IT’S TOO DANGEROUS A WORLD FOR THE US NAVY TO HAVE JUST 11 FLATTOPS: USS Gerald R. Ford’s ‘record-breaking’ deployment could last 11 months, top admiral says/ “If the Ford and its crew end up spending 11 months away from home, it would mark one of the longest carrier deployments since the end of the Vietnam War. The USS Nimitz returned home in 2021 after spending 341 days at sea during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to that, the USS Abraham Lincoln deployed for 294 days between 2019 and 2020.”

Long deployments are hard on the crews and hard on the ships.