Even if nothing was damaged (like that's going to happen) after you fish them out of the drink you think they can be put back in service? Just look at the boosters on the Shuttle--the cost to refurbish them after their dip in the ocean was almost as much as buying new. Valuable in as much as it showed the problem that lead to Challenger, but they refused to look.

They're definitely total write-offs.

Yes* most of the time. The purpose is the Pentagon doesn't want adversaries or anyone else getting their hands on classified gear or aircraft systems because it's basically flying around with a datacenter nowadays. If it's in deep water, NAVSEA may bust out FADOSS gear and make it a OJT exercise for junior recovery personnel.

In recent memory, the scorecard is:

- Truman (CVN-75): 1: JUL-22, 1: DEC-24 (friendly fire), 1: MAY-25, 1: APR-25

- Nimitz (CVN-68; decomm APR-26): 2: OCT-25

(Consider there are 9 additional carriers too.)

Nimitz does an average (mean) of 18.4 arrested landings a day over a span of 52 years.

Truman went 75000 landings (10-11 years) without a major mishap once upon a time™.

~7-8k fixed-wing landings per year per ship, roughly.

We're talking about the U.S. and its seemingly limitless military spending.

Even if they were recoverable, they would still order new ones.

The crew rest requirements in NATOPS have not changed in recent memory. I highly doubt this.

And do you really think they have an adequate maintenance budget? Remember the bird they lost in Alaska because what looks like leaving a barrel of hydraulic fluid open?

Yes, because bad fuel would likely have affected a lot more of the air wing than just two aircraft. I'm sure they'll look into it, and it's a possibility. But it is also possible that those two aircraft just picked that time to break for unrelated reasons.

Bad fuel isn't impossible. I'd just expect it to affect more than two aircraft. But if I also had two unrelated malfunctions in a fighter and a helicopter, I'm not jumping to conclude there's a systemic cause either. Sometimes lightning just strikes twice.

Now if two F/A-18s crashed, that's more suspicious and could indicate a systemic issue in F/A-18 maintenance or operations. But there's a large difference between a helo and a fighter. Different parts, different maintenance procedures.