The Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier: The U.S. Navy’s Problem Child

The Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier: The U.S. Navy’s Problem Child

Key Points and Summary – The Ford-class aimed to transform carrier aviation with EMALS, AAG, automated elevators, and a powerful electrical architecture to boost sortie rates and enable future systems. Integrating all of this at once—while ships were already under construction—drove reliability problems, costly retrofits, and schedule slips. -A single nuclear-carrier yard, specialty suppliers, labor constraints, and shifting design orders compou…