Reserve fleet

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USS Iowa and USS Wisconsin in reserve fleet, 1982.

A reserve fleet or (less formally) mothball fleet is a collection of naval vessels (both warships and support vessels) that are fully equipped for service but are not currently needed and thus partially or fully decommissioned. In earlier times and especially in British usage, these ships were said to be laid up in ordinary, whilst a similar phrase in unofficial modern U.S. naval parlance is ghost fleet.

Such ships are generally held in reserve against a time when it may be necessary to call them back into service, and are usually tied up in backwater areas near naval bases or shipyards, to speed the reactivation process. They may be modified, for instance by having rust prone areas sealed off or wrapped in plastic (or, in the case of sailing warships, removal of the masts). The ships will typically have a minimal crew (or less formally, a skeleton crew, which gave rise to the term bone yard) that makes sure the ship stays in usable condition - if nothing else, the bilge pump needs to run continuously to prevent the ship from sinking.

USS Iowa (BB-61) and "Ghost Fleet" at anchor in Suisun Bay, 2005

When a ship is placed in reserve status the various parts and weapon systems that the vessel uses are also placed in a storage facility so that if the ship is ever reactivated the proper spare parts and ammunition can be loaded aboard the vessel. This has occasionally created problems for naval personnel, as stored equipment is prone to fall into disrepair and, like the ship, can become obsolete as time goes on. One recent example of this was during the United States’ arms buildup under President Ronald Reagan. As part of the 600-ship Navy plan the US reactivated its Iowa-class battleships to serve with the fleet, but since the ships had not been used since the 1960s the US Navy had trouble finding the various specialty items that were needed to make the ship operational, as a result the navy salvaged these parts off of earlier battleships that had been relegated to museum ships.

In practice, the fate of most reserve ships is to be scrapped; after a few years their technology is too far behind for them to be worth upgrading. Sometimes they are used for experiments or target practice, or are sold to other nations, and occasionally to private companies for civilian conversion (especially for support vessels) or to become museum ships or even artificial reefs. In recent decades, the US Navy has begun to scrap dozens of these vessels, many of which date to World War II. Exporting the vessels for shipbreaking, or dismantling, has caused international protests.^[1] More recently, the Navy has established a program to allow ships to be sunk in selected locations to create artificial reefs.