Like some of the senior sailors who walk its deckplates, the USS Blue Ridge did a little weightlifting recently to stave off the physical decline that sometimes comes with getting older.
Machines stacked tons of varying weights aboard each side of the 7th Fleet command ship at a Yokosuka drydock, while a survey team collected data that could help the ship remain on active duty well after its current crewmembers call it a day/.../
The Blue Ridge spent 28 percent of 2011 engaged in operations and 40 percent of the year at sea or otherwise away from its homeport, according to Navy figures.
Van Tol mainly attributes the higher overall tempo to commitments in Central Command, which includes the Middle East and Horn of Africa.
However, van Tol said that operational demands on the 7th Fleet could increase if China returns to the pattern of belligerent behavior it displayed in 2010, which included incidents at sea with U.S. ships and disputes over territory with U.S. allies.
"There is certainly a current tension between increased commitments globally and the need to do recurrent maintenance," van Tol said. "As material problems accumulate or are allowed to get worse, the cost of fixing them increases, so it's a classic case of, ‘Pay me now, or pay me later.'
"That's the constant trade-off Navy leadership is faced with," van Tol said.