USS Gerald R. Ford conducting sea trials Oct. 27.

WASHINGTON: Congress is continuing to push the Navy hard on its Ford-class aircraft carrier effort, demanding major changes to an $11 billion ship christened just last weekend. The 2020 NDAA calls for the Navy to make changes to allow the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) to carry F-35 fighter planes before her first deployment — something the Navy has neither the money or time to do under current building schedules and budget lines.

The Navy never planned for its first two Ford carriers to carry F-35s because of delays in the aircraft’s planning and construction. The service couldn’t wait for all of the F-35s requirements to shake out before bending steel on its first two Ford carriers, so it went ahead with plans to add the capability later. But Congress thinks that’s not good enough. The new NDAA released Monday night “requires the Navy to insert the Joint Strike Fighter ship alterations on the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) before her first deployment,” in the mid-2020s, a requirement that either requires tens of millions in extra funding, or some other program to lose out.  

It’s not clear how the requirement will shake out once the appropriations committees take a whack at the budget, but such changes won’t come cheap. A Congressional aide tells me there will be no extra money in the 2020 budget for the ship, but lawmakers expect the Navy to realign money in its 2021 budget request.

The 36-year old USS Carl Vinson is currently undergoing a $34 million refit in Bremerton Wash. in order to begin flying F-35s by 2021, making the veteran ship the first carrier in the Navy to fly the 5th generation aircraft.

Navy officials recently explained that while both Nimitz and Ford-class aircraft carriers can operate with F-35Cs aboard, there are significant modifications required to be made to both carrier classes in order to push and fuse all the data the F-35s can generate, along with building additional classified spaces, new jet blast deflectors, and other upgrades to take advantage of the plane’s capabilities. Room also needs to be made for Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, which will replace the Navy’s C-2A Greyhound fleet, which cannot haul the F-35’s heavy engines out to the ship. 

The Navy has long planned to incorporate F-35 capabilities into the third and fourth Ford carriers; the USS Enterprise slated to deploy in 2028 and the yet-to-be-named CVN 81, which will go to sea in 2032. In January, the Navy awarded Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding a $24 billion contract for the two ships, compared to a predicted cost of $28 billion if the sea service had purchased them separately.

Lawmakers also gave the OK for $8.4 billion to begin buying nine upgraded Virginia-class submarines, supporting the multi-year contract that the Navy signed with Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls earlier this month. Again, we don’t know yet what the appropriators will do.

The $22.2 billion contract, the largest in Navy history, includes an option for a tenth boat, which would bring the contract up to $24 billion if enacted. The first fast-attack sub is slated for delivery in 2025. The new NDAA also includes $2.2 billion to support the Columbia-class program which is intimately tied up with Virginia, as the two programs will begin kicking out one Columbia and two Virginias per year, a pace of submarine building the service has not seen in decades.