White House Asks Navy to Move Ford-Class Carrier Island Amidships
The change would add billions to a hull already priced at about $13 billion
The White House has asked the U.S. Navy to relocate the superstructure island on Ford-class aircraft carriers to an amidships position, a significant departure from the class's current design philosophy.
Ford-class carriers carry their island more than 100 feet further aft than the preceding Nimitz-class design. The placement was deliberate. Moving the island aft created roughly half an acre of additional unobstructed flight deck forward, improving aircraft launch and recovery operations.
The same design work removed an unused starboard quarter elevator and a parking area that could not be accessed during flight operations. The aft island addressed those operational inefficiencies while creating valuable deck space.
Officials have nonetheless begun studying a revamp of the design to put the island amidships, partly to make the ships more aesthetically pleasing for the president.
The redesign could cost several billion dollars on top of the $13 billion per-unit base price. It would follow previously announced multi-billion-dollar changes to remove electromagnetic catapults and weapons elevators, systems that have already significantly delayed USS Gerald R. Ford and USS John F. Kennedy.
Former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead pointed to the opportunity cost of the engineering work. "The engineering effort and design effort obviously will detract from other shipbuilding design initiatives that are in play," he said.
Steel cutting for USS Doris Miller began five years ago and long-lead components have already been ordered. General Atomics reports nearly 50 percent of production complete on launch systems, and has warned that changes at this stage create significant risks to cost and schedule.
