A nuclear supercarrier may only be considered to be “in the fleet” when it can actually pull out of the pier. It is that fact which causes USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) leaving Newport News, to make sea trials with the manufacturer to a man, more than the ceremonial that it is a release of steam to one of those engines which counts availability in wretched fractions.
The second Gerald R. Ford-class carrier CVN-79 has started the initial underway period that is to test major ship systems under the supervision of the shipyard. This lengthy curve of the ship to this point began when the vessel was ordered to begin construction in June of 2015, and the distance between that phase of building the keel and the open-sea testing serves to stress the fact that it is now extremely difficult to create new carrier capacity on forecastable schedules.
The strain is structural. General carrier planners tend to have a notion of a “rule of thirds,” one unit deployed, one unit training up, and one unit down being serviced. That is likely to mean only three or four who can be maintained in permanent position in an 11-carrier Navy, not to mention the losses to collisions, pot-holes, and industrial congestions. When one hull starts to slide, the backlash falls on the crews, air wings and the few ships which could still steam.
Here, the math is brutal and is concerned with maintenance. All nuclear carriers are eventually presented with the midlife refueling and multi-year overhaul, an industrial exercise that can be compared to a city block being rebuilt within the hull of a ship. The external periphery of that reality was demonstrated during the overhaul of USS George Washington, which took over 2,100 days under the influence of constantly growing constraints. In addition to schedule effects, the human price of long “construction-site” shipboard life has become too great to be ignored and habitability and support systems as readiness factors are being highlighted; not comforts.
The context is the reason the design of CVN-79 is important. The 100,000-footprint so familiar to Ford-class carriers is retained, but based on a new internal rationale: the electrical power and automation is brought to the centre of gravity in order to operate the flight. The electromagnetic catapults and high-tech arresting equipment are not merely engineering waving, but are designed to raise the throughput of launch-and-recovery operations and decrease the airframe and deck equipment stress, especially when the aircraft mix changes. In addition, the Kennedy is already configured to operate as F-35c, as there was an earlier move to incorporate those modifications in the ship instead of attaching them afterwards.
The sensor and system baseline of the ship is consequential in the same way. The Kennedy is coupled with the shift to the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR) and the abandonment of the dual-band approach of the lead ship. That modification is as much about maintainability and fleet standardization as it is about performance as the sustainment headaches rapidly increase when only one or two ships have a special configuration.
Another carrier is also not new and alone it is insufficient in solving old problems. Inquiries related to recent operations by carriers have habitually accused training insufficiency, weary watch crews and equipment discipline as the narrow margin where accidents commence particularly when operation tempo maintains a high level over extended periods. A second deployable hull in that environment performs two functions simultaneously: it increases capacity, and it decreases the pressure of “no other choice,” which may normalize risk.
Manufacturer sea tests will not put Kennedy into commission overnight, but it represents the beginning where a carrier can begin to demonstrate itself in the only place that matters: underway, with actual loads and actual motion and actual constraints. To a Navy that is operating on its heels, such a shift is the difference between a ship that is on paper and a ship that is capable of bearing the load.
