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An all nuclear battlegroup would still require replenishment as both it's crew and aircraft require consumables. As best I can establish from the various congressional documents now available online the concept of operations for the replenishment of all-nuclear groups was to be different though. With conventionally powered escorts a proportion of the carriers liquid fuel capacity would be used to carry fuel for her escorts, meaning less available for the air wing, the faster the group steamed the more ship fuel it would require. This was offset by providing an AOR or AOE as an integral part of the battle group (hence the AOE-6 class) that could replenish the carrier and her escorts within the combat area. Once the AOE's stores were expended the group would have to retire and replenish from an Underway Replenishment Group (URG), likely out of the range of Soviet shore-based strike aircraft. By contrast, a CVN with nuclear escorts would be able to dedicate its entire liquid fuel capacity to JP-5 allowing greater combat endurance from it's air wing. The all-nuclear group would not have an accompanying AOE and once its own stores were expended it too would have to retire to the URG, but would be able to do so at a higher speed than the conventionally escorted group and thus return to the combat area faster. The maths depends on the inputs but nuclear-propulsion advocates argued that the combination of a high-transit speed to and from the URG and greater JP-5 stowage in the carrier would result in greater time on station than a carrier with conventional escorts.
A fleet of nuclear escorts would have less ships than one consisting of conventionally powered ships. A 1967 study (The Endurance Supplement to the Major Fleet Escort Force Level Study) concluded that a CVN escorted by 4 DXGNs was equal to one escorted by 3 DXGs and 3 and 3/8ths DXs. This remained the accepted ratio throughout the nuclear versus conventional debate. Right through to the end of the Cold War the Navy was stating it needed 6 gas turbine destroyers in each carrier battlegroup (or 12 in a two-carrier group) whilst the basic assumption for nuclear escorts per CVN in the late 1970s was also 4.
I have included some commentary below from the Naval Historical Foundation website, the full piece can be found here. VADM Doyle became Op-03 Deputy Chief of Naval Operations in 1975 and was therefore a key personality in the debates around the CSGN and other programmes in the late 1970s, much of his testimony to congressional hearings can now be found online.
Title VIII refers to Sections 801-804 of the FY1975 defense authorization act that required all "major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy" to be nuclear powered, this covered all carrier escorts and the ships allocated to surface action groups but it did not cover frigates, amphibious ships, auxiliaries, etc, it neatly lined up with Rickover's belief that it was uneconomical to equip warships below 8,000 tons with nuclear propulsion. Title VIII was repealed by Section 810 of the FY1979 defense authorization act.
A fleet of nuclear escorts would have less ships than one consisting of conventionally powered ships. A 1967 study (The Endurance Supplement to the Major Fleet Escort Force Level Study) concluded that a CVN escorted by 4 DXGNs was equal to one escorted by 3 DXGs and 3 and 3/8ths DXs. This remained the accepted ratio throughout the nuclear versus conventional debate. Right through to the end of the Cold War the Navy was stating it needed 6 gas turbine destroyers in each carrier battlegroup (or 12 in a two-carrier group) whilst the basic assumption for nuclear escorts per CVN in the late 1970s was also 4.
I have included some commentary below from the Naval Historical Foundation website, the full piece can be found here. VADM Doyle became Op-03 Deputy Chief of Naval Operations in 1975 and was therefore a key personality in the debates around the CSGN and other programmes in the late 1970s, much of his testimony to congressional hearings can now be found online.
Title VIII refers to Sections 801-804 of the FY1975 defense authorization act that required all "major combatant vessels for the strike forces of the United States Navy" to be nuclear powered, this covered all carrier escorts and the ships allocated to surface action groups but it did not cover frigates, amphibious ships, auxiliaries, etc, it neatly lined up with Rickover's belief that it was uneconomical to equip warships below 8,000 tons with nuclear propulsion. Title VIII was repealed by Section 810 of the FY1979 defense authorization act.
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