The fleet is losing one of its 10 carrier air wings this fall, and with it thousands of personnel and dozens of aircraft will be scattered to plus-up the rest of the fleet.
If the 2017 budget plan is approved, the carrier air wing will begin its shutdown in October, Navy spokesman Lt. j.g. Kara Yingling told Navy Times.
The one to go is Carrier Air Wing 14, based out of Naval Air Station Lemoore, California, which hasn't deployed since 2011 or been fully staffed since 2013.
The downside is, it's going to reduce the time between deployments for the rest of the carrier air wings.
But there is an upside. The personnel in the wing and its associated squadrons will be spread around the remaining 9 air wings.
The question is, would you rather have 10 partially staffed wings (and squadrons) or 9 fully (or nearly so) manned wings?
Of course, the risk is that this is the beginning of a trajectory. Once force levels start shrinking, it's hard to stop that. I remember a time when 15 air wings with about 86 aircraft each was considered the bare minimum to support the mission. And that was at a time when we weren't fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and the Chinese PLAN fleet was 1950s era Soviet junk.
XBradTC 
Leave a comment