It will not be easy to cover for the loss of the two destroyers, explains Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
“With two FDNF (Forward Deployed Naval Forces) DDGs out, the Navy would either need to forego some operations, work the remaining 10 cruisers and destroyers harder, or bring ships from Hawaii or CONUS to cover for them,” Clark told The National Interest.
Indeed, the fact that the Navy is forcing its fleet to do more with fewer ships to perform its global mission might have contributed to both collisions.
“Since the workload in FDNF may be a contributing factor to the collisions, the Navy would probably use ships from Hawaii from CONUS to cover for the loss,” Clark said.
“If those ships are following the Optimized FRP (Fleet Response Plan), the Navy will need five ships to cover for the two lost from FDNF. Each FDNF ship maintains an about 50 percent OPTEMPO, and an OFRP ship is about 20 percent deployed (one 7-month deployment each, 36 months).”