January 28, 2026:
At the end of 2025 the U.S. Navy/USN cancelled its Constellation-class guided missile frigate program after five years and billions of dollars spent. With not even one frigate completed. The current U.S. government was trying to break this cycle of failure in American shipbuilding, but the results will not be visible for several years, or longer.
The Constellation equipment failures were preceded by several others. At the end of 2022 the first of the new American Ford class CVN/Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier finally left for its long delayed operational stress test cruise. This meant two months at sea, operating as a fully functional aircraft carrier. Unfortunately, this cruise revealed more equipment flaws, the main ones being continued problems with EMALS catapults and arrestor gear. That was not expected as the recent repairs to EMALS and the arrestor gear as well as the four JBD Jet Blast Deflectors mounted on the flight deck were monitored and found to have worked. The JDBs are relatively ancient tech, first introduced in the 1950s as more powerful jet aircraft became standard on aircraft carriers and deck crews needed protection from the dangerous blats of heat coming out of jet engines as the aircraft prepared to take off.
In August 2022 the Ford JBDs were found to have defective components that corroded and caused JBDs to fail. Substandard components have long been a problem in shipbuilding, especially when it comes to warships. These require a lot of exotic components not found on commercial vessels. Suppliers will often deliver substandard parts, either because of incompetence or attempts at fraud. This was another item on the long list of failures by the navy shipbuilding bureaucracy. The Ford-class ships are not exceptional when it comes to these problems, just the most expensive ship plagued by these problems.
There seemed to be no end of problems that delayed this operational stress test cruise, which was meant to demonstrate that the Ford, the first of a new class of carriers, was ready for decades of service. The stress test cruise showed that the Ford could operate under simulated combat conditions, but not as effectively as existing Nimitz class CVNs. Nimitz uses older tech while the Fords were equipped with updated versions of many key items, some of which didn’t perform as expected and, of those, some were predicted to fail with those predictions ignored. There were several reasons for this, starting with poorly thought out new technology that was not adequately tested before being accepted for installation on the Ford. The flawed items included new catapults, arrestor systems and elevators that brought munitions to the flight deck where they were attached to aircraft. There were some other problems with the radars and engines, but these proved easier to fix than the flight deck equipment. The JBDs were not new tech, and failures were the result of substandard parts. There may be other substandard components in the Ford that will not perform reliably for as long as expected.
A ship, especially a warship that had a lot of problems, was often referred to as a cursed ship. The USS Ford, the first of the class, had become a major disaster rather than a more effective new ship design. The number and severity of problems are certainly cursed at often enough by those who built or now serve on the Ford. It was not supposed to be that way.
Several innovative new technologies were supposed to have made the Fords more effective and cheaper to operate than the previous Nimitz class. Two of those new technologies; EMALS Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System catapults and the new AAG Advanced Arresting Gear that handles landings more effectively, were disappointing. The navy believes it had these problems solved and had carried out 10,000 launches with the problem-prone EMALS and AAG. One thing the first cruise provided was more practice for launch with recovery crews, and that worked this time.
The AWE high-speed electromagnetic ammunition elevators, for getting explosive items to the deck more quickly, failed multiple times. All the elevators are now operational and able to move more munitions from the magazines to the flight deck twice as quickly as the elevators used on the previous Nimitz CVNs.
There are lesser problems with the nuclear propulsion system, the new dual X and S band radar and several other systems have all combined to make the Ford unable to do the job it was designed for. The propulsion and radar problems were fixed.
The Ford flaws also caused some unexpected modifications to the new F-35C stealth fighter. This made it possible for the F-35C, the model designed for carrier operations on the existing Nimitz class CVNs, to survive using the cranky landing equipment unique to the Fords. Eventually the navy compiled a list of 60,000 lessons learned while building and trying to get the Ford ready for service. That ultimately meant Ford was four years behind schedule.
As of early 2020 the navy believed the EMALS problems were solved. Just to be sure the Ford underwent months of intensive use to confirm that the capability and reliability problems EMALS suffered from were indeed fixed. Many EMALS problems were fixed but some major ones remained. The worst of these was the fact that if one EMALS catapult developed problems, all four EMALS catapults were out of service until the malfunctioning one was fixed. That was not a problem with steam catapults. Testing and tinkering with EMALS had, by 2021, led to over 8,000 successful launches with EMALS and recoveries with AAG. Despite that, more work was required before the EMALS could match and then exceed the steam catapult when it came to handling heavy use, like during combat operations. An EMALS failure now only puts two catapults out of service until the problem was found and fixed. The two-month cruise was a final test to see if the EMALS was reliable enough for heavy use.
Fixing the AWE weapons elevators was still underway at the time of the FSST. At that point all eleven of the elevators were moving, which was progress, but several of them were still not certified for regular use. By the end of 2021, all elevators were for service. That was tested when all eleven elevators were used to load 1,200 tons of munitions into the magazines. This required 1,400 trips by the elevators over nearly three days. This was much faster than using the older elevators found in the Nimitz.
The nuclear propulsion system problems were the kind that only get discovered once the ship was at sea for an extended period. To a certain extent that was also true with the new dual-band radar. The EMALS problems were more fundamental and, even though a test EMALS was installed on land first and tested, it was not tested thoroughly enough. The AAG landing arrestor system also used new technology like EMALS and performed poorly at sea for the same reasons, sloppy design and testing. The AAG was now considered reliable. There are still questions about how well EMALS will perform once the Ford was declared ready for deployment. That means heading overseas with its Carrier Task Group escorts and operating at least as effectively as the older Nimitz class carriers it was to replace.
The nuclear reactor problems were fixed but there were still problems with the dual-band radar. In the meantime, the next Ford class carrier will revert to the two separate radar systems instead of the theoretically more efficient and less-expensive new design.
Some of the F-35C problems were minor in comparison. Sturdier jet blast deflectors had to be installed to deal with much higher heat levels generated. It was necessary to rearrange space on the hangar deck to provide secure limited access areas for work on highly classified F-35 components. The needed F-35C mods have already been made, tested, and approved on one Nimitz class carrier. This problem was mainly allocating enough time and money to do it for the first Ford class carrier and all subsequent ones.
It wasn’t until February 2018 that the navy confirmed that it was having major problems with the design and construction of its new EMALS catapults, then installed only in the newly completed USS Ford CVN 78 and eventually the three other Ford-class carriers under construction. During the first sea trials, the Ford used EMALS heavily, as would be the case in combat and training operations, and found EMALS less reliable than the older steam catapult. EMALS was also more labor-intense to operate and put more stress on launched aircraft than expected. Worse, due to a basic design flaw, if one EMALS catapult became inoperable, the other three catapults could not be used in the meantime as was the case with steam catapults. This meant that the older practice of taking one or more steam catapults offline for maintenance or repairs while at sea was not practical with the EMALs design. The navy admitted that in combat if one or more catapults were rendered unusable, they remained that way until it was possible to shut down all four catapults for repairs.
The landing and recovery system also failed far more frequently than with steam catapults. In effect, these problems with launching and recovering aircraft made the Fords much less effective than the older CVNs. The navy had long had a growing problem with developing new ships and technology and the Ford was the worst example to date.
There were no easy solutions. The most worrisome part of this was the apparent inability of Navy shipbuilding and design experts to come up with a solution for the problem they created. This EMALS catastrophe was avoidable, and the problems should have been detected and taken care of before the Ford was on sea trials.
The EMALS disaster calls into question the ability of the navy to handle new, untried, technologies. That was not a new problem and had been around since World War II. In retrospect, not enough was done to test and address what are now obvious problems. The current solution was to delay the moment of truth if possible and then conclude that it was unclear exactly how it happened but that measures would be taken to see that it never happens again. That approach was wearing thin because more people understood it was just a cover for the corruption and mismanagement that had been developing within the industries that build warships. The navy had been having a growing number of similar problems with the design of the LCS, the DDG 1000 and a lot of smaller systems.
Meanwhile, there was a critical need for new carriers. The first ship of the new class of carriers, the Ford is about the same length, 333 meters and displacement 100,000 tons, as the previous Nimitz class, but looks different. The most noticeable difference was the island set closer to the stern rear of the ship. The internal differences are less obvious, including the power generation and electrical system. The Nimitz ships are rapidly wearing out and with the EMALS disaster, the Navy must fix the problems or be forced to improvise and do without an effective carrier force for a decade or more.
The Fords were not just replacements for the aging Nimitz class; they were designed to be cheaper to operate. There was a lot more automation and smaller crews. The Ford was the first modern American warship built without urinals. There are several reasons for this. The Ford will have a smaller, by at least 20 percent, crew and more of them will be women. Currently, about ten percent of American warship crews are women, but the Ford crew will be at least 15 percent female. Since women sleep in all-female dormitory berthing areas, a toilet head will now be attached to each berthing area instead of being down the hall. Moreover, berthing areas will be more spacious because of the smaller crew and hold a third to half as many bunks as previous carriers. Finally, drainpipes for urinals more frequently get clogged than those coming from toilets. Eliminating the urinals means less work for the plumbers. There are a lot of other visible changes to enhance habitability and make long voyages more tolerable.
Before the EMALS crisis, the Ford was expected to cost nearly $14 billion. About 40 percent of that was for designing the first ship of the class, so the actual cost of the first ship CVN 78 itself will be at least $9 billion and about the same for subsequent ships of the class. Except for the additional cost of fixing unexpected crises like the EMALS and high-speed ammo elevators. Against this, the navy expects to reduce the carrier's lifetime operating expenses by several billion dollars because of greatly reduced crew size. Compared to the current Nimitz class carriers, which cost over $5 billion each, the Fords will feel, well, kind of empty because of the automation and smaller crews. There will also be more computer networking, and robots, reducing the number of people 6,000 constantly moving around inside a Nimitz class carrier. The most recent Nimitz class ships have a lot of this automation already but adding EMALS was considered too expensive because of the major engineering changes to the power plant and electrical systems.
In 2016 the USN had another shipbuilding disaster on its hands. The innovative LCS Littoral Combat Ship didn’t work. The navy admitted that it was more than just teething problems and largely due to over a decade of bad management. In the previous year 62 percent of the LCS ships had major equipment failures. The 2015 decision to reclassify the LCS as a frigate increased the per-ship cost to over a billion dollars each. The original LCS design was supposed to be a low $220 million per ship but that escalated to $480 million. The innovative use of a much smaller crew in a highly automated ship never worked, nor did the use of mission modules. The problem was the same one the navy had had with so many warships since the 1980s, poor management in design and construction. The LCS, conceived in the late 1990s as a solution to warships that were too expensive to build, became another example of what the LCS was supposed to fix.
The U.S. Navy had been increasingly unhappy with the performance of American ship builders, and the LCS problems are just another reminder. Costs are rising sharply, quality is down and the admirals can’t get satisfactory answers from the builders. For example, the new class of destroyers, the DDG-1000 class destroyers also faced ballooning costs, up to as much as $3 billion per ship, as opposed to planned costs of $800 million. The current Arleigh Burke-class destroyers only cost $1 billion each.
A large part of the problem was the tendency to dismiss the lessons of the past as irrelevant. For example, since the 1960s the navy had insisted on making more and more changes to the ship design as they are built. This drives up costs. During World War II the shipyards were given a design and then left alone until they delivered the ship. At that point the navy issued another contract for all the changes it wanted. Warships undergo numerous minor and sometimes major changes during their 20-30 year service life. But it’s most expensive to do it while you are building the ship. That raises another problem, the decades-old contractor practice of deliberately making an unreasonably low estimate of cost when proposing a design. The navy goes along with this, in the interest of getting Congress to approve the money. Since Congress had a short memory, the navy does not take much heat for this never ending low ball planning process. Actually, it’s poor planning in general that causes most of the high costs. It’s bad planning by the navy, when coming up with the initial design, and bad planning on the part of the few shipyards that have a monopoly on building warships. Monopolies do not encourage efficiency. The LCS was just the latest example of all these bad habits at work. Don’t expect any of this to change anytime soon. It’s the way things have worked in the navy for a long time. Many admirals, members of Congress, and even a few shipbuilding executives, have called for reform. But it just doesn’t happen.
The LCS was meant to avoid the expense of building an improved frigate as a replacement for the 71 Perry class frigates. This change had been obvious since early 2015 when the navy decided to officially call LCS vessels frigates. By mid-2016 the navy decided to go one step further and drop the use of modules in the LCS. Instead the navy would equip existing and future LCS ships like the MMSC Multi-Mission Surface Combatant version of LCS Saudi Arabia had requested in late 2015.
The LCS was meant to be much more than a frigate and used a very innovative design. In the end there was plenty of innovation but nothing that was useful or reliable. The U.S. Navy 's effort to abandon the frigate and reinvent it with the quite different and very innovative LCS design was risky, and it largely failed to achieve its objectives. What many sailors really wanted was a replacement for the 4,100 ton Perry frigates, which were very popular with their users. Construction of Perrys lasted from 1975 to 2004 and that included a lot of upgrades and modifications. These ships had a top speed of 55 kilometers an hour and a crew of 176. There were anti-aircraft and anti-submarine sensors and weapons, plus a 76mm cannon, a Phalanx anti-missile 20mm autocannon and two helicopters that could be armed with anti-submarine torpedoes or anti-ship missiles. Six foreign nations used the Perry and some substituted local weapons for American ones.
The LCS began development in 2002 and in 2012 the U.S. Navy put it into mass production. Then in 2013 one of the three LCSs in service got its first tour in a combat zone, counter-piracy duty around the Straits of Malacca. There LCSs will take turns serving six month tours of counter-piracy duty and be based in Singapore. There were lots of problems with design, reliability and crew effectiveness. At the same time costs were going up. By early 2014 the navy decided to cut the number to be built from 52 to 32. Mostly this was about shrinking budgets, but there’s also the fact that the LCS had been, for many admirals and politicians, much more troublesome than expected. This was to be expected because the LCS was a radical new warship design and these always have a lot of problems at first. For the LCS the problems never stopped. Some were fixed, others resisted solution at all and others were fixed, then broke again.
The navy originally sought to have between 50 and 60 LCSs by 2014-18, at a cost of $460 million after the first five each. The USS Freedom ended up costing nearly $600 million, about twice what the first ship in the class was supposed to have cost. The navy believes it had the cost down to under $500 million each as mass production begins. That did not happen. At this point cancellation of the program was becoming an attractive option. That would be easier to do than fix the fundamental problems with the management of designing and building warships. That would involve substantial changes in the American shipbuilding industry, the way Congress handles the military budget and leadership methods within the navy.