The US Navy is still grappling with elevator problems on its new Ford-class supercarriers
The advanced weapons elevators were previously an issue on the first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford.
Navy officials suggested in written testimony to Congress that they could affect the new USS John F. Kennedy.
The US Navy next Ford-class aircraft carrier is just about done, but it could be held up by challenges with the elevators, Navy officers and officials said this week.
It's a bit of déjà vu. The same technology was at the center of headaches for USS Gerald R. Ford, the first of the new class of Navy supercarriers, and now the elevators are a challenge as shipbuilders work to finish the next ship in the class.
"The John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) is nearly 95% construction complete and has a contract delivery date of July 2025," Navy officials said in a joint statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee seapower subcommittee's hearing on the state of nuclear shipbuilding on Tuesday. "However, we assess that significant pressure to that date."
The officials cited issues with some of the CVN 79's technologies, namely the advanced weapons elevators and aircraft launch and recovery systems.
They said the pressure to meet the contractual delivery date is driven by "critical path challenges, primarily in the Advanced Weapons Elevators and Aircraft Launch and Recovery Equipment."
The officials added that while "initial class design challenges are resolved," some of the "early class production-focused challenges and associated learning continue on CVN 79."
The Advanced Weapons Elevators with electromagnetic motors, Advanced Arresting Gear, and Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System were issues during the development and construction of the first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford, which faced delays and cost overruns mostly attributed to integration issues surrounding new systems and capabilities.
The elevators on the Ford, for example, weren't installed when the carrier was delivered in May 2017, well beyond the original 2015 delivery goal. The first of 11 weapons elevators arrived in December 2018.
The Navy secretary at the time, Richard Spencer, staked his job on fixing the Ford elevators in early 2019, but the problem persisted beyond the deadline. In January 2020, then-acting secretary Thomas Modly said that the issue had been "sort of a disaster" but noted the service was "getting after the problem."
In their joint statement on Tuesday, Navy officials highlighted successful USS Gerald R. Ford deployments, indicating that the issue is in production, not design at this stage. They added that the lessons learned are being implemented on CVN 80 and 81.
The Navy didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's query about the specific problems with the weapons elevators and potential delays to CVN 79's delivery.
The Ford class' elevators are controlled by electromagnetic, linear synchronous motors, which effectively allow them to move faster and carry more ordnance.
Nimitz-class carriers have weapons elevators that use pulleys and cables and can carry 10,500 pounds at 100 feet a minute. The Ford's, on the other hand, can carry up to 24,000 pounds at 150 feet per minute.
Among the other new technologies on the Ford class, the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS, is also an upgrade, over the steam catapults on the Nimitz-class carriers. The system is designed for faster sorties of heavier aircraft but the technology saw questionable performance, as did the new advanced arresting gear for aircraft recovery.
The inclusion of the elevators and EMALS was paired with overall ship layout changes as well.
President Donald Trump has previously been critical of both the catapults and the weapons elevators on the Ford, expressing concern about the use of magnets in the advanced technology.
The Navy officials who testified before Congress Tuesday said the "Navy and shipbuilder HII-NNS are hyper-focused on a CVN 79 delivery plan that results in the fastest path to a combat ready CVN, crew, and air wing."
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