The most expensive warship ever built might not get any siblings. Navy Secretary John Phelan announced on April 21 that the service is conducting a comprehensive review of the Ford-class aircraft carrier design — and he pointedly refused to rule out canceling future ships in the class. “It’s too early to say,” Phelan told reporters when asked directly whether the review could end the program. “But we will have carriers.” That’s not the ringing endorsement a $13 billion-per-ship program usually gets.

The Question Nobody Wanted to Ask

Phelan framed the review as routine fiscal responsibility — “a prudent and practical” look at “the costs of the designs and the systems to make sure that they make sense.” But the subtext is unmistakable. The Navy is asking whether the Ford class, with its electromagnetic catapults, advanced arresting gear, and dual-band radar, delivers enough advantage over the proven Nimitz class to justify the massive cost premium. The Ford’s electromagnetic launch system (EMALS) has been a particular flashpoint. President Trump has repeatedly criticized the technology, once claiming during an Oval Office meeting that the catapults “didn’t work” and that the Navy should return to steam-powered systems. While EMALS has since demonstrated reliable operations, the political headwinds persist.

Two Presidents’ Names, Zero Contracts

The ships on the line are the fourth and fifth Ford-class carriers, named USS William Jefferson Clinton and USS George W. Bush by the Biden administration. Neither has been contracted yet. If the review concludes that a modified Nimitz design — or an entirely new concept — offers better value, those names may never grace a flight deck. The alternative is Trump’s own pet project: the “Trump-class battleship,” a surface combatant concept estimated at over $17 billion per hull. Whether that design could replace carrier aviation’s role in power projection is a question the Navy has so far declined to address publicly.

Ford vs. Nimitz: The Real Scorecard

On paper, the Ford class offers significant improvements. EMALS can launch aircraft more smoothly and with less maintenance than steam catapults. The Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) handles a wider range of aircraft weights. The dual-band radar eliminates the need for separate search and targeting systems. And the ship’s electrical architecture generates three times the power of a Nimitz, future-proofing it for directed-energy weapons and advanced sensors. But the Nimitz class has something the Ford can’t match: a track record. Ten Nimitz-class carriers have operated for decades with predictable maintenance cycles and well-understood costs. The Ford spent years in post-delivery trials fixing problems with its advanced weapons elevators and combat systems.

The Carrier Question Gets Louder

This review doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The Navy is simultaneously facing questions about whether large-deck carriers remain viable in an era of long-range anti-ship missiles. China’s DF-26 and DF-21D — the so-called “carrier killers” — have made some strategists argue that concentrating 5,000 sailors and 75 aircraft on a single hull is an unacceptable risk. The counterargument, reinforced daily in the Persian Gulf, is that nothing else projects airpower like a carrier. The Ford and Lincoln CSGs are currently the backbone of US combat operations against Iran, launching hundreds of sorties per day from international waters. Whether the Navy builds more Fords, reverts to Nimitz, or invents something entirely new, the review’s conclusion next month will shape American naval aviation for the next half-century.

Sources: Washington Post, USNI News, The War Zone, Washington Times