Global
The United States is preparing to begin dismantling the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, a vessel historically linked to U.S. military operations off the Libyan coast in 1986. The carrier gained prominence during heightened tensions between Washington and the regime of the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, as part of a program costing over $1.3 billion. After being decommissioned in 2017, the carrier left the shipyard in Virginia heading to Mobile, Alabama, where it will undergo dismantling and removal of its nuclear systems in a project expected to be completed by 2030. This move brings back into focus the military confrontations between the United States and Libya in the 1980s, especially in 1986, when the carrier was part of the U.S. naval presence in the Mediterranean amid escalating tensions. Records indicate that the carrier was ordered to the Mediterranean on April 25, 1986, in response to the crisis with Libya following naval clashes in the Gulf of Sidra in March of the same year. It later participated in air sorties and surveillance missions, monitored by Soviet naval forces. The confrontation between Washington and Tripoli escalated in March 1986 when U.S. forces conducted naval operations to test freedom of navigation in the Gulf of Sidra after Gaddafi declared a specific latitude line as the limit of Libyan waters, leading to missile exchanges and strikes on Libyan naval targets. The carrier entered service on November 25, 1961, as the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, serving for over fifty years and participating in major U.S. military operations including the Vietnam War and campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, before being officially decommissioned in 2017. The cost of the carrier’s deactivation and dismantling program is approximately $1.43 billion, covering decommissioning, storage, and dismantling contracts. The project’s complexity lies in the carrier housing eight nuclear reactors, requiring careful removal of reactors and handling of radioactive materials under strict protocols, alongside recycling large portions of its metal structure. Completion is anticipated by 2030.
