After two long deployments the US’s newest aircraft carrier will soon head to Norfolk Naval Shipyard for maintenance and upgrades.
The laundry room will have to be completely rebuilt after a fire broke out in March, said Rear Adm. Kavon Hakimzadeh, commander, Norfolk Naval Shipyard.
“We've got some fire damage to repair, so that kind of increases the scope of what we're doing,” he said.
Ford is the United States’ newest and largest aircraft carrier. Its maiden voyage was in 2022. The public shipyard will work closely with Newport News Shipbuilding, which built the carrier, Hakimzadeh said.
The shipyard will also install a fix used on the USS George H.W. Bush to help fix the sewage problems that plagued the carrier. WHRO first reported last July, shortly after the Ford left port for its record breaking deployment.
The fire spread into the sleeping areas for some of the sailors, displacing at least 200 crew members. It briefly sidelined the carrier during the early part of the war against Iran. Norfolk Naval Shipyard sent a small crew to the Mediterranean to manage the repairs and bring the carrier back online, Hakimzadeh said.
“They essentially did all the necessary temporary repairs to get that ship back operating, and they did it in five days. It was incredible,” he said.
Last year, Hakimzadeh became the first admiral to run Norfolk Naval Shipyard.
Typically, the Navy’s four public shipyards are run by a captain. The Navy is experimenting with whether having an admiral in charge will help the service clear away the backlog of deferred maintenance that has been plaguing the service for more than a decade.
“These teams go off on their own and they do some exceptional work out there. Why do they do so well out there, and why don't they do, why don't they do the same level of work when they come inside the fence line here at the shipyard?” Hakimzadeh said.
He said the shipyards send multidisciplinary teams of engineers and shipyard workers who tackle the problem quickly together. He wants to bring the same mindset to getting carriers and submarines out of maintenance in Norfolk.
Last year, he became the first admiral to be put in charge of a public shipyard, which are normally overseen by captains. He says the carrier
The carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower recently left the yard ahead of schedule, even though there was a fire in an air conditioning unit, when the work was nearly finished. Eight sailors were injured but have returned to full duty.
“We only finished a few days early, but you always have problems near the end of availability, when you're testing all the systems,” Hakimzadeh said. “Essentially, you have to finish a month and a half early to make sure the crew has time to test everything and bring the systems back on line.”
Despite all of the damage to USS Ford, the shipyard does not expect the carrier to linger in the yard.
“There are some estimates out there talking about it's going to take us up to a year to be able to get this done. We believe very strongly that we're going to get it done in significantly less time than that,” Hakimzadeh said.
Getting carriers back into service more quickly is particularly important as new carriers take more than a decade to complete.
The latest Ford-class carrier John F. Kennedy is not expected to be turned over to the Navy until next year, which is a year later than expected. The future aircraft carriers Enterprise and Doris Miller are also behind schedule.
The Navy recently added a year to the service life of USS Nimitz. The carrier is currently in the Caribbean on its way from Washington to Norfolk. The crew recently celebrated the ship's 51st birthday, making it the oldest carrier to ever serve in the U.S. fleet.
