The nominee to be the next Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) promised the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) that he would report the status of the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) monthly following schedule delays with advanced weapons elevators (AWEs) earlier in the program.
SASC Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) opened Wednesday’s questioning of Vice Adm. Michael Gilday during his nomination hearing with a strong criticism of the Ford and its new technology delays.
He noted the ship was delivered nearly two years late, incomplete, $2.5 billion over budget, with nine of 11 total AWEs still not functioning, causing costs to increase. Moreover, since the Ford is meant to be the numerical replacement for the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), CVN-78’s delays means there have been only 10 operational carriers despite a CNO requirement for 12.
Inhofe implied awarding Ford to a sole-source contract and incorporating numerous immature technologies “with next to no testing and had never been integrated on a ship” has helped drive these problems.
The new technologies include the Dual-Band Radar (DBR), Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), and AWEs. Since entering into the contract in 2008, Inhofe said the cost has ballooned to over $13 billion “without understanding the technical risk, the cost or the schedules. This ought to be criminal.”
While Inhofe allowed the Ford will be a great ship and is necessary to keep up with the threat environment, “we have to do a better job.”
“There was a level of arrogance that it didn’t really make any difference that the elevators don’t work,” Inhofe said.
He repeated Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer promised President Trump the elevators would be ready to go by the time the Ford pulls out of port or he could be fired. “Well they still don’t work,” and are likely not to be all functional when the ship leaves port in October, a delay from an earlier planned date in July (Defense Daily, Jan. 8).
Spencer’s promise “indicates either poor knowledge of the facts or poor judgment and this is the latest example of Navy leaders not being straightforward when it comes to the program,” Inhofe said.
Inhofe asked Gilday to provide his impressions given this “is going to be dumped on your lap.”
“I share your concern and I agree with your assessment, including the fact that we will likely only have two, perhaps four elevators operational by the time Ford leaves her availability in the fall. It’s still unacceptable. We need all 11 elevators working in order to give us the kind of redundancy & combat readiness that the American taxpayers invested in that ship,” Gilday said.
He added there were 23 new technologies introduced on to the Ford and four were immature when the ship was commissioned in 2017. Gilday noted the EMALS, AAG, and DBR have seen considerable progress with system reliability “trending in the right direction and actually where we want it to be based on the last at sea testing.”
However, he admitted, “it’s the elevators, I think, that’s a remaining big hurdle to get over to get that ship at sea and finally deployed.”
Upon Inhofe’s suggestion, Gilday committed to report to SASC monthly on the status of CVN-78 “in complete transparency.” He added he would take what the Navy is learning form the Ford and ensure “we don’t commit those same mistakes again on the Columbia-class and other ships that we need to field in the next few years.”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) also questioned the nominee on the Ford.
Gilday elaborated both EMALS and AAG have had almost 800 launches and 100 on each of three successive days, “which it’s right at the level we see from the existing Nimitz class, so we think we’re on a good path with respect to reliability and sortie generation rate.”
He said the DBR is now also showing reliability rates over 90 percent as well, so “the focus right now is in those elevators.”
Kaine asked why the AWE was not shore-testing, in comparison to EMALS and AAG.
Gilday said this week he met with Secretary of the Navy staff to ask that question and of the 23 new technologies, “they did not consider the elevator system to be high risk, and so it wasn’t prototyped at shore.”
Gilday noted “it’s absolutely critical when we’re talking about complex warships and the systems and system design, that if we’re going to introduce new technologies, that they are prototyped adequately and proven before we go to production.”
When Kaine asked who made the decision and why, Gilday said it is ultimately the Navy’s responsibility and while money was a factor, “I don’t think it was the overriding factor. I think as the engineers took a look at the existing design that they saw the risk is lower. They saw the risk is acceptable.”
He explained AWE was a new design, but the technology exists commercially in warehouses. However, putting it on moving ships requiring watertight spaces changes things.
“So, you can imagine to maintain watertight integrity up seven or eight decks is a pretty big challenge.”
Earlier this year, Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), said the Navy was now working to build an AWE land-based test site for future improvements and alterations (Defense Daily, Feb. 20).