The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman is slated to undergo a massive overhaul designed to prepare the hulking vessel for the second half of its service life.
The Pentagon on Tuesday announced a $5.1 billion fixed-ceiling incentive contract with HII to complete the carrier’s mid-life overhaul at Virginia’s Newport News Shipbuilding.
The refueling and complex overhaul, or RCOH, comprises approximately one-third of the maintenance and modernization a carrier will undergo during its service life, according to the announcement.
The RCOH process on Truman will “include refueling the ship’s reactors, as well as extensive modernization work in thousands of compartments and tanks, as well as on most ship systems,” a HII release stated. “In addition, major upgrades will be made in the propulsion plant and combat systems.”
Truman’s overhaul notice comes a little over a year after the carrier completed a 251-day deployment that saw the vessel fire over 1.1 million pounds of ordnance and unleash the largest carrier-launched airstrike in history.
Despite making combat history, the carrier’s deployment was also plagued by incidents that prompted an array of investigations.
In February 2025, the ship collided with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M near Port Said, Egypt. The ship’s commanding officer Capt. Dave Snowden was subsequently relieved due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command.
Truman also lost a trio of F/A-18 Super Hornets during the deployment. One was shot down by the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg in a friendly-fire incident. Another experienced a failed arrested landing and went overboard. A third slipped off the hangar deck as a result of evasive maneuvers in response to an incoming ballistic missile and fell into the Red Sea.
Homeported at Naval Station Norfolk, Truman will be the eighth Nimitz-class carrier to complete its mid-life RCOH in Newport News.
“Our team has been diligently working to get ahead on this critical engineering and construction project that will prepare USS Harry S. Truman for the second half of her service life,” Bryan Caccavale, the Newport News Shipbuilding vice president of program management, said in a release. “When the ship arrives at NNS, we’ll apply that same diligence to working with our suppliers and Navy partners to ensure a successful recapitalization of CVN 75.”
The announcement did not specify when work on the carrier would begin, but noted that the overhaul is expected to be completed by November 2031.
The contract includes additional options that, if applied, could bump its total value to closer to $5.2 billion.
J.D. Simkins is Editor-in-Chief of Military Times and Defense News, and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
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