The conventionally powered aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy (CV-67) was decommissioned at Mayport, FL, on March 23, 2007. The ship will be towed to the Navy's inactive ship facility at Philadelphia, where it will be placed in preservation ("mothball") status. The Navy had proposed retiring the Kennedy and reducing the size of the carrier force from 12 ships to 11 as part of its proposed FY2006 and FY2007 budgets. Until mid-2005, the Kennedy was homeported in Mayport, FL. Prior to the proposal to retire the Kennedy, the Navy's plan was to maintain a 12-carrier force and keep the Kennedy in operation until 2018. The issue for the 109 th Congress was whether to approve, reject, or modify the Navy's proposal in the FY2006 and FY2007 budget submissions to retire the Kennedy and reduce the carrier force to 11 ships. In acting on the proposed FY2006 defense budget, the 109 th Congress passed a provision that amended 10 U.S.C. 5062 to require the Navy to maintain a force of not less than 12 operational carriers. In acting on the proposed FY2007 defense budget, the 109 th Congress passed a provision ( Section 1011 ) in the FY2007 defense authorization act ( H.R. 5122 / P.L. 109-364 of October 17, 2006) that amended 10 U.S.C. 5062 to reduce the required size of the carrier force from 12 operational ships to 11 and to permit the retirement of the Kennedy under certain conditions. In light of Section 1011 and the Kennedy's retirement, one potential issue for the 110 th Congress concerns the Navy's future plans for the home port facility at Mayport. The proposal to retire the Kennedy and reduce the carrier force to 11 ships first came to light in January 2005, in an internal FY2006 DOD budget-planning document called Program Budget Decision (PBD) 753 , which was approved on December 23, 2004, by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. PBD 753 set forth a number of significant adjustments to the FY2006 budget and FY2006-FY2011 Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP), including the proposal to retire the Kennedy. PBD 753 estimated that retiring the Kennedy in FY2006 would reduce DOD funding requirements for FY2006-FY2011 by a net total of about $1.2 billion. Table 1 shows the year-by-year funding changes for FY2006-FY2011 of retiring the Kennedy in FY2006, as estimated in PBD 753 . As shown in the table, retiring the Kennedy was estimated to produce a steady-state savings of roughly $300 million per year starting in FY2008, including roughly $200 million per year for crew pay and allowances, and roughly $100 million per year in ship operation and maintenance (O&M) costs. In February 2006, the Navy estimated that overhauling the Kennedy and keeping it in service during the five-year period FY2007-FY2011 would cost more than $2 billion. The Kennedy was originally scheduled for a $350-million overhaul that was to begin at its home port of Mayport, FL, on May 2, 2005, shift to the government-operated Norfolk Naval Shipyard at Norfolk, VA, on June 17, 2005, and be finished there on August 18, 2006. In light of the proposal to retire the Kennedy, the Navy said it wanted to use the $350 million to finance other Navy needs. On April 1, 2005, the Navy announced that it had canceled the overhaul. Navy officials said in early 2005 that following its retirement, the Kennedy would be placed in preservation ("mothball") status to preserve the option of reactivating it at some point. The ship might be reactivated, they said, if a conventionally powered carrier were needed to succeed the conventionally powered Kitty Hawk (CV-63) as the carrier that is forward-homeported in Japan (see section below on carrier home ports). On October 27, 2005, however, the Navy announced that it intends to use one of its Nimitz (CVN-68) class nuclear-powered carriers to replace the Kitty Hawk as the Japan-homeported carrier when the Kitty Hawk retires in 2008. A Navy spokesman said the decision to replace the Kitty Hawk with a nuclear-powered carrier was a mutual agreement between the United States and Japan. In November 2005, it was reported that the Navy had selected the George Washington (CVN-73) as the carrier to replace the Kitty Hawk in Japan in 2008. The Navy publicly confirmed this on December 2, 2005. In February 2006, the Navy announced that it had restricted the Kennedy from conducting flight operations with fixed-wing aircraft due to newly discovered corrosion problems with the ship's arresting gear mounts. The Navy also stated that two of the ship's four aircraft catapults were operating under waivers that were scheduled to expire in June 2006, and that four of its eight boilers were operating under waivers that were scheduled to expire in September 2006 and could renewed. From FY1951 through FY2006, the Navy's force of large-deck aircraft carriers generally fluctuated between 12 and 15 carriers. It reached a late-Cold War peak of 15 ships in FY1987-1991, and began declining after that, along with the size of the Navy as a whole. The carrier force declined to 12 ships in FY1994, and remained there through FY2006, even while the total number of ships in the Navy continued to decline. From FY1995 through FY2000, the Kennedy was operated as an "operational/reserve training carrier" with a partially reserve crew. During this period, the Navy's force of 12 carriers was often characterized as an "11+1" force. The Kennedy reverted to being a fully active carrier in FY2001. Table 2 summarizes the Navy's carrier force just prior to the decommissioning of the Kennedy. As shown in the table, the force included 2 conventionally powered carriers—the Kitty Hawk (CV-63) and the Kennedy (CV-67)—and 10 nuclear-powered carriers—the one-of-a-kind Enterprise (CVN-65) and 9 Nimitz-class ships (CVN-68 through CVN-76). The Kitty Hawk , Navy's oldest carrier, entered service in April 1961. In 1991, the ship completed an extensive service life extension program (SLEP) overhaul that was intended to extend its service life from about 30 years to about 45 years. The ship is scheduled to be retired in 2008, at age 47. The carrier force is to be maintained at 11 ships by the commissioning in 2008 of the George H. W. Bush (CVN-77), which was procured in FY2001. CVN-73 is to be transferred to Japan in 2008 to succeed the Kitty Hawk as the Japan-homeported carrier. The Enterprise , the Navy's next-oldest carrier, entered service in November 1961, seven months after the Kitty Hawk. In 1994, the ship completed a nuclear refueling complex overhaul (RCOH) that was intended to extend its service life by about 20 years, to 2013. The ship is scheduled to be replaced in 2015 by CVN-78, a new carrier that the Navy plans to procure in FY2008. Unlike the Navy's newer Nimitz-class carriers, each of which is powered by two nuclear reactors, the Enterprise is powered by eight nuclear reactors, making the Enterprise's reactor plant more complex and expensive to maintain, at least in the view of some observers, than the reactor plants of the Nimitz-class ships. The Kennedy , the Navy's third-oldest carrier, entered service in 1968. Unlike the Kitty Hawk, which was given an extensive SLEP overhaul, the Kennedy was given a less extensive (but still fairly substantial) complex overhaul (COH) that was completed in 1995. Prior to the proposal to retire the Kennedy in FY2006, the Kennedy was scheduled to retire in 2018, at age 50, and be replaced in 2019 by CVN-79, an aircraft carrier that the Navy wants to procure in FY2012. Since the Kennedy did not receive a SLEP overhaul at about age 30, some observers questioned whether the ship could be kept in service to age 50. The Nimitz (CVN-68), the first of the Navy's Nimitz-class carriers, entered service in 1975 and completed an RCOH in 2001. The Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69), which entered service in 1977, completed an RCOH in 2004. These RCOHs, like the Enterprise RCOH, are intended to permit each ship to remain in service for an additional 20 years. The Carl Vinson (CVN-70), the third Nimitz-class carrier, entered service in 1982. The ship is undergoing an RCOH that began in November 2005 and is scheduled to finish in November 2008. The total estimated cost of this RCOH is $3,134.3 million, of which $861.5 million in advance procurement funding has been provided from FY2001 through FY2005. The Navy requested another $1,493.6 for FY2006, and planned to request the final $779.2 million in FY2007. Nimitz-class RCOHs are performed by Northrop Grumman's Newport News (NGNN) shipyard, located at Newport News, VA. The Navy is proposing to maintain in coming years a 313-ship fleet that includes 11 aircraft carriers. The final report on the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), submitted to Congress in February 2006, endorses a Navy that includes 11 carriers. Admiral Michael Mullen, the CNO, said he supported the decision to retire the Kennedy and reduce the carrier force to 11 ships, and that he would also support qualifying Mayport, FL, as a home port for a nuclear-powered carrier.