U.S. Navy
Warzone/The Drive: CVN-81, The Fourth Ford Class Supercarrier, Is Slated To Cost A Whopping $15B
The price of a single Ford class supercarrier is approaching the size of the entire annual defense budget of Canada.
The cost of an American nuclear-powered supercarrier has risen massively with the introduction of the Ford class and there doesn't appear to be any relief in sight even as the design matures and is reproduced. Updated cost estimates were published in the Congressional Research Agency's latest report to Congress on the Ford class carrier program that was released on July 2nd, 2018. It comes as USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-79), already the most expensive ship ever built, continues to face major developmental issues and unforeseen cost overruns.
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Bigger than the gdp of a few small countries.
ReplyDeleteI’ve never understood the total determination to reinvent the wheel with every new ship class - and for that matter every other program.
ReplyDeleteExisting systems, proven and robust, are discarded for far more complex, fragile and expensive ones.
Or maybe it’s just that we follow these programs too closely. The V-22 went through several deadly convulsions in its testing and is now a solid machine. Any way I hope this thing works because they’re set to build lots of them. At 15-20 billion apiece.
Well, $20 billions is not that much. A use of 40 years mean $500 million a year which is much less than the cost of using it.
ReplyDeleteAdd billions for refits and maintenance during that time
DeleteThe biggest driver of carrier costs has been the man-hours used to build them.
ReplyDeleteCBO documents show that there has been NO improvement in hours to complete the Nimitz carriers during their entire production run. NONE. It actually takes effort to be that inefficient.
The Ford carriers are only carrying on that tradition of wasteful building.
~ Anon #87