7 aircraft carriers (and ships of their strike groups) are at sea at the same time? WTF is going on???

via Business Insider.

For the first time in years, seven of the US Navy's 11 nuclear aircraft carriers are at sea simultaneously, according to US Naval Institute News.

The USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), USS Nimitz (CVN 68), and USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) are in the Western Pacific on operational deployments. They have full air wings and carrier escorts.

The USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) and USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) are in the Eastern Pacific, while the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and the brand-new USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) are in the Atlantic. Those four carriers are on training missions or doing workups before deployments.

All the carriers — including the ones converging on the Western Pacific — are on planned operations amid President Donald Trump's 12-day trip to Asia.

Story here. 

Someone better be able to write a big ass check to the US Navy for this "situation"!

What do I mean.

Maintenance.  Every single ship is gonna need after deployment work done it. Seven carrier strike groups out at the same time?  That's alot of maintenance work!

Personnel.  Those sailors on deployment are gonna all rate at least a few days off when they get back.  They also should rate some dwell time.  But unfortunately the Navy is just like every other institution.  You have people that are homesteading...they never go to sea.  So that means that someone is gonna have to write a check to all those guys that are gonna be asked to go back on float just as soon as they got back.  I thought cross decking was a thing of the past.  I guess I was wrong.

If this is just a result of a couple of combatant commanders smelling their oats and deciding that they rated an aircraft carrier, or if this is part of the runup to war...I just don't know.

What I do know is that seeing more than half our carrier strength and escorts at sea at the same time is peculiar as hell!