April 17, 2026: As of late March, the U.S. Navy has only one CVN/Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier operating near Iran. The USN has eleven CVNs, but the CVN-78 Ford was sidelined by a fire in its laundry facility which disrupted operations throughout the ship. This left only CVN-72 Abraham Lincoln. The other nine CVNs are deployed elsewhere or undergoing periodic upgrades and maintenance, including expensive and time consuming refueling. This involves removing and replacing the nuclear fuel. This includes partial dismantling of the ship. The most recent CVNs avoid this process. Currently only four CVNs are operational, CVN-78, CVN 72, CVN 73 and CVN 77.

USS John C. Stennis/CVN-74 is currently 14 months behind schedule and the USS Harry S. Truman/CVN-74 is undergoing a complicated refit to repair damage resulting from a collision. The problem is that the USN has only one shipyard that can handle this. Scheduled maintenance and unscheduled repairs are what keeps many CVNs from deploying.

Current status of all CVNs in service or planned. As of early April.

CVN name is followed year it entered service or is scheduled to do so

CVN 78 USS Ford, In Port at Split, Croatia

CVN 68 USS Nimitz 1975, Scheduled for retirement but that is delayed until 2027

CVN 69 USS Dwight D. Eisenhower 1977, Currently in port undergoing maintenance

CVN 70 USS Carl Vinson 1982, Currently in port undergoing maintenance

CVN 71 USS Theodore Roosevelt 1986, Currently in port preparing for deployment

CVN 72 USS Abraham Lincoln 1989, Currently deployed in the Arabian Sea

CVN 73 USS George Washington 1992, Currently in port at Yokosuka Japan

CVN 74 USS John C. Stennis 1995 Undergoing, RCOH/Refueling and Complex Overhaul

CVN 75 USS Harry S. Truman 1998, In port preparing for RCOH

CVN 76 USS Ronald Reagan 2003, In port undergoing scheduled maintenance

CVN 77 USS George H. W. Bush 2009, Currently deployed in the Atlantic Ocean

CVN 79 USS John F. Kennedy, expected to enter service in 2027

CVN 80 USS Enterprise, expected to enter service in 2029

CVN 81 USS Doris Miller, expected to enter service in 2032

CVN 82 USS William J. Clinton, expected to enter service in 2036

CVN 83 USS George W. Bush, Still To Be Determined

There are many other reasons why CVNs have problems remaining operational. Eight years ago the navy confirmed that it had major problems with the design and construction of its new EMALS Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System catapult installed in its latest aircraft carrier; the USS Ford CVN 78 and the three other Ford class carriers under construction. During sea trials the Ford used EMALS heavily, as would be the case in combat and training operations and found EMALS less reliable than the older steam catapult, more labor intensive to operate, put more stress on launched aircraft than expected and due to a basic design flaw if one EMALS catapult becomes inoperable, the other three catapults could not be used in the meantime as was the case with steam catapults. This meant that the older practice of taking one or more steam catapults offline for maintenance or repairs while at sea was not practical because the design of the EMALS system did not allow for it. The navy admitted that in combat if one or more catapults were rendered unusable, they remained that way until it was possible to shut down all four catapults for repairs.

The navy also asked for another delay in performing mandated shock tests, in which controlled explosions were set off near the hull that generated at least 66 percent of the amount of force the ship was designed to handle. This would reveal what equipment was not sufficiently built or installed to handle shock and make changes as well as confirming that the hull can handle the stress overall. The navy wanted to wait until the second Ford class carrier entered service in 2024 because, it admitted, it was unsure how badly shock tests would damage new systems and design features. Meanwhile there were some other major shortcomings with the Fords, including electronics, the radars, the flight deck arresting gear and some of the elevators. But none of these are as serious as the malfunctioning catapults.

Some of the problems with EMALS were of the sort that could be fixed while the new ship was in service. That included tweaking EMALS operation to generate less stress on aircraft, modifying design of EMALS and reorganizing how sailors use the system to attain the smaller number of personnel required for catapult operations. But the fatal flaws involved reliability. An EMALS catapult was supposed to have a breakdown every 4,100 launches but in heavy use EMALS actually failed every 400 launches. By the end of 2017 the navy concluded that an EMALS equipped carrier had only a seven percent chance of successfully completing a typical four day surge multiple catapult launches for a major combat operation and only a 70 percent chance of completing a one day surge operation. That was because when one EMALS catapult went down all four were inoperable. In effect the Ford class carriers were much less capable of performing in combat than their predecessors.

With steam catapults when one went down the other three could continue to operate. Worse, even minor repairs or maintenance on one EMALS catapult meant all four had to be out of service. The navy hoped they could come up with some modifications to EMALS to fix all these problems. In the meantime, the new Ford carrier was much less useful than older ones that use steam catapults. In fact, the Ford class carriers were basically worthless, except for training of the non-flight crew which could function without reliable catapults.

There were no easy solutions. For example, it would cost over half a billion dollars to remove EMALS and install the older steam catapults. This would also take up to several years and lead to many other internal changes. The navy considered bringing a recently retired carrier back to active service as a stopgap because whatever the fix is it would not be quick or cheap. The most worrisome part of this was the apparent inability of navy ship building and design experts to come up with a solution for the problem they created.

This EMALS catastrophe was avoidable, and the problems should have been detected and taken care of before the Ford was on sea trials. Back in 2010, when the U.S. Navy planned to equip future aircraft carriers with electromagnetic catapults, it seemed like a great idea, and everyone was assured that all was proceeding according to plan. This was especially true after EMALS passed some key tests in 2010. This included the first time an EMALS catapult launched an F-18E carrier jet fighter. This was from a land base equipped with the test version of EMALS. Earlier in 2010 tests had been put on hold for a bit while software problems were fixed.

The mechanical aspects of the electromagnetic catapult were believed to be pretty much solved but the test model the navy was working with had been having some serious problems with the control software. In the midst of all this there was no mention of the key problems, like being able to repair one catapult while the other three kept working. This had been a key feature of steam catapults for a long time and what is really scary here is that no one caught it.

With the 2010 decision, the plan to put electromagnetic catapults into all future carriers beginning with the Ford went ahead and apparently serious criticism of real problems was no longer an option. This was a great relief at the time because the Ford was under construction and a massive and expensive redesign would be needed to make room for the bulkier steam catapult. Now that option must be again considered, along with the other option, to try and fix the problems that were missed in 2010.

EMALS is still preferred because when it works as designed it puts less stress on launched aircraft, moves the aircraft forward more gradually, requires fewer people to operate, and is easier to maintain without much plumbing, fewer mechanical parts and lots of sturdy electronics. The gentler treatment of launched aircraft would means that smaller aircraft could use the catapult and that aircraft with larger payloads could be launched. Without a functional EMALS the steam and electricity generation system of the Ford class carriers, designed to supply large quantities of electric power, would not be able to provide the needed quantities of electricity to operate powerful new weapons like railguns and high powered lasers as well as EMALS.

The EMALS disaster calls into question the ability of the navy to handle new, untried, technologies. That is not a new problem and has been around since World War II. In retrospect not enough was done to test and address what are now obvious problems. The current solution was to delay the moment of truth as long as possible and then conclude that it was unclear exactly how it happened but that measures would be taken to see that it never happens again. That approach is wearing thin because more people are well aware that is just a cover for the corruption and mismanagement that has been developing within the industries that build warships. The U.S. Navy has been having a growing number of similar problems: the design of the LCS, the DDG 1000 and a lot of smaller systems.

Before the EMALS crisis the Ford was expected to cost nearly $14 billion. About 40 percent of that is for designing the first ship of the class, so the actual cost of the first ship CVN 78 itself will be at least $9 billion and about the same for subsequent ships of the class. Except, that is, for the additional cost of fixing the EMALS problems. Against this the navy expected to reduce the carrier's lifetime operating expenses by several billion dollars because of greatly reduced crew size. Compared to the current Nimitz class carriers, which cost over $5 billion each to build, the Fords will feel, well, kind of empty because of the automation and smaller crews. There was also more computer networking, and robots, reducing the number of people constantly moving around inside a Nimitz class carrier with a crew of 6,000. The most recent Nimitz class ships had a lot of this automation already but adding EMALS was considered too expensive because of the major engineer changes to the power plant and electrical systems. A lot of that is subject to change depending on what internal alterations are required to make the carrier work at least as well as the Nimitz class.