Navy officials on Tuesday told Congress the oft-delayed USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) will have an additional three-month delay before its post-shakedown availability (PSA) ends and the next Force Structure Assessment will change up the fleet mix while maintaining 355 ships.
Navy acquisition chief James Geurts said the PSA needs to continue work on the nuclear power plants, finish PSA work, and complete installing and testing the advanced weapons elevators (AWE).
The Ford started the year-long PSA last July to fix any issues that came up during the Ford’s first period at-sea. The original schedule had the PSA finish in July and then deploy in 2021 (Defense Daily, July 16, 2018).
“Right now my current estimate is that’s going to be an October delivery, vice July, so about a three-month delay,” Geurts told the House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee during a hearing on the president’s budget request.
“All three of those causal factors: making the adjustments to the nuclear power plant – we noted during sea trials, fitting in all the post shakedown availability workload, and finishing the elevators are all trending about the same time and so October right now is our best estimate,” Geurts continued.
The Ford has been dealing with problems with the propulsion bearing system. The carrier has four bearings that transfer thrust from its four propeller shafts. The issue was so important the Defense Department included repair costs in a reprogramming request last year (Defense Daily, July 19, 2018).
CVN-78 also has well known problems with its AWEs. The Ford-class ships are designed with 11 AWEs built by shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII], but the system has been delayed repeatedly on the Ford. The second elevator was only accepted earlier this month (Defense Daily, March 6).
In late January, Jennifer Boykin, president of HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding, said the company expects to turn over four upper stage elevators by the time the Navy finished the PSA and that another four to five lower stage elevators will be in the certification process by the time CVN-78 reaches its sail away date (Defense Daily, Feb. 1).
The Navy’s top acquisitions official noted the fleet has been notified and they are working the time change into their schedules.
When asked if he was confident the Navy would meet this new October deadline Geurts said, “with the information I have right now, that’s where we’re sitting right now.”
Geurts admitted the Navy would have preferred getting CVN-78 out of the shipyard in July. “I’m never happy delivering a ship back to the fleet late, and so we’ve got all lanes on deck working on that, but that’s where I see things right now.”
Separately, Vice Adm. William Merz, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems (N9), told the subcommittee that the new FSA the Navy expects to finish by the end of the year has more moving parts than the 2016 FSA.
“We’re expecting a pretty hard look at the mix of ships this year. We know we are heavy on large surface combatants. We would like to adjust that to a more appropriate mix, especially with the lethality we’re seeing coming along with the frigate. All shipyards have agreed that they can give us the lethality we need,” Merz said.
Merz also said the Navy is looking in to changes to fit a more distributed logistics and improving the medical support fleet beyind the current two hospital ships.
Merz did not know if the final 355 ships in the final fleet size will remain constant but said “I would find it highly unlikely to come up with a lower number based on the growing threat challenge.”
Given the likely changing ratio of large to small surface combatants (SSC), Merz also admitted he expects the SSC requirements number to change.
When pressed by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) in which direction, Merz said, “I suspect it would go up.”