MMR January 9 2023 - Y'all Can't Get It Together

The elevators are one of several new technologies incorporated into the carrier. Traditional carrier elevators use hydraulics and mechanical linkages — cables — to raise and lower platforms. According to Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), the Ford’s advanced elevators replace those maintenance-intensive and comparatively slow elevators with ones run by electromagnetic motors. With fewer moving parts, the system should in principle be less complex to operate. However, the manufacturing tolerances for such a system require greater accuracy and precision than a purely mechanical one.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Navy and builders struggled to incorporate such tolerances and, in 2019, the Navy told Bloomberg that as many as 70 elevator doors and 17 hatches did not meet requirements because of how changes to the ship have evolved. Without fully functioning weapons elevators, a carrier will struggle to generate the desired sortie rate because it will take too long to move weapons from the magazines to aircraft on deck.

The elevators are not the only major problem the Ford has had to resolve. Among other issues, the Navy has addressed the ship's waste management — its toilets overflow — as well as propulsion and electrical systems. In April, the Navy announced that the ship’s formerly troublesome Advanced Arresting Gear and Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System had accumulated 8,000 launch and recovery cycles, an important turnaround for another system that had plagued the carrier from early on, and another that directly affects how quickly the carrier can launch and recover aircraft.