The head of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) expressed confidence July 13 that the first Ford-class aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), will overcome its remaining development challenges and become a valuable asset for warfighters.
“What we need to do with the Ford is we need to get it out to sea,” Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, NAVSEA’s commander, said at a Navy League breakfast in Arlington, Va. “Once that ship is out to sea, I think people will see it’s a fantastic warship that’s really going to serve the Navy and naval aviation well.”
Moore said the Navy has a plan in place to fix long-running problems with the General Atomics advanced arresting gear (AAG) so that aircraft flights can start on the carrier deck in January. The program is also making progress in getting the three faces of the Raytheon [RTN] dual-band radar in sync so they can share target-tracking information with each other, he said. In addition, the program is working to pinpoint the cause of a glitch in the ship’s electrical system.
His comments came a day after the Navy announced that the ship’s delivery was delayed from September to November to resolve “first-of-class issues.” CVN-78, whose prime contractor is Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII], is supposed to provide more combat capabilities and operational efficiencies than the existing Nimitz-class carriers, but it has had a series of technical problems, cost overruns and schedule delays. The ship is now expected to cost almost $13 billion, more than $2 billion over initial estimates.
Moore said that lessons learned from CVN-78 are being folded into the second Ford-class carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), which is about 20 percent complete and has a “solid” cost performance. Cost-controlling steps include using a less expensive radar than the dual-band radar. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), however, warned in October that CVN-79 is likely to cost more than the Navy’s $11.5 billion estimate due to “optimistic assumptions of construction efficiencies and cost savings.”