) arrived in Mombasa, Kenya, for a scheduled port visit, Sept. 5, 2026. US Navy photo The shift in availabilities prompted the BAE Systems Jacksonville repair yard to potentially lay off 400 shipyard workers for lack of work. To prevent the loss of workers, the Navy arranged for a $70 million availability for future Virginia Payload Module missile tubes.

“That emergency intervention was successful, and it averted an immediate disaster,” Thomas said.

But a combination of funding gaps and operational needs has resulted in the cancellation of 18 smaller maintenance periods, Thomas said.

Retired Rear Adm. John Polowczyk, president of the Virginia Ship Repair Association, said the boom-bust cycle has been an issue among the 350 members.

“After [a member] went through his up and down workload demands and numbers of people, he said two things. ‘It’s hard to have a workforce without the work.’ He also said these things could look like bar charts, graphs… It’s somebody’s livelihood,” Polowczyk said. “We don’t necessarily have a workforce problem; we have a workload problem.”

The shifts in availability will surge ships to private repair yards starting in early 2027 and into 2028 – timing that’s less than ideal.

“The current schedule concentrates more than six concurrent availabilities squarely during our peak hurricane season, introducing execution infrastructure and force protection risks,” Thomas said. “This feast or famine dynamic is going to break our shipyards.”

The service is making changes to how it is thinking about maintenance by moving away from major availabilities to instead repairing ships in a way that breaks with longer periods.

“The traditional model of naval ship maintenance is no longer viable in this high-demand operational environment,” Thomas said. “That’s what we [have] got to change.”

Sailors stand watch in the pilothouse aboard Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Oscar Austin (DDG-79) as the ship transits through the Suez Canal, Sept. 12, 2026. US Navy photo The solution is spreading repairs out in a maintenance continuum to prevent all the repairs from piling up in major availabilities, Thomas said.

“The maintenance continuum is a strategic framework designed to maximize fleet readiness through continuous screening, planning and execution across the entire life cycle of a platform. Its core principle is simple: proactively identify and address maintenance needs at the earliest feasible opportunity. Let’s maximize equipment redundancy, extinguish material problems before they cascade into mission-killing casualties,” he said.

To that end, the Navy is trying to push more work down to the sailor level and Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activities have been stood up across the fleet. The SIMAs are designed to develop sailors with elevated repair skills who can supplement the crew and repair yards for work.

Ships in the Middle East are also traveling with more spare parts and are learning to do more repairs at sea, officials said. Additionally, the service is experimenting with new diagnostic tools and generative artificial intelligence to make planning for the availabilities easier.

Officials said that while the supply and maintenance problems have been difficult, the ships have performed well.

“[We’ve had] 1,000 offensive engagements at 97 – almost 98 – percent accuracy and over 300 defensive engagements with zero shots taken. That’s over three years. And believe me, there’s been a lot of attempts,” Kellum said. “I am positive now. I have proof in sustained combat operations. [Sailors] are awesome.”