The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday blasted the U.S. Navy’s Ford-class aircraft carrier program as an acquisition debacle.
Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona who served as a naval aviator during Vietnam, didn’t waste anytime launching into his criticism of the sea service’s $40 billion effort to develop the first three new supercarriers.
“The Ford-class aircraft carrier program is one of our nation’s most complex and most expensive defense acquisition projects,” he said in his opening statement during a hearing on the matter. “It’s also become, unfortunately, one of the most spectacular acquisition debacles in recent memory — and that’s saying something.”
While the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), the first ship in the class, is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy in May — after more than a dozen years of development — the second ship is five years behind schedule, McCain said. What’s more, the acquisition program is estimated to be more than $6 billion over budget — and questions remain about the reliability of core systems.
The senator criticized the lack of accountability among officials in the Navy, Pentagon and even Congress for the schedule delays and cost overruns. In a clear shot to the builder, Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., McCain said the cost of the program is so out of control that it may force the U.S. to change how it buys such ships in the future.
“We simply cannot afford to pay $12.9 billion for a single ship,” he said. “If these costs are not controlled, we must be willing to pursue alternatives that can deliver similar capabilities to our warfighters on time and on budget.
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