The US Navy’s New Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier: How to Waste $120 Billion

Summary: Embodying cutting-edge technology and capable of carrying 90 aircraft and more than 4,500 crew members, the USS Gerald R. Ford represents the pinnacle of American naval engineering with a construction cost of $13 billion – a total of $120 billion for all new Ford-Class ships .

-Despite its progress, critics argue that its vulnerability to anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies and staggering operational costs make it an impractical investment in the context of modern warfare.

-As maritime dynamics evolve, with adversaries like China deploying cost-effective A2/AD systems, emphasis shifts to more agile, stealthy and cost-efficient platforms such as submarines, hypersonic missiles and space weapons, challenging the Ford’s strategic viability of class carriers.

The Falling Cost of Aircraft Carriers: Why the USS Gerald R. Ford Signals a Strategic Pivot

It is one of the most beautiful, technologically advanced weapons platforms ever devised by man. On board as many as 90 fixed-wing aircraft, including the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, the Boeing EA-18G Growler, the Grumman C-2 Greyhound, the Northrop-Grumman E-2 Hawkeye, Lockheed Martin F -35 Lightning II combat craft, as well as an assortment of helicopters and unmanned vehicles, the USS Gerald R. Ford, the first in its class, is a modern marvel. The leviathan can carry a crew of more than 4,500 people. It has a nuclear power plant that allows the ship to be deployed for long periods of time.

And compared to older models of the U.S. Navy’s ubiquitous aircraft carriers, the Fordclass aircraft carrier has a much stealthier cross-section, allowing it to operate in a contested combat space for extended periods of time.

The downside is the cost (and time) required to build or even repair it Fordclass carrier. The FordIts construction will cost approximately $13 billion. From then on, it will cost about $700 million to maintain one Fordclass carrier. Although, according to US Navy Captain Brian Metcalf, future versions of the Fordclass carrier is expected to cost $5 billion less than the prototype, the USS Gerald R. Ford, costs (at least, according to Metcalf).

Nevertheless, this is the most expensive warship in the US Navy fleet.

The wrong system for the wrong war

At a time when the US military is subject to increasing public and political skepticism about the costs of its operations, with multiple new threats emerging around the world to strain and deplete the US military, and the staggering amount money thrown at a single weapon system, such as the Ford-class carrier, requests revaluation. Yes, it’s an incredible weapon. No, it is not the weapon we need for today’s war – or even tomorrow.

In the era of the Anti-Access/Area Denial Strategy (A2/AD) that US rivals have readily embraced, the $13 billion Ford-class airlines are, if you’ll pardon the expression, a sunk cost for the US Navy. For the first time in years, the US Navy is no longer the world’s largest naval force. That distinction belongs to China. Now, defenders of the U.S. Navy will rightly acknowledge that China merely favors quantity over quality. But as the communists so often remind us, ‘quantity has its own quality’. Moreover, these were the same arguments that the British Royal Navy made when the US Navy surpassed them in size in the 1940s.

The A2/AD systems that China, Russia and a host of other US rivals, both state and non-state actors, are significantly cheaper than the Ford-class and can in principle use the Fordclass fighting is ineffective. That doesn’t mean there isn’t another Fordclass exists or that it will take at least five years to build (it took 12 years for the Gerald R Ford to be built). Therefore, there is a risk that you will have the Ford in combating one of China’s numerous anti-ship missiles far outweighs any advantages in terms of offensive capabilities against a rival nation-state such as China, the Fordclass offers.

Future Wars: Be more agile, stealthy and faster

What is needed in today’s conflicts (and those of tomorrow) will be smaller, faster, and stealthy warships. More emphasis will be needed on submarines, rather than on cumbersome and expensive existing systems such as the aircraft carrier. Submarines could also be equipped with drones that could be launched from the missile launches on submarines to enhance the capabilities of maritime aircraft. In addition, the US military should spend the money it spent on bulky aircraft carriers instead of on hypersonic missiles and space weapons.

The bottom line is that it is just as amazing and beautiful as the new one Fordclass aircraft carriers are, they are not worth the money invested. This is especially so because modern warfare has changed and made these elephant weapon platforms effectively obsolete.

No matter how much stealth technology is integrated into the USS Gerald R. Ford, the big ship can still be tracked down, tracked by China, targeted by Chinese missiles or hypersonic hover vehicles, and destroyed – all for a fraction of the cost of maintaining the warship for the US.

America could find itself in a similar position to what the French found themselves in at the start of World War I: a great-looking power that was completely outmatched by their rivals because they made the wrong strategic investments – and their people paid for it. bad investments.

About the author

Brandon J. Weichert is a former congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who contributes to The Washington Times, as well as American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. Weichert can be followed on Twitter @WeTheBrandon.