It’s expensive and has been running late, but the USS Gerald R. Ford is one robust carrier. The Ford was commissioned in 2017 and is almost ready for its first official deployment. It is the lead ship in the Ford-class that will replace the Nimitz-class carriers one-for-one in the coming years.
The USS John F. Kennedy, also a Ford-class, is slated to be delivered to the navy in 2024. It is in U.S. code that the navy is required to keep 11 carriers in its fleet at all times. So, it is imperative that the Gerald R. Ford conducts its first scheduled patrol this year.
Some Presidents Know the Navy Well
Another president, Teddy Roosevelt, once said, “A good navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guaranty of peace.” The Ford-class is one way to project power and carry a big stick.
More Sorties With Fewer Sailors
The Ford-class keeps the basic Nimitz-class hull form yet has numerous improvements over the earlier carriers. It can fly more sorties per day, require fewer crew members to save money on personnel expenses, and lessen the need for more operating and support costs. This should reduce total expenditures for each Ford-class ship by $4 billion during each lifecycle.
It Needed a Break
The Gerald R. Ford finally completed a six-month “modernization and maintenance” period at Huntington Ingalls Industries-Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia in March. Workers updated the galley and improved command-and-control spaces.
Ford-Class: More Tests and Training
The carrier is now at its home port in Naval Station Norfolk undergoing a final training and certification program. In 2021, the Ford went through critical shock trials when 40,000 pounds of explosives were set off near the carrier. It passed that stage with flying colors.
Is It Ready Yet?
But this sequence of events has been delayed for years. The original deployment for the Gerald R. Ford was supposed to be in 2018. It is also a $13 billion ship with “five thousand shipbuilders in Newport News and thousands of suppliers across the United States,” so the clock has been ticking to get it fully ready to lead a strike group. Navy brass said “everything is on track” as far back as last autumn.
The Gerald R. Ford Is Mammoth
The Ford’s capabilities should be worth the wait as it is one primo ship. It is 1,092 feet in length and has a beam of 134 feet while the flight deck is 256 feet wide. The Ford displaces 100,000 tons. Two nuclear reactors with four shafts put out a speed of 30 knots.
The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) completes the first scheduled explosive event of Full Ship Shock Trials while underway in the Atlantic Ocean, June 18, 2021. The U.S. Navy conducts shock trials of new ship designs using live explosives to confirm that our warships can continue to meet demanding mission requirements under harsh conditions they might encounter in battle.
The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) completes the first scheduled explosive event of Full Ship Shock Trials while underway in the Atlantic Ocean, June 18, 2021. The U.S. Navy conducts shock trials of new ship designs using live explosives to confirm that our warships can continue to meet demanding mission requirements under harsh conditions they might encounter in battle. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Riley B. McDowell)
Ford-Class: New Launch and Arresting System
Instead of a steam-launched catapult, the Ford will have a newfangled Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and advanced arresting gear. This is better to send aircraft of different sizes and weights into the air. It will take fewer sailors to run the system and should have a lower number of maintenance issues.
Great Air Group and Protection
The Ford will have a full complement of F-35C Lightning IIs, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes, and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare airplanes. These airplanes can fly 160 sorties a day or surge to over 200 sorties a day during combat.
For protection and survivability, there are Sea Sparrow medium-range surface-to-air missiles and a Phalanx close-in-weapon system.
NORFOLK (July 22, 2017) Sailors man the rails of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) during its commissioning ceremony at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. Ford is the lead ship of the Ford-class aircraft carriers, and the first new U.S. aircraft carrier designed in 40 years. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Andrew J. Sneeringer/Released)
Ford-Class: Stand and Deliver
The entire Department of Defense is likely aware that the Gerald R. Ford has endured its share of delays and cost projections gone wild. Though $13 billion is a high price for one ship. The question is: can it deliver on all the new technologies – over 20 new systemic upgrades with innovations? Were there just too many bells and whistles to bring it in on time? That will be up to the postmortem reports from the General Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service to point out lessons learned from the long procurement period that will hopefully help other carriers in the Ford-class make it to fruition on time and under budget.
Now serving as 1945’s Defense and National Security Editor, Brent M. Eastwood, PhD, is the author of Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare. He is an Emerging Threats expert and former U.S. Army Infantry officer. You can follow him on Twitter @BMEastwood.
GhostTomahawk
June 29, 2022 at 1:09 am
If we didn’t need to incorporate the entire country to build it… it would already be done.
In 1933 we built the Golden Gate Bridge in 3 years. 80 years later it took over 12 to build the Bay Bridge. Better technology more abilities 4x longer.. and China built half of it. During WW2 we were cranking out carriers in 2 years. Now it takes over a decade. The reason? Bureaucracy. Red tape. Union labor. Everyone is billing the tax payer because congress doesn’t spend their own money. They spend ours. Time to tell these builders if you go over YOUR BUDGET its on you. Stand and deliver or we get someone else next time
Chris Cha
June 29, 2022 at 11:00 pm
GhostTomahawk, you’re pointing out the right problem, but not the right root cause. Shipbuilders are paid on a cost-plus basis to build the ships. While the shipbuilders DO innovate, cost reduction is not a driving factor – it just reduces their revenue stream as well. Move to fixed price with strict change controls. It will help reduce costs on the 2nd through Nth ship. Ultimately, the shipbuilders need to catch up to the aircraft manufacturers with digital twin so they can simulate the design changes rather than costly and time-consuming tests.
Gary Alpert
June 30, 2022 at 8:50 am
Years ago my father’s machine shop made parts for the California class subs. After inspection by the government inspector parts were shipped to electric boat in Groton CT. Bad design made the parts inoperable when installed on the subs.After a meeting with my father and the review board for the navy the quote goes like this. “We don’t care what it costs, fix it”. We had a new car and a new sailboat that summer, and by the way my engineer father identified the problem and fixed it. That is why we pay $ 200 for hammers in the military.
PS11B10
June 29, 2022 at 11:16 am
My chief concern with that EM launcher are EMP attacks.
Deplorable Joe Voter UltraMAGA
June 30, 2022 at 7:18 am
The military hardens all electronics against an EMP. Unfortunately the rest of the US isn’t. Those carriers would be about the only energy producing plants for the entire US if we got hit by a North Korean nuke in orbit above us (amplifies the EMP).
truthalwayswinsout
June 29, 2022 at 11:28 am
The Navy needs to fire 70% of its Admirals and stop being woke.
Jacksonian Libertarian
June 29, 2022 at 11:50 am
In the “mature precision strike regime” surface ships including aircraft carriers are extremely vulnerable to “time on target” overwhelming missile strikes. It is doubtful that an Aircraft Carrier Battle Group can stay within combat range (500 miles) of Taiwan in the event of a war with China, without getting sunk. For the price of an Aircraft Carrier Battle Group ($20-$30 Billion) and its 60-90 aircraft, thousands of long range drones could be fielded to loiter over the battlefield.
Daniel C Moore
June 29, 2022 at 1:36 pm
I believe we need a number of smaller carriers. The Ford class is too expensive to lose and therefore too expensive to put in harms way.
Exnavynuke
June 29, 2022 at 1:04 pm
I damn well hope the Ford is capable of doing far more than 30 knots! My, previous generation carrier, was capable of doing 30kt+… and that plus was a surprisingly large integer.
[lt;dr: killing a carrier is currently pretty hard]
Also, while Phalanx is a pretty good system, it can only intercept a very finite number of times before it’s magazine goes dry – and reloading it takes an excruciatingly long time. Conversely, Sea Sparrow was purported by those who would know to be just awful. Perhaps that cursed system has been updated so that it finally works, but NAVSEA had been tinkering with it for decades before I got there, and had very little to show for they efforts.
Vis a vis the oft-repeated claim, as embodied by Jacksonian Libertarian in this thread, that an overwhelming missile strike is an existential thread to a CSG; I’d have to cautiously agree, with several caveats. Firstly is the composition of the group: the carrier is the primary, often effectively only, offensive punch of the group. All of the other ships play defense, often having several roles simultaneously. Secondly is the nature of the threat: sea-skimming anti-ship missiles are actually relatively easy to intercept enmasse with assistance of competent AWACS who can look down at them incoming, while the Dong Feng-21 and similar ballistic missiles present a much more difficult intercept picture (yet, thanks to the SM-6 series, not impossible) but are themselves less likely to successfully prosecute to target do to the extended and fragile command/decision tree.
NorgeX
June 29, 2022 at 4:07 pm
You do not need to sink a carrier to kill it.
Once it cannot neither launch nor recover aircraft it is deadweight, nay a liability, in the battle area, drawing down on other forces because it now needs additional protections which are extracted from other battle groups. Better to beach it and abandon it. I cannot help but get the ‘too many eggs in one basket’ chills with our current slate of super carriers. Are more, smaller carriers the answer? The wisdom of Solomon would sure be nice for this debate.
Exnavynuke
June 29, 2022 at 10:22 pm
You bring up an excellent point. Remove a CVN’s ability to launch or recover aircraft and it becomes a mission kill. That, rather than sinking the beast is what I’m often referring to – a single Sunburn or DF-21 hit is extremely unlikely to send a US Nimitz to Davy Jones’ Locker.
A smaller ship implies a smaller airwing; which means there’s even more difficult cuts that’ll have to be made. Less strike aircraft and a sufficiency of force multipliers; more strike aircraft but give up certain combat roles as luxuries? There are also implicit economies of scale: a 50kt carrier has less than half the available space of a 100kt carrier, with all other considerations equalized. Truly a difficult problem.
Chris Cha
June 29, 2022 at 11:01 pm
GhostTomahawk, you’re pointing out the right problem, but not the right root cause. Shipbuilders are paid on a cost-plus basis to build the ships. While the shipbuilders DO innovate, cost reduction is not a driving factor – it just reduces their revenue stream as well. Move to fixed price with strict change controls. It will help reduce costs on the 2nd through Nth ship. Ultimately, the shipbuilders need to catch up to the aircraft manufacturers with digital twin so they can simulate the design changes rather than costly and time-consuming tests.