Second Ford-Class Carrier Puts To Sea For Acceptance Trials
The second of the United States Navy's Ford-class supercarriers, USS John F. Kennedy, has got under way for acceptance trials, roughly six months after her builder's trials. The trials test and evaluate ship systems and components at sea and represent the last major milestone before a delivery that is now expected in March 2027, against an original date of 2020.
The carrier measures approximately 1,106 feet, around 337 metres, and displaces more than 100,000 tonnes, making vessels of this class the largest warships ever put to sea. She is broadly a sister to the first ship of the class, though Congress and the Navy made several changes during construction, including bringing forward work that would otherwise have been completed after delivery. She has also been configured for the F-35C variant of the Lightning II fighter and fitted with a new air surveillance radar.
The schedule history is the story. Steel cutting began in 2011 and the keel was laid in 2015, with the hull floated out of dry dock and the ship named in 2019. Pandemic-related delays were compounded in 2020 when the Navy confirmed changes to the construction plan reported to add two years. Two next-generation systems, the advanced arresting gear and the advanced weapons elevators, are causing the remaining delays; seven of the eleven weapons elevators are reported complete. The first ship of the class was delivered without those systems working, and they took years to finish and commission afterwards.
The builder is drawing on that experience while the Navy incorporates lessons from the lead ship's first deployments. USS Gerald R. Ford returned to Virginia in May after 326 days at sea, the longest carrier deployment since the Vietnam War, having been involved in operations off Venezuela and in the conflict with Iran. She is now in an extended maintenance period that could last as long as a year.
That timing produces an awkward symmetry: the lead ship may return to sea at roughly the moment her sister is finally handed over. Two further carriers are under construction at the same yard, with deliveries currently targeted for March 2031 and February 2034 — a cadence that leaves the Navy dependent for years yet on a Nimitz-class fleet the Ford class was designed to replace.
