WASHINGTON — The Navy will run into some financial limitations for things like training and exercises starting this summer, stemming from the current pace of operations, according to the service’s top officer.
“I will have to start making decisions to change training, operations, certification, events, those type of things we do to generate our force in the July timeframe,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday in response to questions about when he expected to run out of funding due to the current rate of operations. The Navy currently has two aircraft carriers deployed to the Middle East.
Caudle confirmed that funds for these operations would come from a defense supplemental. In response, Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif, chair of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, insisted that the supplemental must be sent to lawmakers as soon as possible.
“I don’t know who’s making this final decision to get the supplemental over here, but we need to get it over here,” Calvert said. “Both sides need to look at it. Obviously, the Senate needs to look at it. It’s going to take some time. And at the same time, we’re going to be doing the base bill for defense appropriations. But it seems to me, based on what you just told me, that we’re going to need to do the supplemental first and get this funded as quickly as possible.”
Altogether, costs from Operation Epic Fury in the Middle East have climbed to $29 billion, the Pentagon’s acting comptroller Jules “Jay” Hurst told lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao also told lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford will likely require significantly more maintenance once it returns home from its nearly 11-month deployment in comparison to a standard, seven-month deployment.
“For every 30 days that the ship is extended on deployment, it adds 6 percent of maintenance, so five months extra would add 30 percent for maintenance,” Cao told lawmakers on Tuesday.
The Ford got underway from Naval Station Norfolk in June 2025, and has been at sea for a total of 323 days as of Tuesday due to multiple extensions. It broke the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln’s previous record of 294 days at sea in 2019 and 2020 for the longest deployment since the Vietnam era.
During the Ford’s historic deployment, it operated in the High North region with NATO allies and in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the fall, it headed to the US Southern Command’s region to support the Trump administration’s naval buildup there, prior to Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro’s ouster in January.
President Donald Trump announced in February the carrier would head east again to support operations in the Middle East, along with the Abraham Lincoln, as tensions between the US and Iran escalated. The Ford has since departed the Middle East and is now in the Atlantic, according to USNI News’ fleet tracker.
