The third Ford-class aircraft carrier is due to be delivered a year and a half late, on top of the government pushing back procurement of another future carrier by two years, according to the Navy’s fiscal year 2025 budget request.
While the FY ‘24 budget documents planned for the future USS
Enterprise (CVN-80) to be delivered in March 2028, the newest budget documents, released this month, cite September 2029 as the newest expected delivery date.
This increases the work timeline from start of construction to delivery from 110 months to 128 months.
A footnote in the budget documents tersely explained that “the CVN-80 delivery date shifted from March 2028 to September 2029 due to delays in material availability and industry/supply chain performance.”
HII’s [HII] Newport News Shipbuilding division is the sole builder of the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
In November, HII President and CEO Chris Kastner first said during an earnings call that delivery of CVN-80 was delayed a year because of delays of major components for “the bottom of the ship” by suppliers. He said these were residual effects from post-COVID labor and supply chain impacts (Defense Daily, Nov. 2, 2023).
Navy officials separately acknowledged the service decided to delay procuring another carrier, CVN-82, by two years from fiscal year 2028 to 2030.
The FY ‘25 budget highlights book said the Navy adjusted the phasing of procurement of critical aviation forces to comply with the budget caps in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.
“To match this rephasing, CVN-82 procurement has shifted from FY 2028 to FY 2030,” the highlights book said.
In January, a Newport News Shipbuilding executive told reporters that reports that said the Navy was considering this delay was “extremely disappointing” (Defense Daily, Jan. 8).
The executive warned any increase to carrier production intervals could break the momentum of the carrier production line, cause suppliers to go cold and “have a detrimental impact on the entire nuclear shipbuilding industry, including submarine construction,” since more than half of HII’s suppliers work on both carriers and submarines.
The executive said the CVN-82 delay would exacerbate issues in an “already fragile industrial base.”
The previous plan for CVN-82 procurement in FY ‘28 was already a year later than industry says is its preferred build rate of one carrier every four years.
A report published in January by the Aircraft Carrier Industrial Base Coalition (ACIBC) said the earlier schedule to procure CVN-82 in FY ‘28 was already having detrimental effects on the supplier base. It argued almost half of advanced procurement suppliers “are already expected to have already stopped continue production (i.e. “go cold”) for their respective CVN material/equipment by then.”
It said if CVN-82 was further delayed, 40 percent of suppliers said they would need to lay off workers and/or deprioritize military shipbuilding and instead explore more commercial options.
The report also said 71 percent of suppliers saw CVN-82 being ordered six or more years past CVN-81 as a negative to their business, “potentially leading to a significant cost increase” in products/services, workforce reduction and/or exploring alternate business opportunities.
While the documents indicate the Navy plans to delay CVN-82, they also show the service Navy was taking part of HII’s messages to heart.
HII advocates three years of advanced procurement (AP) funding for CVN-82. While HII wants the AP funding to start in FY ‘25 for procurement by ‘28, the Navy plans to start three years of AP funding in FY ‘27 with the planned FY ‘30 procurement.
In January, HII argued the three-year long AP period will help them “hit the sweet spot with the supply base.”