The Navy's state-of-the-art aircraft carrier will be late coming out of the yard.
Sea trials for Gerald R. Ford will be delayed six to eight weeks due to "a slight deterioration" in the shipboard test program, officials said Tuesday. Ship delivery is scheduled for March 31, but could be affected by the results of sea trial.
"This prudent step provides the most affordable path to delivery," said Cmdr. Thurraya Kent, spokeswoman for the Navy Research, Development & Acquisition. "All the work and any associated schedule delays are being managed within budget and below the $12.887 billion cost cap."
The ship has had its share of setbacks as undeveloped technologies such as the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear struggled to keep pace with production schedules. But this delay is needed to get everyone trained and qualified on the vast array of new technologies — a schedule which has fallen behind Kent said. The slower-than-expected pace was not the fault of the crew, for which she had high praise.
The ship is 93 percent complete. EMALS testing, which first failured, was successfully completed on the bow catapults in June, and is on schedule to complete waist catapults in November. Dual Band Radar testing has commenced; propulsion plants have completed their non-critical steaming program and are preparing for the critical test program.
Roughly 240 junior sailors moved aboard the supercarrier in early August. Ford's 1,600-member crew now works on the ship rather than in office buildings throughout Newport News, Va.
