Carrier crunch leaves US unprepared for a China fight

The US Navy is running out of aircraft carriers—and time—as global threats multiply faster than it can build, launch or sustain its next-generation warships.

USNI reported this month that delivery of the USS John F Kennedy (CVN-79), the US Navy’s second Ford-class aircraft carrier, has been delayed by two years due to ongoing challenges with integrating Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) and Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE).

Originally scheduled for July 2025, the carrier is now expected to enter service by March 2027, according to the US Navy. That will reduce its fleet to 10 carriers, below the legally mandated 11 units, for nearly a year following the May 2026 retirement of USS Nimitz (CVN-68).

The delay stems from the Navy’s 2020 decision to shift from a dual-phase to a single-phase delivery plan, which was meant to enable earlier incorporation of the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter and Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar.

Lessons learned from CVN-78 were only partially applied to CVN-79, and retrofitting proved complex, according to Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII).

The US Navy is now coordinating with stakeholders to explore preliminary acceptance prior to full delivery. Similar delays also affect the CVN-80 Enterprise, now projected for July 2030, due to supply chain and material availability issues, extending its timeline by 28 months.

These setbacks highlight broader integration and sustainment challenges in the Ford-class program, with US Navy officials working to mitigate operational gaps and preserve readiness amid increasingly strained global commitments.

Persistent delays, spiraling costs and unresolved technical flaws in the Ford-class program are undermining the US Navy’s ability to field and sustain the kind of forward-deployed force needed to deter rising multi-theater threats from near-peer and regional adversaries like China.

Summarizing key concerns, Brent Eastwood notes in a June 2025 National Security Journal article that the Ford-class’s $13 billion per unit cost, $5 billion in R&D and 23% cost overrun have alarmed lawmakers.

Chris Panella notes in a March 2025 Business Insider piece that delays in procuring CVN-82 threaten over 60,000 jobs across more than 2,000 firms. Without immediate action, he says 96% of sole-source suppliers could halt production by 2027, raising costs and risking the loss of skilled workers.

Eastwood also warns that repeated construction delays—such as the USS Enterprise’s slip to 2029—undermine fleet readiness, just as emerging threats like hypersonic missiles, drone swarms and cyberattacks raise serious doubts about carrier survivability in conflict scenarios.

He adds that munitions and fuel resupply demands place additional pressure on logistics chains already stretched thin. Eastwood further notes that unproven technologies such as the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and AAG have contributed to deployment delays.

A January 2025 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report states that although both systems aboard the USS Gerald R Ford have shown improvement, they still fall well short of US Navy reliability goals—EMALS averaging just 614 cycles between failures against a target of 4,166, and AAG at 460 against 16,500.

The CRS report says these persistent gaps have led the US Navy to enhance testing protocols and data collection for further refinement.

At the operational level, Ford-class delays are straining the Navy’s ability to meet global Carrier Strike Group (CSG) commitments. Steven Wills observes in a July 2024 article for the Center for Maritime Strategy (CMS) that the US Navy’s carrier force remains overstretched, operating with only 11 carriers in a world that demands at least 15 for sustained global presence.

Wills writes that repeated crises, particularly in the Red Sea, have pushed deployments beyond readiness cycles, disrupting both maintenance and training. He points out that the US Navy’s reliance on temporary solutions—like rushing Pacific-based carriers to relieve overburdened ships—reflects persistent gaps in force structure and planning.

These shortfalls, Wills argues, are degrading air superiority in key theaters like the Indo-Pacific and the Levant and are the consequence of years of procurement underreach. He also criticizes the logic of “cheating the math” by slashing carrier numbers without adjusting mission demands.

Ishaan Anand, in a CMS article this month, further stresses that concurrent maritime crises in the Red Sea and Indo-Pacific reveal the US Navy’s growing dual-theater challenge.

He notes that the extended deployment of the Eisenhower CSG to counter Houthi threats in CENTCOM’s area of responsibility has diverted assets from priority Indo-Pacific zones, enabling China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to ramp up exercises near Taiwan and the Luzon Strait.

Anand writes that the absence of forward-deployed carriers like the USS Ronald Reagan has forced the US Navy to rely on destroyers and littoral combat ships with far less power projection capability.

He argues this operational tradeoff—between Middle Eastern deterrence and Indo-Pacific stability—shows the US Navy’s inability to maintain a carrier-led presence in two contested regions simultaneously.

And yet a third front may already be forming. As Russia becomes more assertive in the Arctic and North Atlantic, US carrier strike groups have been forward-deployed to Northern Europe as part of NATO deterrence efforts. This signals a growing awareness in Washington that even while juggling crises in the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, Europe cannot be neglected.

The convergence of these crises has elevated the specter of a simultaneous three-front contingency in the Pacific, Middle East, and Europe, testing whether a US Navy built for peacetime presence can withstand wartime demands.

Hal Brands warns in an October 2022 Bloomberg article that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s designs on Taiwan, and Iran’s nuclear provocations expose fundamental US vulnerabilities under its current “one-war” defense planning framework.

He argues that while these adversaries are not formally aligned, their actions could generate overlapping crises that would force the US into unacceptable tradeoffs, fracturing its global posture.

Mackenzie Eaglen underscores this point in an August 2024 National Security Journal article, stating that the “one-war” force-sizing construct is increasingly seen as obsolete in the face of converging near-peer threats from China and Russia, alongside regional challengers such as Iran and North Korea.

Eaglen cites the US Commission on the National Defense Strategy, which warns that the US lacks the capabilities and capacity to prevail across multiple theaters—a vulnerability that could embolden adversaries to test US resolve.

She writes that despite calls for a “Multiple Theater Force Construct,” the US military remains smaller, older, and less ready, with naval, ground, and air assets stretched across outdated global postures.

Pivoting between regions, she argues, invites dangerous strategic gaps that erode deterrence and compromise leadership at a time when unity of effort is most crucial.

The Ford class’s technical limits, operational wear, and inability to meet multiple strategic demands suggest the US Navy’s carrier-focused force isn’t prepared to deter or fight future wars.