USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) Delivers at Sea​

By Admiral James G. Foggo, U.S. Navy (Ret.)

While onboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) in 1993, President Bill Clinton opined that when word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it is no accident that the first question many people ask is: ”Where’s the nearest carrier?”.

If POTUS asked this question today in the context of Putin’s diatribe of threats against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the answer would be that USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is on station and ready for any contingency in the European area of operations. In fact, Ford is on her first long deployment and made an important port visit in Oslo, Norway late last month.

Figure 1. The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) arriving in Oslo, Norway on May 24, 2023. Photo from NATO JFC Norfolk.

Being the first of her class, and the follow-on to the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, it was a long and expensive journey to get to this point, but frankly, worth the cost. Ford, and her sister ships of the class currently under construction, represent a capability that will be afloat for the next five decades in defense of our global national security interests.[1]

There has been much written about the cost of USS Gerald R. Ford, totaling $13.3 billion dollars, but the new carrier brings disruptive capabilities to 21^st century warfare. In an era of integrated deterrence, Ford represents the most adaptable and lethal combat platform in the world. Ford is the first new U.S. aircraft carrier designed in more than 40 years, introducing 23 new technologies that offer impressive advances to its aircraft launch system, propulsion, power generation, ordnance handling, and more.

That constitutes a lot of change, and many have criticized the Navy for putting so much new technology on the first ship of a class. Doing so obviously increases risk. When some of these new systems ran into trouble during testing, their failure was highlighted in a way that was unacceptable to Congress or the American taxpayer. Frankly, with the nation facing so many threats, it is time to shed the “zero defect mentality” and embrace those who are willing to take risk. Our adversaries are moving forward by leaps and bounds in terms of capacity and capability. We must outmatch and outpace them.

Technological Innovation

Drawing from my own experience, it was Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, who had the most forward-leaning perspective on risk. In Rickover’s June 5^th 1953 memo, he compares “paper reactors” to “real reactors.” He opines that, in real reactors, difficulties are encountered, whereas the tools of a paper reactor designer are paper, a pencil, and an eraser. Mistakes can simply be erased. In real reactors however, the design engineer wears these mistakes around his neck, where they cannot be erased and everyone sees them. Their solutions require manpower, time, and money.[2] In summary, Rickover was a proponent of trial and error, and he was willing to accept failure in new designs in order to find alternatives that worked.

The Ford-class design incorporates an unprecedented 23 new technologies and improvements that have never been integrated on a warship at sea. For example, Ford’s island, which contains the command and control elements to drive the ship and launch and recover aircraft, was moved further aft. This modification gives Ford another half-acre of space on deck to maneuver aircraft before or after launch and recovery, thereby increasing the sortie generation rate, or the rate at which aircraft are launched and recovered from the flight deck. This means less down time and getting more aircraft into the fight sooner.

USS Gerald R. Ford’s propulsion plant design is new and intended to provide the ship with more power and greater longevity between overhauls. Unlike previous carrier designs, Ford has fuel  stations integrated into the flight deck for faster refueling capability, rather than the traditional method of dragging hoses from catwalks on the sides of the ship across the deck to conduct refueling of aircraft. This also decreases the need to move or re-spot aircraft between launch cycles, thereby increasing both efficiency and safety.

Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System – or EMALs – is a quantum leap forward from steam catapults of the Nimitz-class. Instead of dedicating steam for the launch of aircraft, EMALs uses a stored energy bank to provide the electromagnetic field that generates a much smoother catapult launch of any type/model/series of aircraft. This means an easy transition from launch of a small drone to much heavier, combat loaded aircraft such as the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet or F-35C Lightning II. It also means reduced stress on the aircraft and less personnel required to conduct flight operations on the deck of the carrier. With an eye to the future, EMALS has the capacity to expand its launch envelope to accommodate both lighter and heavier aircraft not yet designed.

One of the most innovative new technologies, which is also proving to be one of the most advantageous of the Ford design are the Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE), capable of delivering massive amounts of weapons from magazines to the hangar bay or the flight deck. AWEs are also electromagnetically operated, and although it proved challenging to get all 11 elevators operational, they are now all operating on deployment, and like EMALs, are revolutionizing delivery of armed aircraft to the fight.

Capabilities and Performance

On April 2, 2023, the Gerald R. Ford Strike Group successfully completed composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX): the certifying event for Navy ships preparing for worldwide combat employment. During the final eight days of intense graded operations, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) and Carrier Air Wing Eight (CVW-8) met or exceeded all expected standards for a deployable aircraft carrier, validating Ford’s new design and the readiness of her crew.

Specifically, the flexibility and adaptability of Ford’s design was identified as a key contributing factor in her recent combat certification. It was noted that the enhanced flight deck configuration enables an expanded range of refueling, rearming and remanning options, while other characteristics related to electrical power, advanced weapons elevators and fueling stations were observed to have an immeasurable benefit to operational efficiency during more than 1,500 COMPTUEX flight events. Ultimately, the Carrier Strike Group Four (CSG-4) assessment team concluded that the Gerald R. Ford Strike Group completed the most successful COMPTUEX events in recent past, translating Ford’s new technologies and design into increased efficiency and warfighting capability. And in a future fight where the margins to victory may be razor-thin, improved efficiency and enhanced warfighting capability may be the deciding factor in an air-sea battle.

The bottom line is that USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is deployed, on station and delivering tremendous warfighting capability to the combatant commander. It is time to give credit – rather than criticism – to the designers of the platform as we watch the rest of the Ford-class carriers come online and exceed the Nimitz-class’ performance.

Admiral James G. Foggo, U.S. Navy (ret.), is the Dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy. Admiral Foggo is the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, and Allied Joint Force Command, Naples. He commanded BALTOPs in 2015 and 2016 as well as Exercise Trident Juncture in 2018.

[1] Future ships of the FORD class include USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79); Enterprise (CVN-80); USS Doris Miller (CVN-81).

[2] Hyman G. Rickover, The Journal of Reactor Science and Technology, Volume 3, No. 3.