U.S. Military Readiness and Safety

The USS Gerald R. Ford, now on its 266th day at sea and not expected back in Norfolk until at least May — putting it on track to exceed the post‑Vietnam carrier deployment record — has been battered by a laundry‑room fire sailors say burned for roughly 30 hours and by chronic plumbing and sewage failures. Crew and families say repeated mission diversions (from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean and back to the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea), deferred maintenance and extended time underway are eroding morale and harming reenlistment prospects, a strain acknowledged publicly by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine.