USS John F Kennedy reached a major construction milestone earlier this summer, but US lawmakers are raising serious technical concerns as the US Navy’s latest aircraft carrier inches closer to its 2020 commission date. 

The US Navy released a video of the Kennedy’s island being into lowered into place, published on May 29 to coincide with its namesake’s birthday. The “island” is a carrier’s command center, housing the bridge, an array of radar systems, and flight control. Rear Adm. Brian Antonio, Program Executive Officer for Aircraft Carriers, lauded the development as a positive sign that the Kennedy is nearing completion: “With the island landing, John F. Kennedy takes on that distinctive and unmistakable profile of an aircraft carrier… It symbolizes nearing the end of structural work and the start of bringing the ship to life, transitioning steel and cable to a living ship and crew.” With the fitting of the 588-metric ton island, the Kennedy is reportedly 92 percent complete. 

The second Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier to be commissioned in less than a decade, the USS John F Kennedy is the latest entry in the Navy’s push to replace the aging Enterprise class and certain Nimitz class vessels. The Ford-class forgoes a major hull redesign, instead focusing on efficiency improvements that are meant to reign in maintenance and whole-life costs. One of the Ford line’s defining features is its Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), a new aircraft launching mechanism that’s purportedly not only cheaper and easier to maintain, but also more powerful and reliable than its CATOBAR predecessor. 

The USS John F Kennedy is being produced with a “modular” approach: sections of the ship are welded together into larger structures called “superlifts,” which are then loaded onto the drydock in preparation for final assembly. In keeping with the Ford class design mantra of efficiency, Kennedy construction program director Mike Butler asserts that this technique results in lower production costs:  “Fewer lifts to the dock means we’re building larger superlifts with more outfitting installed prior to erecting the sections in dock… this translates to man-hour savings because the work is being accomplished off the ship in a more efficient work environment.

The Kennedy’s preoccupation with cost and efficiency concerns appears commendable, given the hefty price tag of building and maintaining its Nimitz-class predecessor carriers. However, lawmakers are concerned that too many vital corners are being cut in the carrier’s production. In particular, the Kennedy will not be able to launch the F-35C fighter until post-delivery modifications to its EMALS mechanism have been completed; according to a Government Accountability Office report, this could be as late as 2027. 

Congress has conveyed on no uncertain terms that they consider the consider the lack of F-35 compatibility to be unacceptable, even going as far as to add a provision to the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that blocks the Navy from accepting delivery of the Kennedy until it “is capable of deploying with the F-35.” 

This development is partly the unintended consequence of prior cost caps imposed by Congress on the Ford carrier program. The manufacturer is cutting out essential features to abide by spending parameters, only to add them in future modification packages down the line. Not only is nothing saved over the long term, but the Navy must use an unfinished carrier as it waits for additional features that should have been included from the outset. 

The USS Kennedy’s F-35 snafu comes at a time when the first Ford class ship, the USS Gerald R. Ford, faces a host of unflattering propulsion, launch mechanism, carrier design issues shortly after its 2017 delivery. 

Mark Episkopos is a frequent contributor to The National Interest and serves as research assistant at the Center for the National Interest. Mark is also a PhD student in History at American University.