As of Sept. 14, two Navy guided-missile destroyers were operating in the Red Sea and another 13 were in the Arabian Sea, according to the U.S. Naval Institute’s fleet tracker, which uses Navy and public data. The concentration comes as U.S. forces conduct operations against Iran, according to U.S. Central Command, placing renewed operational demands on a destroyer fleet that has experienced prolonged maintenance periods.
The demand on the Arleigh Burke-class has been significant even before the current conflict. The USS Carney spent 235 days deployed from September 2023 to May 2024 and conducted 51 engagements against Houthi-launched weapons, according to the Navy. When Carney returned in May 2024, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti told the crew the last time the Navy had directly engaged an enemy to that degree was during World War II.
The renewed demand comes as the Navy’s maintenance system has struggled to keep the fleet on schedule. A December 2025 Congressional Budget Office analysis of Navy maintenance data found that Arleigh Burke-class destroyer overhauls that began between 2011 and 2024 took an average of 26% longer than the Navy’s final schedules estimated. The 225 DDG-51 overhauls analyzed also required 8% more labor than scheduled.
CBO projected that DDG-51 destroyers will spend an average of more than nine years, or about 27% of their planned service lives, in maintenance — more than twice the roughly four years envisioned in the Navy’s 2012 class maintenance plans. The agency cited the aging fleet, postponed maintenance, late inspections and contract awards, unexpected additional work, delays in parts and materials, and modernization work as factors. The average age of the DDG-51 fleet rose from 10 years in 2011 to 20 years in 2024.
The Government Accountability Office, in a January 2025 review, found that the Navy requested nearly $24.9 billion for combat-surface-ship maintenance from fiscal 2020 through 2023 and reported that nearly $25.9 billion was appropriated. The Navy reported obligating 99.7% of that funding by the end of fiscal 2023, yet GAO found the service continued to face shortages of spare parts, insufficient qualified maintenance personnel, and a continuing need to defer maintenance.
U.S. Fleet Forces Command declined to discuss its current destroyer readiness posture, current operations, or potential effects on future deployment schedules, citing operational-security and classification guidelines. The command also declined to provide historical aggregate data on destroyer operational tempo.
Sources: DVIDS News · Defense News