Sen. John McCain said Tuesday that it is “unacceptable” that the Navy’s next generation Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier will be delivered two months late.
The Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said the delay in the delivery of the ship built by Huntington Ingalls Industries shows the need for the Pentagon’s acquisition system to be reformed, including some of the changes in the Senate-passed National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2017.
“The Ford-class program is a case study in why our acquisition system must be reformed – unrealistic business cases, poor cost estimates, new systems rushed to production, concurrent design and construction, and problems testing systems to demonstrate promised capability,” McCain said in a statement. “After more than $2.3 billion in cost overruns have increased its cost to nearly $13 billion, the taxpayers deserve to know when CVN-78 will actually be delivered, how much developmental risk remains in the program, if cost overruns will continue, and who is being held accountable.”
The Defense Department’s inspector general recently released a report that found that the arresting gear that will catch planes on the aircraft carrier’s flight deck has still not been proven safe enough to be tested aboard a ship.
“The advanced arresting gear (AAG) cannot recover airplanes. Advanced weapons elevators cannot lift munitions. The dual-band radar cannot integrate two radar bands. Even if everything goes according to the Navy’s plan, CVN-78 will be delivered with multiple systems unproven,” McCain said.
Asked to respond to McCain’s criticism, Beci Brenton, a spokeswoman for Huntington Ingalls, said “we continue to work closely with the Navy to complete the testing program and get the ship to sea.”
The Senate-passed version of the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill, which staffers will begin reconciling with the House-passed bill this week, would split the Pentagon’s top acquisition job into two different positions: one to focus on the day-to-day procurement needs of the department and one to focus on innovation.
The House version of the legislation includes less radical changes to the acquisition program, including requiring more open-source architecture to allow for more competition among industry and enable the military to upgrade pieces of larger platforms as technology advances.
