Years late and billions more: The USS Gerald R. Ford is a lesson in how the Navy builds ships
The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford returns to Norfolk on Friday, April 14, 2017, after a week of builder's trials during which the ship's systems were tested.
BILL TIERNAN, DAILY PRESS/TNS
By DAVE RESS | Daily Press | Published: May 23, 2021
(Tribune News Service) — For the past 1½ years, on 18 trips off the Virginia and North Carolina coasts, sailors and shipyard workers from Newport News have prepped the Navy’s newest carrier for deployment — 27% over its original budget and years behind schedule.
The costliest single item on the Department of Defense’s shopping list, the USS Gerald R Ford has been on a fast track to launch a series of new technologies intended to boost the Navy’s striking power for at least the next 50 years.
It is a fast track that started two decades ago and has seen delays installing key components of the ship, as on-shore testing revealed unexpected problems that required hundreds of millions of dollars to fix and that forced workers at Newport News Shipbuilding to redo finished parts of the 1,092-foot long carrier, hundreds of pages of government budget documents, Navy assessments, oversight reports and Congressional hearings show.
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/years-late-and-billions-more-the-uss-gerald-r-ford-is-a-lesson-in-how-the-navy-builds-ships-1.674378