For more than two hundred days, the USS Gerald R. Ford and its carrier strike group have stayed at sea, shifting from European waters to the Caribbean in a marathon deployment that even the US Navy\u2019s top admiral now calls unsustainable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adm. Daryl Caudle has publicly said he will push back against any attempt to extend the supercarrier\u2019s cruise, arguing that the human and technical strain has gone far enough. What rarely enters this debate is something else stretched thin by record deployments. The climate and the oceans that carry this floating city<\/a> are under pressure too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to reporting from The War Zone<\/em> and 19FortyFive<\/em>, the Gerald R. Ford strike group left Norfolk on June 24, 2025, initially to support operations in Europe and the Mediterranean. In autumn, the Trump administration redirected the group to the Caribbean under US Southern Command for counter narcotics and security missions, leaving it operating far from home for more than seven months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adm. Caudle has called the ship \u201can invaluable option\u201d for any crisis, yet he also warned that another extension would \u201cget some push back from the CNO,\u201d citing the toll on sailors\u2019 families and on already fragile maintenance schedules. Extended cruises mean ships return in worse shape than planned, repair yards are thrown off schedule, and the next deployment cycle slips further into the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first glance, that sounds like an internal Navy logistics problem. In climate terms, though, it is a small window into one of the least-discussed sources of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. The Pentagon is already the world\u2019s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2019, US Department of Defense emissions<\/a> reached about 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, with roughly 60% coming from operational fuel use, mostly jet fuel for aircraft and other vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the EU\u2019s own estimates and independent research, militaries worldwide account for around 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions<\/a>, which is more than all civilian aviation. In 2023, the Pentagon\u2019s operations and installations alone generated an estimated forty eight million metric tons of CO\u2082 equivalent, more than the annual emissions of several entire countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carrier strike groups sit right inside that carbon-intensive core. The Gerald R. Ford\u2019s nuclear reactors do not burn fossil fuel for propulsion, but the rest of the package still runs on oil. Escort destroyers rely on marine fuel<\/a>, and the carrier\u2019s air wing burns large volumes of jet fuel every day it is flying training and patrol sorties. <\/p>\n\n\n\nRead More: Scientists have found 6,000 cubic kilometers of magma beneath Tuscany, a Yellowstone-scale reservoir hidden under one of Europe\u2019s calmest-looking landscapes<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n