The United States Navy has been constructing the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, which are the next generation of supercarriers, with the lead ship being the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). The Ford-class carriers feature several advancements over the previous Nimitz-class carriers, including new technologies, increased automation, and enhanced capabilities.

The construction of an aircraft carrier is a complex and time-consuming process that typically spans several years. While there may have been progress made since my last update, such as the completion of key milestones or construction stages, I recommend referring to official sources, defense publications, or reputable news outlets for the most accurate and up-to-date information on the progress of America’s next super aircraft carrier.

“We are halfway through lifting the units onto the ship, and many of the units are larger and nearly all are more complete than the CVN 78 (USS Ford) lifts were. This is one of many lessons learned from the construction of the lead ship that are helping to reduce construction costs and improve efficiencies on Kennedy,” Mike Shawcross, Newport News’ vice president, John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) and Enterprise (CVN 80) aircraft carrier construction, said in a written statement.

HII ship developers have been employing a newer construction strategy for the Kennedy, involving a handful of techniques intended to lower costs and call upon lessons learned from the building of the first Ford-class carrier in recent years, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78).

With so much of the ship built, hundreds of structural units have been completed on items such as pipe assemblies, cabling, shafts, rudders and struts for the ship. The USS Kennedy will replace the USS Nimitz which is due to retire by 2027; the Ford-class carriers are slated to replace the existing Nimitz-class carriers on a one-to-one basis in an incremental fashion over the next fifty years or so.

One of the construction techniques 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 technique, referred to by Huntington Ingalls developers as “modular construction,” were also used when building the Ford; the process welds smaller sections of the ship together into larger structural “superlift” units before being lifted into the dry dock, HII statements explained.

Construction begins with the bottom of the ship and works up with inner-bottoms and side shells before moving to box units, he explained. 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 it makes the process less expensive, builders explained.

HII ship developers have been making an aggressive effort to lower costs of the USS Kennedy. Officials have said that the cost of the USS Kennedy will be well over $1.5 billion less than the costs to build the first Ford-Class ship. The Navy received substantial criticism in recent years from lawmakers and government watchdog groups during the construction of the USS Ford for rising costs. Construction costs for the USS Ford wound up being several billion above early cost estimates.  Cost overruns with the construction wound up leading Congress to impose a $12.9 billion cost-cap on the ship.

At the time, Navy officials pointed out that integrating new technologies brings challenges and 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. Nonetheless, service leaders have consistently said that the Navy is making substantial progress with efforts to lower costs for the Kennedy.

Also, Newport News Shipbuilding – a division of HII –  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 begins. As for the design, the Kennedy will be largely similar to the design of the USS Ford, with a few minor alterations. The Kennedy will receive a new radar and its aircraft elevators will use electric motors instead of a hydraulic system to lower costs.

New Radar for USS Kennedy

The Navy plans to test and operate a new, highly-sensitive ship-defense radar technology for its 2nd Ford-Class aircraft carrier — to detect incoming enemy fire, anti-ship cruise missiles and airborne threats such as attacking drones, fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters. The new radar, called the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar, or EASR, is slated to go on the now-under-construction USS Kennedy (CVN 79), as well as several of the service’s amphibs such as the LX(R) and its third big-deck America-class amphib, LHA 8.

Testing is slated for next year and technical development of EASR is now underway, Navy officials said. “Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar successfully conducted Preliminary Design Review in March 2017 and is working towards Critical Design Review in August 2017,” Naval Sea Systems Command spokeswoman Christianne Witten told Scout Warrior in a written statement. “Developmental testing is scheduled to start in 2018 for EASR, and is expected to conclude in late 2019.”

EASR uses gallium nitride (GaN) semi-conductor technology and builds upon common hardware, software and processing elements of the Navy’s next-generation AN/SPY-6(V) Air and Missile Defense Radar slated for the service’s Flight III DDG 51 destroyers. “EASR is a SPY-6 variant, using identical hardware, signal processing and data processing. EASR will have the additional capability of air-traffic control radar, which ADMR does not have,” a senior Navy official told reporters.

Much like SPY-6, EASR is engineered to be cyber-hardened and reliable, according to Raytheon statements. “EASR has cost and reliability benefits of gallium nitride. It uses digital beam forming and advanced algorithms for operations in high-clutter, near-land electromagnetic interference environments,” a Raytheon statement said.

The AN/SPY-6 is described by radar engineers as being 35-times more powerful than most-current ship-based radar systems; developers say it enables detection of objects twice as far away and half the size compared with existing radars. In radar terminology, a 15-decibel increase with AMDR translates into roughly 35 times more power and sensitivity compared to the existing AN/SPY-1D radar.

AMDR (AN/SPY-6) consists of S-band and X-band radars and a radar suite controller. Together, the technologies are able to scan, track and search the horizon and surrounding area for threats by sending an electromagnetic signal into the atmosphere, then analyzing the return signal of what it hits. The information can provide dimensions of a missile or other incoming threat by identifying its size, shape, location and trajectory.

Similar to its predecessor, the Aegis AN/SPY-1D radar, the AMDR includes a phased-array radar, Navy officials said. The S-band radar is engineered for long-range detection, whereas the X-band radar performs the over-the-horizon search capability, according to the service.

AMDR is optimized for anti-air and ballistic missile defense missions but is also capable in the anti-surface and counter-battery arenas. Much like today’s AN/SPY-1D radar, the AMDR will be able to scan the surface as well, assisting with the fire-control technology needed to identify where an incoming threat can be intercepted.

The idea with EASR and AMDR is to give ship commanders more time and decision-making abilities by identifying approaching threats and enemy attacks more precisely and at much farther distances. This phenomenon is naturally of great relevance in today’s global threat environment wherein potential adversaries are quickly developing longer range, precision ωεɑρσռry and electronic ωɑɾʄɑɾε systems.

Giving commanders increased response time – when under attack – can save sailors lives and multiply offensive and defensive mission possibilities. Furthermore, the need for more powerful radar is unambiguously strengthened by ωεɑρσռs developments now being pursued by potential US adversaries such as lasers and possibly hypersonic enemy ωεɑρσռs in the future.

The current Navy strategy hinges upon the recognition that providing needed advanced technology while establishing greater technical commonality better facilitates modernization and upgrades of radar systems across the fleet. Such an approach is also intended to improve sustainment, permit hardware to quickly integrate new software as threats emerge, and lower acquisition costs throughout the life-cycle of the system.

The decision for the new radar emerged out of a special radar commonality and affordability study conducted by the Navy which looked at finding technologies that would work across multiple platforms. The EASR is being engineered as a 3-faced phased array radar designed to be adaptive and rotate.

For cost and cross-fleet commonality reasons, EASR was chosen as the future radars for carriers and amphibs, despite the fact that the first Ford-Class carrier uses Dual Band Radar. Dual Band Radar was originally slated to go on 27 new, high-tech DDG 1000 destroyers. However, when the Navy changed plans and only decided to procure three DDG 1000s, the price of Dual Band Radar went up, Navy developers explained.

Navy developers say commonality and cost reduction are entirely consistent with integrating next-generation detection ability; further, carriers do not need radar as sensitive and powerful as Dual Band Radar, in part because carriers typically have a destroyer or a cruiser nearby to help protect it by providing a defensive radar envelope.

EASR will not have some of the technical capabilities of the Dual Band Radar such as fire control radar capability, however engineering the new EASR for the USS Kennedy, or CVN 79, will save the Navy $180 million in the cost of the ship. EASR will, among other things, be configured to perform the functions of existing ship radars such as the AN/SPS-49 and the three-dimensional AN/SPS-48 anti-aircraft sensor currently on Navy destroyers and cruisers.

The USS Kennedy will replace the USS Nimitz which is due to retire by 2027. The Office of Naval Research previously helped develop the radar through a on a $6 million EASR study and development contract with Raytheon. EASR radar could also be back fitted onto Nimitz-class carriers, which will be around through 2057.