Will Overbudget Ford-Class Carrier Ever Match Nimitz’s Performance?

Why did the Navy and the Pentagon choose to take the riskiest, most costly, most irresponsible path by cramming 23 new technologies into the Ford?

The U.S. Navy's future USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is seen underway on its own power for the first time in Newport News, Va., on April 8, 2017. Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ridge Leoni/U.S. Navy via Getty Images

Commentary

The upfront cost of a  Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier was supposed to be modestly more than its predecessor, the Nimitz class. It was supposed to be able to generate a significantly higher number of sorties over any given time period. Its lifecycle cost was supposed to be less than that of the Nimitz, and it was supposed to be able to operate with 1,200 fewer crew members.

Instead, the cost of the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) has gone to more than $15 billion from $10.5 billion by 2024 (the last Nimitz carrier cost $6.2 billion). Meanwhile, a recent operational trial casts severe doubt on the claim that the Ford will be able to generate 30 percent more sorties than a Nimitz.

The trial pitted the brand new Ford-class carrier against a Nimitz-class warship, and despite claims that more powerful and faster weapons elevators would allow the Ford to prevail in generating more sorties, it didn’t. In fact, the extreme unreliability of its key systems, including the electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) and the advanced arresting gear (AAG), raises the possibility that over any kind of extended operation, it won’t even be able to match the sortie generation rate (SGR) of a Nimitz-class carrier. Only in the most ideal conditions (read unrealistic) over a short period of time would even a fully functioning Ford be able to generate significantly more sorties than a Nimitz.

In short, the claim was largely marketing hype designed to justify the need for a whole new carrier class filled with new expensive technology that had yet to be developed or vetted.

The 2022 Congressional Research Service Report notes:

“CVN 78 is unlikely to achieve its SGR requirement. The target SGR threshold is well above achieved historical rates and based on unrealistic assumptions, including fair weather and unlimited visibility, along with the expectation that aircraft emergencies, failures of shipboard equipment, ship maneuvers, and manning shortfalls will not negatively affect flight operations. Poor reliability of key systems that support sortie generation on CVN 78 could cause a cascading series of delays during flight operations that would likely negatively affect CVN 78’s ability to generate sorties. The reliability of these critical subsystems represents the most risk to the successful completion of CVN 78 [Initial Operational Test and Evaluation].”

The much-touted reduced manning requirements are also in jeopardy, as it turns out that the advancements that the Ford brings to the table may not reduce crew needs nearly as much as projected. One key area overlooked when touting lowered manning requirements is that the F-35C is very maintenance- and labor-intensive compared to legacy aircraft. So, once the Navy completes millions of dollars of modifications required for the Ford to handle the F-35, there will be more upward pressure on crew size. Consequently, the smart money says that within a decade, the crew size differential between a Nimitz and a Ford will have largely evaporated.

Given that the projected 50-year lifecycle advantage over the Nimitz was only $4 billion, and that the Ford classes are already costing several billion dollars more than projected, and given that the lifecycle cost savings of the Ford were primarily expected to come out of reduced manning requirements, and given just how unreliable and how not ready for primetime many of the Ford’s critical systems are, it seems likely that the Ford’s 50-year lifecycle costs will significantly exceed that of its predecessor.

Much of the Ford’s unreliability comes from its two most mission-critical systems, the EMALS and the AAG. More than four years after the Ford was commissioned, a 2021 summary from the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation showed it’s not even close to meeting even bare-minimum reliability goals.

Ford’s Fatal Flaw

But as bad as the crippling unreliability of critical systems are on the Ford, there’s a fatal design flaw that greatly exacerbates the situation: Critical maintenance and repairs can’t be conducted on any one of the EMALS catapults without taking the other three catapults offline. The same flaw is also present with AAG systems. So, to be clear, while a catapult undergoing repairs/maintenance doesn’t hamper the operation of a Nimitz carrier’s other three catapults, on the Ford, taking down one of the four electromagnetically powered catapults for repairs requires taking the other three offline.

Or, as the Congressional Research Service puts it:

“The reliability concerns are amplified by the fact that the crew cannot readily electrically isolate EMALS components during flight operations because of the shared nature of the Energy Storage Groups and Power Conversion Subsystem inverters on board CVN 78. The process for electrically isolating equipment is time-consuming. Spinning down the EMALS motor and generators alone is a 1 1/2-hour process, precluding some EMALS maintenance during flight operations.”

So, in order to conduct certain types of maintenance on a Ford-class carrier’s EMAL or AAG, the carrier can’t be in any area of potential threat. This is in sharp contrast to the Nimitz, which can conduct full repairs on one of its vastly more reliable steam catapults, confident that it still has three working catapults with which it can launch planes that can conduct their full range of defensive and offensive operations, including critical fleet defense combat air patrols.

At this time, no public plans to correct this fatal flaw have been revealed by the Navy.

This begs the question: With the Nimitz-class carriers being by far and away the most powerful carriers in the world for the foreseeable future, why did the Navy and the Pentagon choose to take the riskiest, most costly, most irresponsible path by cramming 23 new technologies—many of which were untested, unproven, and to this day, still immature—into the Ford?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.