George Washington Fire Fallout

The USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) is at sea, and was reported to be heading towards Pearl Harbor to swap crews with the USS George Washington (CVN 73). Looks like those plans have been put on hold while the Navy takes assessment of the fire damage. Navy Times is reporting:

The carrier Kitty Hawk, which was on its way to Hawaii to swap crews with the carrier George Washington, now plans on visiting Guam while officials on the GW assess the extent of a fire that broke out several days ago.

“There’s no change to our long-term schedule and much is still contingent on what the assessors find on the George Washington,” Capt. Todd Zecchin, Kitty Hawk’s commanding officer said. “But in the meantime we are going to pull into Guam and hopefully by then we will know the rest of the way ahead.”

While Navy officials assess the damage on GW, the Kitty Hawk continues to operate in the Western Pacific and will make the Guam port visit in “mid-June,” he said.

Right now there are too many questions without answers to bother speculating, although the time line here gives the impression that over the next two weeks the answers will be forthcoming. There is only one aspect to the entire Kitty Hawk - GW swap that bothers us. If the Navy is mandated by law to keep 11 carriers in service, and the House bill for FY09 makes this point emphatically in regards to the USS Enterprise (CVN 65) for 2011, why is the Navy mothballing the USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) in July as the Navy Times article suggests at the end of the story.

Looks to us like the Navy is in too much of a hurry to decommission the Kitty Hawk, and should probably wait until after the USS George H. W. Bush (CVN 77) is commissioned.