Key Points and Summary on Ford-Class: The U.S. Navy’s Ford-class supercarrier program is a “nightmare” of production delays and unresolved technical defects, according to Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports.
-The lead ship, USS Gerald R. Ford, was delivered years behind schedule, and the follow-on carriers, USS John F. Kennedy and USS Enterprise, are also facing significant delays, with the Enterprise now pushed to May 2030.
-These setbacks are attributed to persistent problems with new technologies like the advanced weapons elevators and, critically, a severe shortage of skilled labor at the Newport News shipyard, which is struggling with a high attrition rate among its workforce.
The Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier Challenge
The first of her class of the newest aircraft carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was supposed to be a technological marvel.
It features 23 revolutionary technological improvements in the design and operation of carrier aircraft – the famous Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System (EMALS) and the Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), to name two.
These innovations will generate benefits for carrier operations for decades to come.
But with those technologies have come more than the usual “fair share” of problems.
The ship has completed its first full deployment and is preparing for another, but significant defects with the Ford program remain unresolved.
A number of them have no resolution date on the horizon, according to more than one report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The ship, which is entering service and capable of launching and recovering aircraft, is now scheduled to be operational on a date that is years behind schedule.
The first six of the Ford design are CVN-78, CVN-79, CVN-80, CVN-81, CVN-82, and CVN-83. CVN-78 (Gerald R. Ford) was initially procured in fiscal year 2008.
The ship was commissioned into service on 22 July 2017 and had achieved initial operational capability (IOC) in December 2021.
The ship’s first deployment began in October 2022, more than five years after the ship was commissioned.
The next ship in the series, CVN-79 (John F. Kennedy,) was procured in FY2013. The Navy’s FY2025 budget submission states that the ship is scheduled for delivery in July 2025, which is already here.
Ford-Class in 4 Words: Problems and More Problems
The Ford-class is the successor to the Nimitz-class carrier design.
The carrier is based on the Nimitz-class hull form, but its design incorporates several improvements.
These include features that enable the ship to generate more aircraft sorties per day, provide more electrical power for supporting ship systems, and utilize high-technology on-board systems, which permit the ship to be operated by several hundred fewer sailors than the Nimitz-class ships.
The Ford carrier design is also intended to reduce the 50-year life-cycle operating and support (O&S) costs for each ship by approximately $4 billion, compared to the Nimitz-class design.
However, the ship is experiencing more defects than expected to be put into service, and as always, numerous aspects have turned out to require corrective measures, revised program scheduling, and budget adjustments.
Some of those are:
-Faulty welds that were first reported in late September 2024 that have been found on the Ford-class carriers as well as other ships.
-Whether or not to procure CVN-82 in FY2030, which has been proposed in the US Navy’s FY2025 budget submission, in FY2028 instead, which was the scheduled date in prior-year Navy budget submissions, or in FY2029.
-Whether to procure CVN-82 and a subsequent aircraft carrier (which would be CVN-83) as a two-ship buy that would be similar to the two-ship buy that was used for procuring CVN-80 and CVN-81.
-CVN-78 program issues that were highlighted in a January 2024 report from the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) and a June 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on DOD weapon systems.
What Blocks the Path to Recovery
The program office has argued more than once that USS Ford was a new and untested ship concept and design, with the inherent issues that come with a first-of-a-kind vessel.
These, say program officials, are teething problems with her new technologies and are being worked out so they will not cause disruptions with the follow-on carriers.
However, in its annual assessment of defense procurement programs, the GAO reports that the Navy still anticipates significant additional delays for future hulls in the series.
There are ongoing issues with the weapons elevators aboard the second-in-class Ford-class CVN 79, which could delay the planned July 2025 delivery date for the vessel, according to the program office.
The delivery date for CVN 80, the third Ford-class carrier, has been delayed to May 2030, which is more than two years later than the Navy had expected.
Issues that are blocking the Navy’s ability to get the program back on track, again, according to the GAO, include the availability of materials and a shortage of skilled labor.
The leading shipyard for the program, HII Newport News, has “persistent shipyard workforce issues” that the program office is trying to fix by revising schedules and creating incentives for workers, GAO has said.
Newport News has been attempting to hire more yard employees. Still, it has been challenging to retain personnel new to the shipbuilding industry, HII CEO Chris Kastner told defense media outlets in April. The attrition rate for first-year new hires is so high (the Navy estimates it at 50-60 percent per year) that HII is abandoning the practice of hiring on “green” staff and is instead recruiting experienced personnel.
This puts the shipyard in competition with other shipyards for the same pool of skilled welders.
Kastner acknowledged that this, in the en,d “means you’re going to hire less and you’re [still] going to have to figure out how to get the work done.” It also raises your production costs,” said a long-time carrier design US Navy contractor who spoke to National Security Journal.
“We have spent the last 20 years or more not investing in our shipyards and not investing in the people we need to make them work. Now we are paying the price,” he said. “I would like to say there is some satisfaction in saying ‘I told you so’ to a bunch of people, but most of those who are responsible for the mess we are in were gone a long time ago.”
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs and Director of the Asian Research Centre with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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