by Kris Osborn, Warrior

Pipe assemblies, cabling, shafts, rudders and struts are just a few of the small parts of a massive aircraft carrier which need to be organized and built into a large, extremely complex  integrated design …..to bring an aircraft carrier to life.  The famous and now operational USS Ford, the Navy’s first-in-class breakthrough carrier,  took 12 years to assemble. The first steel was cut in 2005, and the ship was commissioned for operational service in 2017, a difficult process not without years of budgetary, technological and scheduling challenges. 

Now the USS Kennedy is surging toward operational life in 2027, and HII has been moving faster with the second Ford-class carrier because builders have leveraged new construction techniques emerging from lessons learned building the USS Ford.  Newport News Shipbuilders, a division of HII, has been moving forward for many years now with a process builders call “modular construction” wherein ship compartments are assembled together before moving them to the dock to expedite the building process.  Smaller segments of the ship are welded together into a structural “superlift,” a process designed to advance construction before the ship is lifted up into drydock. 

Lessons Learned From USS Ford

In general, carrier construction begins with the bottom of the ship and works up with inner-bottoms and side shells before moving to what’s called box units. The bottom third of the ship gets built first. Also, some of the design methods now used for the Kennedy include efforts to fabricate or forge some parts of the ship - instead of casting them –  because HII builders have explained it makes the process less expensive. 

This construction technique for Kennedy construction has included efforts to assemble compartments and parts of the ship together before moving them to the dock – this expedites construction by allowing builders to integrate larger parts of the ship more quickly. This “modular construction” technique was also used when building the USS Ford to a lesser extent; the process welds smaller sections of the ship together into larger structural “superlift” units before being lifted into the dry dock. 

Carrier Costs

HII ship developers have made progress lowering costs of the USS Kennedy, with some reports indicating that the cost of the USS Kennedy has been at least $1.5 billion less than the costs to build the first Ford-Class ship. Many are likely to recall that the Navy received substantial criticism for years from lawmakers and government watchdog groups during the construction of the USS Ford for rising costs, technological problems and scheduling delays.  Construction costs for the USS Ford wound up being several billion above early cost estimates.

At the time more than 10 years ago, Navy officials responded that integrating new technologies brings challenges, adding that at least $3 billion of the Ford’s costs were due to what’s described as non-recurring engineering costs for a first-in-class ship such as this. 

Also, Newport News Shipbuilding  was able to buy larger quantities of parts earlier in the construction process with the Kennedy because, unlike the circumstance during the building of the USS Ford, the Kennedy’s ship design was complete before construction began. This is quite significant, given that HII has for years used extensive digital modeling to solidify ship designs and support construction; progress with these efforts was greatly improved after the USS Ford was built and computer models had already been designed and built.  As for the design, the Kennedy is largely similar to the design of the USS Ford, with a few minor alterations. The Kennedy has a different radar and its aircraft elevators will use electric motors instead of a hydraulic system to lower costs.

Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University