Quote:
Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic
Actually if it's in the reserve fleet it would probably be kept in a decent state, they have a significant maintenance program to ensure the ships can be put back into service. That's not to say that every ship in the reserve fleet would be seaworthy, some of the oldest ones are getting a bit "thin in the hull"
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...y/dot/ndrf.htm
What the global security writeup does infer though is that the longer a ship has be sitting in the reserve fleet, the greater the likelihood it will be scrapped or sunk (as artificial reefs) |
It depends - the JRRF (and the NRDF in general) has both "retain" and "non-retain" ships, and the latter get just enough work done to keep them from sinking before they can be scrapped. The Sturgis (a former nuclear power barge built from a Liberty ship) was overhauled twice in fifty years - once when she first went into the JRRF in 1967 and again in the 1990s when they wanted to evaluate the decay rate of residual radioactive contamination. She just went to the breakers this year. A light carrier would likely get similar treatment, since it would be considered of low value compared to the nuclear fleet carriers, and pretty much anything it can do could be done as well or better by a
Tarawa,
Iwo Jima, or
Wasp.