Two Years?

It takes the Navy two years to go from commissioning a ship to sending it out on its first cruise? Given that warships typically serve less than 30 years, that's a fair piece of its operational life just to get ready to go.

Another thought: The USS Sterett has 39 officers and 275 sailors. Criminy, back in the day, only nuclear cruisers had that many officers. A 1052 FF had about 17 officers and 230 sailors, though, when a LAMPS det was embarked, that went to 21 and 250. If the officer count on the Sterett includes the helicopter pilots, say six or so, that means that is still has 33 officers in ships company.

By comparison, the Leahy and Daniels class CGs had 27 officers and about 430 sailors on them. Does anyone know what all of those officers are doing on the Sterett?