What is the meaning of Blue & gold rotation in the navy?
Specifically “Blue and Gold” refers to the two crews of a ballistic missile submarine. Fast attack submarines only have one crew. Traditionally a ship has one crew. That one crew takes the ship goes through a “cycle,” which is comprised of a maintenance period, workup/training period and a deployment overseas. After the deployment it returns to homeport and begins the cycle again. A cycle typically covers 18-24 months. So to keep a ship deployed, the Navy requires 3 or 4 additional ships to support the single ship that is deployed. For a ballistic missile submarine, to reduce the time the submarine is not on station/deployed and not on patrol, each submarine has two crews. While one crew (the blue crew) is on patrol, the other crew (the gold crew) is in homeport training and working up. At the end of blue crew’s patrol, the submarine returns to homeport, both crews do a brief maintenance period, and then the gold crew takes the submarine out on patrol, while the blue crew conducts trai
