The U.S. Navy’s fourth Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier will be delivered two years late because of limited construction space at the shipyard where it’s being built, according to the Navy.
The service’s fiscal 2027 shipbuilding budget estimate, which was released in April, shows that USS Doris Miller’s arrival was bumped from February 2032 to February 2034 due to “constraints” at Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding shipyard in Virginia.
That delay, however, is a result of issues with the construction of the third Ford-class carrier, the CVN-80, or USS Enterprise.
“The primary schedule driver for CVN-81 is the lack of available shipyard construction space for large assemblies due to delays on CVN-80,” a Navy official told Military Times.
The USS Enterprise is occupying the shipyard’s final assembly area, where large assemblies are required to take place. It is the only space accessible by a heavy-lift crane, which is needed for construction, the official said.
“The CVN-80 delivery date shifted from July 2030 to March 2031 due to delay in critical path construction required for launch of the ship,” according to the Navy’s budget estimate.
Equipment that the Enterprise needs for construction didn’t arrive on time, the Navy official said.
A representative from Newport News Shipbuilding provided clarification on the logjam.
“CVN-80 construction delays result from late arrival of large, sequence-critical equipment that hindered the initial structural build of the ship in the dry dock,” the representative said. “All of the delayed critical material has since arrived.”
The shipyard said it expected to begin construction of the USS Doris Miller later this year.
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The Enterprise has faced setbacks before.
Navy budget documents in July 2025 said that the carrier was delayed from September 2029 to July 2030 due to supply chain issues.
The Navy purchased the USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller under a two-ship buy, or two aircraft carriers acquired under a single contract, in January 2019.
Under the new manufacturing timeline, it will take 12 years to complete construction of the USS Enterprise and 15 years to deliver USS Doris Miller.
The Gerald R. Ford-class as a whole has faced significant delays.
The second Ford-class carrier, USS John F. Kennedy, which has an expected delivery of March 2027, has seen delays in order “to support completion of Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) certification and continued Advanced Weapons Elevator (AWE) work,” according to the Navy’s fiscal 2026 budget documents.
Its delivery was pushed back from July 2025, according to those documents.
The lead ship in her class, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was also delayed due to issues with its nuclear propulsion system and Advanced Weapons Elevators.
Previous Navy Secretary John Phelan told reporters in April that the service was reviewing the costs of future Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers USS William J. Clinton and USS George W. Bush to “make sure that they make sense.”
The Navy was analyzing the price of building and maintaining future ships in order to make sure that they financially aligned with the Navy’s budget and future goals, Phelan said.
Riley Ceder is a reporter at Military Times, where he covers breaking news, criminal justice, investigations, and cyber. He previously worked as an investigative practicum student at The Washington Post, where he contributed to the Abused by the Badge investigation.
