EDITOR'S PICK | Nov 5, 2019, 11:36pm

The USS Ford’s Business Case Sinks As The Troubled Carrier Finishes Sea Trials


Craig Hooper Contributor
Aerospace & Defense
I evaluate national security threats and propose solutions.

Last week, the U.S. Navy celebrated the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), sending the troubled aircraft carrier to sea for the first time in 15 months. But the Navy also released a set of troubling statistics that show the Navy’s own business case for the Ford class aircraft carrier is crumbling, with the Ford offering far less of an efficiency boost over the Navy’s legacy Nimitz class carriers than expected.

The decline in performance was stark. Days before the USS Ford went to sea, Secretary of the Navy, Richard V. Spencer, restated his business case for abandoning older but proven Nimitz-class carriers on October 23, boasting, “I get 30 percent more sortie generation, 25 percent fewer people on board, and a maintenance cycle that’ll be improved compared to the Nimitz, it is an efficiency game-changer. So let me abandon an older vessel and move to the newer fleet.”

Spencer sounded confident. But in the space of just eight days, after USS Ford returned from sea trials, marking the triumphant end of a grueling 15-month post-shakedown availability/Selective Restricted Availability, the Navy crushed Secretary Spencer’s business case, reporting a five percent increase in crew and operation and maintenance numbers that were higher than expected.

A Navy press release noted that the work done by the USS Ford would now be “executed with a 20 percent reduction in crew, at a significant cost savings, when compared to Nimitz-class ships. The Gerald R. Ford-class carrier offers a 17 percent reduction — approximately $4 billion per ship — in life cycle operations and support costs compared to the earlier Nimitz class.”

The three primary performance estimates used to sell the Ford–high sortie generation rates, big crew reductions and lower operating costs–will continue to decay. And as the Ford’s original rose-tinted performance estimates collapse under real-world testing, the $13 billion USS Ford will start to look more and more like a $5 billion Nimitz.

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