Navy Secretary John Phelan has ordered a sweeping review of the Ford-class aircraft carrier program, putting the future of the Navy’s most expensive warships in doubt. The review, confirmed by the Associated Press in April 2026, is expected to conclude by May 2026 and will determine whether the service should continue building follow-on carriers or cancel them altogether. The move comes after years of cost overruns, persistent technology problems, and pointed criticism from President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly questioned whether the ships are worth the price.
Billions at stake
The Ford-class program has been one of the Pentagon’s most troubled acquisitions for over a decade. The lead ship, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), came in at roughly $13.3 billion, billions over its original budget, making it the most expensive warship ever built. The Government Accountability Office flagged serious reliability problems with the carrier’s electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) and advanced arresting gear (AAG) as far back as 2013 in a report on lead-ship testing. That assessment warned the shortfalls would limit the Ford’s initial combat capability and recommended changes to the Navy’s testing approach. Many of those recommendations were never fully implemented.
A separate GAO examination of follow-on carrier costs detailed how the lead ship’s price tag ballooned and urged more frequent, more accurate estimates for CVN-79 (USS John F. Kennedy) to prevent a repeat. Congress responded by imposing cost caps on future hulls, but the underlying technical risks never fully disappeared. Weapons elevators, which move munitions from magazines to the flight deck, became their own years-long saga of delays and redesigns.
The program’s total projected cost for all planned Ford-class carriers runs into the tens of billions. Phelan’s review explicitly includes CVN-82 and CVN-83, the next two ships in the class, according to reporting. Canceling either hull would ripple through the defense budget and reshape the Navy’s long-term force structure.
Trump’s role in forcing the question
Trump has made his displeasure with the Ford class public and personal. During his first term, he told Time magazine in 2017 that he wanted the Navy to go back to “goddamned steam” catapults instead of the electromagnetic system. He returned to the theme at rallies and in social media posts, calling the carrier overpriced and overly complex. Those criticisms carried new weight after he returned to office, and Phelan’s decision to launch a formal review is widely seen as a direct response.
The political pressure is not happening in a vacuum. The Senate Armed Services Committee took sworn testimony on Ford-class acquisition problems during the 114th Congress, with senators grilling program officials about concurrency risks, cost growth, and accountability. That hearing established a public record showing lawmakers were warned about EMALS and AAG well before the current review. Congressional unease has only deepened as costs climbed.
The Ford’s operational record
Supporters of the program point out that the Ford has moved beyond its troubled construction phase. The carrier completed its first operational deployment in late 2023, sailing to the Eastern Mediterranean in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. During that deployment, the ship launched and recovered aircraft using the same EMALS and AAG systems that critics had questioned for years. The Navy described the deployment as a validation of the carrier’s design.
But a successful first deployment does not erase the program’s history. The Congressional Research Service, in its running assessment of the Ford class, identifies EMALS, AAG, elevators, and testing concurrency as persistent pressure points. The CRS report also notes that procurement plans and congressionally imposed cost caps exist for CVN-82 and CVN-83, though Phelan’s review could alter or override those plans depending on its findings.
One gap in the public record complicates any outside assessment: there has been limited independent, on-the-record scrutiny of the program’s post-2017 cost and reliability performance. The most detailed GAO audits and congressional testimony date to the program’s earlier phases. Whether reliability metrics have improved enough to justify continued investment, or whether cost-control mechanisms have worked on CVN-79 and beyond, is not fully answered by the documents currently available to the public.
What cancellation would mean
If the review recommends canceling CVN-82 or CVN-83, the consequences would extend far beyond the Navy’s flight decks. Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, is the only shipyard in the United States capable of building nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The yard employs tens of thousands of workers in southeastern Virginia, and carrier construction is the backbone of its workload. Canceling future hulls could hollow out the skilled workforce and supplier base needed to build whatever comes next, whether that is a redesigned carrier, a smaller flattop, or an entirely different class of ship.
The industrial-base question is one reason defense analysts have long argued that carrier programs are nearly impossible to kill outright. Even lawmakers who criticize cost overruns tend to support continued funding once construction contracts are signed, because the economic and strategic costs of stopping mid-program can exceed the costs of finishing.
Phelan’s review could also land somewhere short of outright cancellation. Design modifications, tighter cost controls, or a slower build rate for future hulls are all possible outcomes. No preliminary conclusions have been reported, and the Navy has not released the review’s terms of reference or methodology.
A debate more than a decade in the making
The Ford-class review did not emerge from nowhere. It is the latest chapter in a debate that stretches back to the program’s earliest days, when the Navy chose to pack multiple unproven technologies into a single hull. GAO warned about the risks of that approach. Congress held hearings about it. Cost estimates proved optimistic again and again. What has changed is the political environment: a president willing to publicly challenge the program and a Navy secretary willing to act on that pressure.
Whether the review culminates in cancellation, redesign, or a reaffirmation of the current plan will depend on findings that remain, for now, behind closed doors. The answer is expected by May 2026, and it will shape the future of American naval power for decades.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
