USS Gerald R. Ford Was Still Struggling With Its Dual Band Radar Prior To Deployment

The dual-band radar (DBR) aboard the Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the ship’s primary sensor system, struggled to perform during a pre-deployment exercise and suffered failures as it grappled with the constant need for radar coverage. It remains unclear whether DBR’s issues impacted Ford’s operations during its first full deployment, which began in May 2023 and was extended before ending in January 2024, but the Navy is now seeking to replace Ford’s DBR entirely.

These findings are part of the Pentagon’s Director Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) annual report released last week. The document contains revelations regarding what the Navy will need to do to continue using the DBR, which was only installed aboard Ford and a truncated version of it exists in the three ships of the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) class. The full DBR suite was supposed to equip these ships before being scaled back significantly a decade ago, mainly due to cost concerns. In addition to DBR, the latest DOT&E report also offers fresh insights into the state of the Navy’s newest carrier, how it performed during deployment and the potential for rough seas ahead.

“DBR availability declined during the FY23 [composite training unit exercise] with the continuous demand for radar coverage and an intermittent failure observed during operations,” the report states. Service officials did not respond to TWZ questions on the report’s findings by deadline, and this article will be updated when those answers come in. Prior DOT&E reports have blamed subpar DBR performance on “the operational expectation of continuous radar coverage.”

Due to DBR only being installed on the Ford and a version of it and its combat system on three Zumwalt class ships, supporting DBR and its assorted maintenance, software and upgrades is a pricey proposition for the Navy, which is very heavily invested in the proven Aegis Combat System and associated sensors. The Navy is also considering replacing Zumwalt’s radar with a SPY-6 variant and Aegis Combat System to help with sustainment and commonality across the fleet.  The DOT&E notes both DBR’s rarity and the challenges the Ford may face in keeping it up and running as it awaits the installation of a variant of the AN/SPY-6 radar.

The specific version of the SPY-6 destined to supplant the DBR on Ford is a subvariant of what is also known as the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR) and will include three separate fixed antenna arrays installed around the carrier’s island instead of the DBR’s six arrays. All subsequent Ford class carriers will be built with EASR, leaving just Ford as the only carrier ever have fielded the DBR.

TWZ has previously unpacked the capabilities of the complete SPY-6 family, which currently includes four different variants, and the potential payoffs of fielding such an advanced and scalable active electronically scanned array radar system across the fleet. In addition to Ford class carriers, the Navy plans to install versions of the radar onto various new surface combatants, carriers and amphibious ships going forward, and plans are underway to back-fit it into existing destroyers as well.

It remains unclear precisely when the Ford will get EASR and the new DOT&E report warns that relying on the DBR until then will be challenging. For now, the Navy has asked manufacturer Raytheon to continue providing engineering efforts in support of the DBR program, Military + Aerospace Electronics reported in November. Raytheon did not respond to a TWZ request for comment on its DBR efforts by deadline Tuesday. The DOT&E report’s data cutoff date was Oct. 1, 2024, and it remains unclear what progress, if any, has been made on correcting the ship’s issues, including problems with the DBR, since then.

“Due to the one-of-a-kind nature of the DBR, its availability will depend on the Navy’s access to replacement parts throughout the remaining life of the system,” the DOT&E report states. “The Navy should acquire sufficient DBR replacement parts for the interim period prior to the scheduled replacement of DBR with EASR.”

DBR was billed as the service’s first radar system capable of operating simultaneously on the S-band and X-band frequency ranges. It combines the functionality of the X-band AN/SPY-3 multifunction radar and the S-band SPY-4 volume search radar (VSR) for detecting and tracking targets. It and its underlying combat system was billed central nervous system of the Ford class.

But citing costs and the fact that it might be more radar than a carrier needed, given the capabilities of carrier strike group (CSG) destroyers and cruisers, the Navy opted to replace DBR back in 2016 Military Aerospace + Electronics’s John Keller reported. Continued reliability issues and it having zero commonality with the rest of the fleet were also huge concerns. Cost was also a factor, and officials said that moving to the EASR for the Ford class’s second carrier, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), would save the service up to $120 million.

Even with last year’s extended deployment under its belt, the Ford continues to suffer a host of other problems across various ship systems beyond the DBR. Insufficient data has been gathered to determine the carrier’s operational effectiveness due to initial operation and testing evaluations remaining incomplete, according to the DOT&E.

In some ways, the tardiness of Ford’s testing is to be expected, according to Bradley Martin, a retired Navy surface warfare officer and senior policy analyst at the RAND think tank.

“Many things about the Ford are unusual, and a starting point is that it was delivered late,” Martin told TWZ. The Ford was delivered in 2017, after roughly 15 months of delays. Its first cruise was pushed back several years as well.

“It’s not exactly that the Navy’s operational needs scuppered the testing cycle as much as the ship being delivered late meant that the operational schedule had already been perturbed,” he said.

TWZ has extensively covered the trials and tribulations of the Ford over the years, and the DOT&E’s new report provides added insight into the struggles the Navy has long faced in fixing problems like advanced weapons elevators (AWE), subpar sortie generation rates, and other issues. At one point lawmakers derided the ship as little more than “a $13-billion nuclear-powered floating berthing barge.” TWZ has also covered Ford’s engineering advancements, from its new island design to a novel video system offering 360-degree situational awareness.

While Ford has suffered a variety of missteps over the years, few ship failures have attracted more scrutiny than the AWEs. Billed as a next-generation breakthrough, it took the Navy roughly four years after accepting the Ford to make all 11 of its weapons elevators work.

The Navy reported to DOT&E that Ford’s weapons department conducted 11,369 AWE runs during its May 2023 to January 2024 deployment, moving more than 1.8 million pounds of ordnance to the flight deck. Still, the report notes that these rates fall short of what these AWEs are supposed to move.

“Of note, the crew is reliant on off-ship technical support for correction of hardware and software failures,” the report states.

During its deployment, the Ford maintained fighter jet sortie generation rates “that were sufficient to meet combatant commander operational taskings.” But during carrier qualifications and other evolutions, sortie generation rates have fallen short of the program requirements, a baseline that is not listed in the report. The DOT&E blames these shortfalls on continuing issues with the “reliability and maintainability” of the carrier’s electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) and advanced arresting gear (AAG).

Ford is the first carrier to feature a catapult system not powered by steam, and issues have plagued EMALS for years. The DOT&E report warns that problems with EMALS and AAG “continue to adversely affect sortie generation and flight operations.”

The report states that the EMALS catapult and AAG arresting gear system completed 8,725 launches and arrested landings during Ford’s deployment. DOT&E did note that it hasn’t received enough data from the Navy to update the reliability statistics laid out in last year’s report.

It also warns of “AAG reliability degraders,” and how challenges continue to exist when it comes to obtaining AAG replacement parts. The service continues to have to rely on “off-ship technical support” to address AAG problems as well.

The Navy is also considering whether it should retrofit a fourth AAG engine on the carrier class. It was originally incorporated into Ford’s design, but not installed “as a cost savings measure,” the report states.

“The fourth engine would improve the reliability and availability of AAG, improve the pilot boarding rate, and restore a redundant capability to rig the barricade in the event of AAG engine failure, which the current configuration does not support,” the report states.

When it comes to EMALS in particular, DOT&E noted that “reliability has not appreciably changed from prior years and reliance on off-ship technical support remains a challenge. NAVAIR is continuing development on improvements.”

Fiscal Year 2024 saw the Navy make improvements to how it collects EMALS reliability data, and a similar effort for the AAG is underway. But work remains to be done.

“The Navy has not yet shown progress for data collection on the other shipboard systems, but has implemented procedural changes designed to improve data collection within shipboard work centers in support of the FY25 scheduled test events,” the report states. Meanwhile, the sea service continues to update its test plan for areas like sortie generation rate, self-defense, and cyber survivability.

Ford’s berthing for its crew and carrier air wing are also lacking, the DOT&E warns. TWZ has already reported on sailor quality-of-life issues like clogging toilets, and the new report indicates that sailors could be sardined together in ever-tighter quarters.

The prospect of Ford being overcrowded runs counter to the carrier class’s original vision, which entailed design changes that would reduce manning to 15 percent below a Nimitz class carrier’s force of 3,000 sailors. An embarked carrier air wing brings a Nimitz class carrier to about 5,000 in all.

New ships are supposed to feature growth allowances that would allow for an extra 10 percent of the ship’s company, allowing for extra racks for crew turnover, visitors, and personnel temporarily assigned to the vessel.

“However, sufficient berthing is not installed for the Ford class to conduct combat operations with all hands assigned a bed, due to a lack of berthing capacity for embarked units,” the DOT&E found. “If the ship and its embarked units were each at 100 percent manning, the ship would have a shortfall of 159 beds. These berthing shortfalls will affect quality of life onboard and could reduce the Navy’s operational flexibility in employing the ship across its full spectrum of missions and logistical support roles for the CSG.”

Such rack shortfalls could increase as the carrier’s air wing diversifies to host the CMV-22B Osprey, the MQ-25 Stingray aerial refueling drone, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, none of which are currently part Ford’s carrier air wing (CVW). The Stingray is not yet in service, and TWZ reported last month on other changes Navy brass has planned for CVWs.

Original test plan timelines for gauging other aspects of Ford were delayed due to “the Navy’s operational requirements,” the report notes.

The Navy and Pentagon faced a difficult choice with Ford. They could have waited for all the testing to be completed, or they could have sent it east from Norfolk as a contributing member of a carrier fleet that is already stretched thin, Martin noted.

“As of its deployment, it was capable of doing most of the things aircraft carriers need to do in the environment as it exists,” he said. “Waiting for all those to be tested might have resulted in years of delay in getting the ship out to where it could take at least some of the pressure off the operational force.”

“Were all its systems tested to the point of readiness? No,” Martin said. “Was the ship capable of doing the job of an aircraft carrier? Yes.”

The next carrier in the Ford class, the future USS John F. Kennedy, is scheduled for delivery later this fiscal year and will be capable of supporting F-35 operations. The future USS Enterprise (CVN-80) is running 18 months behind its original delivery date and is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy in Fiscal 2029, according to the DOT&E.

“This delay is due to complications with material availability and industry/supply chain performance,” the report notes.

The Navy will take possession of the future USS Doris Miller (CVN-81) in Fiscal 2032, according to the report. The following two Navy carriers, CVN-82 and CVN-83, will be named after presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, respectively.

Ford’s first full cruise was an operational win for the Navy’s priciest and arguably one of its historically most troubled acquisitions programs. But the DOT&E report indicates that, at least up to the cutoff date for data available in the report, much work remained to be done on the Ford to ensure that it is the high-tech, capable power projector that it has been billed as since it’s inception. Clearly, there has been some progress, but some of the ship’s issues require major changes or physical additions, and those don’t come quickly when it comes to massive warships.

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