Here's something you don't see every day: a United States Navy aircraft carrier with its flight deck occupied by privately-owned vehicles.

US Navy via Twitter
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This photo, posted on the United States Navy's Twitter account, shows the USS Theodore Roosevelt underway in San Diego Bay with its flight deck full of non-military vehicles.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt, according to the United States Navy's press release, is headed to Washington to undergo routine maintenance and to be upgraded to improve mission capability and readiness.

The maintenance and upgrades are scheduled to begin in September, and the list of repairs/maintenance/upgrades sounds fairly extensive, so one would assume the job would take several months:

The DPIA is scheduled to commence this September and will include a system retrofit to accommodate the F-35C Lightning II mission capabilities, as well as upgrades to the ship self-defense system (SSDS), the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) network, and the Mk 38 25mm machine gun, as well as refurbishment and preservation of the ship’s hull, rudder, propulsion shaft, anchor, and 25 berthing spaces. - United States Navy

Since the USS Theodore Roosevelt will spend so much time under maintenance at the shipyard, the United States Navy is officially changing its homeport to Bremerton, Washington, the location of the shipyard. The facility, the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, will be the new home for the USS Theodore Roosevelt until all of the maintenance, upgrades, and testing is complete.

Since the 3,000+ sailors of the USS Theodore Roosevelt are changing their homeport, the families of those sailors ("dependents" in military talk) get moved, too. To help with that move, the USS Theodore Roosevelt is acting as a huge ferry for the vehicles owned by the sailors and their families.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt was expected to arrive at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on July 20th (yesterday, as of this post) and, judging by my experience in the military, it may have arrived on the 19th, or it could arrive on the 22nd. Just hurry up and wait already.

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