USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group (CSG) is on its way to the Middle East for deployment near Iran, as President Donald Trump builds a massive military force in the region to pressurize Tehran.
This will be the US Navy’s second CSG in the region, as USS Abraham Lincoln is already in the Persian Gulf, along with nine other warships, including five Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers. An unspecified number of US submarines are also in the region, along with nearly 30,000 US troops deployed to 18 US military bases in the Middle East.
USS Gerald R. Ford’s crew was informed of the decision on February 12. The Ford CSG is expected to reach the Persian Gulf by the end of this month.
On February 13, when President Trump was asked about the logic behind deploying a second CSG in the Middle East, he replied that the US would need the carrier there.
“We’ll need it if we don’t make a deal (with Iran),” the US president told reporters.
In many ways, the USS Gerald R. Ford’s choice was an obvious one. It is the US Navy’s latest and most advanced aircraft carrier, displacing 100,000 tons, and the only US carrier featuring the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS).
“I think the Ford, from its capability perspective, would be an invaluable option for any military thing the president wants to do,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), told reporters last month at the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) annual symposium.
However, Ford’s deployment to the Middle East is not without controversy, and there are valid concerns about whether the ship’s crew and the ship itself are even ready for the task at hand.
Is USS Gerald R. Ford Ready For Iran Deployment?
Incidentally, the transfer to the Middle East is Ford’s second extended deployment. The USS Gerald R. Ford has been on a cruise since June last year, when it left its homeport in Norfolk for the Mediterranean.
It was later dispatched to the Caribbean last October by President Donald Trump when he was building US military forces near Venezuela.
USS Gerald R. Ford took part in Operation Absolute Resolve in the first week of January, along with USS Iwo Jima, which led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The USS Ford’s initial deployment was supposed to end by the last week of December. However, its redeployment to the Caribbean meant this timeline was missed. The ship’s crew was then expecting to come home by early March.
Now, the second extension means that the crew cannot expect to return home by early April at the earliest. However, if the Iran operation stretches many months, as happened in the Venezuelan operation, which lasted from August 2025 to January 2026, then this timeline could stretch even further.
Although the US Navy regularly kept carriers deployed for nine months or longer during the post-9/11 wars, peacetime deployments typically do not last more than six months.
Notably, it’s not just Ford’s nearly 4,500 sailors who are tired and do not know when their deployment will end.
The new delay will also jeopardize Ford’s scheduled dry-docking period in Virginia, during which major upgrades and repairs have been planned.
The carrier was due for a major maintenance and refitting period at the Newport News Naval Shipyard in Virginia early this year.
This delay means not only will USS Ford have to spend more time in maintenance, but the cost of repairs and upgrades could also shoot up dramatically.
One current service official told the New York Times in December last year that the Ford was expected to receive necessary modifications to one of the systems used to land warplanes on its flight deck. Those modifications have been planned for the past eight years, among the ship’s many other planned upgrades that can be completed only while in an industrial repair facility.
That and other updates were identified as needed during the many years of testing since the Ford, a far more technologically advanced carrier than those that came before it, was commissioned in 2017. By comparison, the next two Ford-class carriers, the John F. Kennedy and the Enterprise, are being built with these changes from the outset.
When a carrier is deployed for more than six months, it faces many maintenance issues.
For instance, the rough asphalt coating on the carrier’s flight deck, called nonskid, begins chipping off in larger amounts after such a long time at sea. That requires a couple of days’ pause in flight operations to resurface the deck so warplanes will not slide around when not held fast by chains.
Senator Mark Kelly, himself a retired career naval aviator, said in an interview that deploying a ship continuously for over six months creates many problems.
“It kind of wears on you,” he said. “And you start to see accidents start to happen — not just pilots crashing planes, necessarily, but accidents on the flight deck,” such as sailors walking too close to air intakes for jet engines or spinning propellers.
“All kinds of stuff starts to happen when you’re out there for an extended period of time,” said Kelly.
Vice Adm. Mike Franken, who retired from the Navy in 2017 after a nearly 40-year career that began as an enlisted sailor on a carrier, said the type of maintenance period the Ford is scheduled for after this deployment would probably take four to six months in a shipyard. Delaying that maintenance by continually extending the carrier’s deployment, he said, would lead to spiraling costs that the president and defense secretary probably have not considered.
“You plan better for this,” Admiral Franken said in an interview.
If supplemental equipment like the elevators that the Ford uses to bring warplanes up from the hangar bay to the flight deck begins to fail, he said, the president and defense secretary will eventually have a ship unable to fulfill its assigned mission.
These failures or maintenance issues could cost dearly in a war situation.
Incidentally, just last month, a US Navy’s top officer said that he will “push back” against orders to extend the deployment of USS Gerald R. Ford.
“I think the Ford, from its capability perspective, would be an invaluable option for any military thing the president wants to do,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), told reporters last month at the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) annual symposium. “But if it requires an extension, it’s going to get some pushback from the CNO. And I will see if there is something else I can do.”
However, ignoring these protests, Ford’s deployment was extended for the second time last week when it was ordered to move to the Middle East.
USS Ford is the US Navy’s most advanced carrier strike group, and it will definitely give the President more military options against Iran, but if the crew is tired and the carrier is facing maintenance issues, then this could be problematic in a war situation.
Notably, USS Truman CSG suffered a series of mishaps during its deployment to the Middle East last year while conducting military operations against Yemen.
Over the course of its full deployment from September 2024 through May 2025, the carrier strike group had a friendly fire incident in December — when a Navy destroyer launched missiles at two F-18s — a collision with a merchant ship in February, and lost two F-18s, one in April and another in May.
A subsequent US Navy probe blamed the “significantly stressful deployment” for these costly mishaps.
Iran is a much more formidable opponent than the Yemen-based Houthis, and the US would not like a repeat of those mistakes.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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