Next-gen U.S. carriers Ford-class push forward amid reliability and budget pressures.

U.S. Navy imagery shows USS Gerald R. Ford running full flight operations across Europe, signaling that the Navy’s newest carrier design is entering steady service. The milestone comes as the U.S. balances shipyard delays, reliability upgrades, and China’s rapid advances in carrier aviation.

The U.S. Navy recently published imagery showing USS Gerald R. Ford cutting through the North Sea with a crowded deck and a fast cycling air wing, the clearest visual yet that the Navy’s newest carrier class is settling into routine operations after a long shakedown. In August, Ford was photographed in the Mediterranean conducting replenishment at sea and sustained flight ops with Carrier Air Wing 8; by late September, the carrier was back in northern waters for NATO’s Neptune Strike serials, launching Super Hornets and COD Greyhounds via humming electromagnetic catapults instead of steam. These scenes land as the Navy learns from Ford’s first full deployment and as China pushes out footage of catapult launches from its new Fujian carrier, a reminder that the CATOBAR contest is no longer a one-nation capability. Washington still wants credible and survivable airpower at sea in two contested theaters, but what’s different is the technology under the deck and the pressure to prove it in real operations.
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USS Gerald R. Ford conducts flight operations during NATO Neptune Strike in the North Sea, Sept. 2025 (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

Ford is the first clean-sheet U.S. carrier since Nimitz, swapping steam for the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Arresting Gear (EMALS), introducing a new radar architecture, and reworking the weapons-handling system to move ordnance faster from magazines to the flight deck. The ship’s eight-month cruise that wrapped in January 2024 produced 8,725 EMALS shots and the same number of traps, a trove of data that Pentagon testers say still isn’t enough to close the reliability argument. DOT&E’s most recent unclassified report notes that hardware and software changes have yet to push mean time between failure to where the Navy wants it, and the crew continued to rely on off-ship technical support for EMALS, AAG, and several weapons elevators. Testers also flagged electromagnetic interference risks and availability concerns around Ford’s one-off Dual Band Radar, which will give way to the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar on follow-on hulls. The verdict so far is practical but provisional: Ford can and has executed sustained flight ops in the real world, but the program still owes the fleet sturdier, independently verified reliability numbers.

John F. Kennedy, the second Ford-class hull, is the proof-of-learning test for the shipyard. EMALS “dead-load” launches began in February 2024 at Newport News, with weighted sleds hurled into the James River, a mundane but necessary prelude to aircraft shots. System activation has continued, but the schedule has slipped to the right. Navy budget documents now peg delivery to March 2027, roughly two years late, citing AAG installation and integration pacing the critical path. That creates a near-term valley: as Nimitz retires and Kennedy arrives late, the fleet is expected to dip to ten carriers for roughly a year, tightening maintenance margins and complicating strike group rotations that are already stressed by emergent demand.

PCU John F. Kennedy conducts EMALS dead-load testing at Newport News, Feb. 2024 (Video source: DVIDS).

Enterprise (CVN 80) and Doris Miller (CVN 81) are the production hinge. Huntington Ingalls shifted Enterprise inside Dry Dock 12 to enable parallel construction under a two-ship block buy, a bid to stabilize the workforce and long-lead parts flow. Current projections put Enterprise into the fleet in the back half of the decade and Doris Miller in the early 2030s, both later than early talking points suggested. Design attention on these hulls is concentrated around the combat system and F-35 support. The spread matters because the Navy is still obligated by law to maintain 11 carriers, even as operational surges in the Mediterranean and Red Sea have repeatedly stretched deployment lengths and pushed refit schedules.

Parallel construction at Newport News underpins Ford-class production cadence (Picture source: HII).

The Naval Aviation Vision continues to cast MQ-25 Stingray as the tanker that unlocks additional radius and payload for the strike fighters by ending the buddy-store refueling tax on F/A-18E/Fs. Program timelines have slipped, but the path still runs through flight testing, deck integration, and an initial operational capability in the latter half of the decade. Until then, the near-term deck mix remains familiar: Super Hornets for strike, Growlers for electronic attack, E-2D for battlespace management, CMV-22 for logistics, and a growing but still uneven presence of F-35Cs as production and software baselines mature. MQ-25’s eventual arrival is less about replacing aircraft than about rebalancing the deck so the strike package can go farther, heavier, and more often.

Looking further out, F/A-XX is the Navy’s contribution to Next Generation Air Dominance. The service has telegraphed requirements focused on range, persistence, and teaming with uncrewed platforms, a tacit admission that dense anti-access envelopes demand a different geometry than the Super Hornet era. Whatever design wins, source selection will not arrive in numbers until the 2030s and will sit alongside F-35Cs for years, pushing the carrier toward a quarterback role in a distributed kill web rather than a platform that concentrates mass in one place and time. The implication is straightforward: the value of the ship will increasingly be measured by how well it orchestrates networks of crewed and uncrewed shooters, not just by the number of strike fighters parked on its deck.

The adversary picture is evolving in parallel. Indeed, Beijing has released video of Fujian conducting catapult launches with what appears to be a J-35 stealth design, a catapult-capable J-15 variant, and the KJ-600 carrier-based AEW aircraft. Satellite imagery has traced the ship through successive trials, including a reported South China Sea work-up, while separate reporting points to Chinese investment in nuclear propulsion test infrastructure. The public narrative is curated and often delayed, but the trajectory is visible: China is moving from experimental proof-of-concept to integrated carrier aviation. For U.S. planners, the concern is less about one-for-one metrics than about the cumulative effect of a peer fielding CATOBAR decks, an organic AEW capability, and a maturing kill chain tied to land-based sensors and missiles.

Operationally, U.S. carriers have remained heavily tasked. Eisenhower’s 2024 Red Sea cruise was billed by the Navy as its most intense carrier combat since World War II, defined by round-the-clock counter-drone and counter-missile sorties in defense of maritime traffic. Ford’s extended Mediterranean presence during late 2023 and early 2024 served as deterrent ballast for a roiling region. More recently, Ford’s return to Sixth Fleet underscored the NATO dimension while other strike groups flexed toward the Middle East, demonstrating how shipyard math and global demand collide. Each extension and swap ripples backward into the industrial base and forward into the next deployment cycle.

The Nimitz-class bow wave is finally cresting. Public messaging and contracting activity indicate Nimitz will deactivate in 2026, a natural endpoint for a ship that spanned the Cold War to counter-ISIS operations. That handoff adds pressure as Kennedy slips, and it heightens the question of whether the Ford cadence now projected at roughly one hull every four to five years can sustain an 11-carrier force without locking the Navy into exhausting deployment tempos. Congress, the budget offices, and the Navy all understand that production rhythm is strategy by other means.

From a design and engineering perspective, Ford’s promise rests on whether EMALS, AAG, and the revamped weapons elevators can sustain higher sortie rates with fewer sailors, less topside maintenance, and faster rearm cycles. DOT&E’s language remains cautious; testers want cleaner reliability data, clarity on potential AAG redundancy upgrades, and evidence that elevators can hit design throughput during realistic surge events. The Navy counters that fixes are in work and points to months of operational flying as proof that the system performs while it matures. Reliability growth is a campaign measured in millions of cycles, not a single deployment.

Photos from August spot Ford’s deck with Super Hornets, Growlers, and logistics aircraft in the Med; late September frames from the North Sea show launches and recoveries in rougher conditions. Across the Pacific, PLAN footage from Fujian highlights choreographed deck movement and multiple types on catapults. The U.S. still holds an advantage in carrier aviation culture, magazines afloat and ashore, and allied ISR scaffolding. China is racing to compress the training delta while solving problems like corrosion control and parts pipelines.

The USS Gerald R.Ford and the Fujian carriers side by side (Picture source: Air Data News - ADN).

U.S. Navy officials have told lawmakers that buying the fifth and sixth Fords together could shave billions compared to serial purchases, reflecting economies in long-lead components and workforce stability. The logic is strong if the goal is to keep 11 carriers without frantic cross-decking of air wings and escorts. But locking in a block buy also commits to a future shape of naval aviation while long-range missiles, space-based targeting, and autonomous platforms continue to redraw the map. If MQ-25 and F/A-XX deliver the reach and endurance planners are seeking, the carrier regains tactical elasticity. If they slip, the ship risks carrying short-legged jets into longer-range kill webs.

There’s also the quieter but consequential issue of radar and electronic warfare integration. DOT&E has warned about electromagnetic interference and urged testing in dense electronic attack environments, the kind of battlespace a carrier strike group would face against a peer with powerful jamming and anti-radiation capabilities. Swapping Ford’s unique Dual Band Radar for EASR on later hulls is only part of the answer. The fleet still needs end-to-end validation that the combat system, networks, and flight ops sensors can coexist under heavy emissions control and contested spectrum.

The open question is whether the Navy can align industrial cadence, reliability growth, and air wing modernization quickly enough to keep the carrier central through the next decade. Kennedy’s 2027 delivery target will stress rotations as Nimitz bows out. Enterprise and Doris Miller are already pushed right. MQ-25 has to reach the deck on time, F/A-XX must survive budget churn and emerge with the range envelope leadership keeps hinting at. Fujian’s public progress has altered the optics of the catapult race and will force harder conversations about survivability and electronic warfare at sea. If the Navy threads these needles, Ford-class carriers will operate leaner, throw farther, and plug more seamlessly into a distributed kill web. If not, the ships will still sail and fight, but with narrower margins as competitors learn quickly.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.