USS Gerald R. Ford Sortie Test Exceeded Nimitz-class Performance, Says CNO Caudle

An F/A-18E Super Hornet, attached to Strike Fighter Squadron 37, lands on the flight deck of aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) while underway in the Mediterranean Sea, April 11, 2026. US Navy photo USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) outperformed legacy Nimitz-class aircraft carriers in a test of the launch and recovery systems of the carrier, the Navy’s top officer said last week.

A February stress test of the electromagnetic launch system, EMALS, and the advanced arresting gear installed aboard Ford generated higher sortie rates than the Nimitz-class, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said during a roundtable at the Tailhook Symposium in Reno, Nevada. The test occurred while Ford was in the Caribbean Sea before sailing to U.S. European Command and the Red Sea.

“The way you measure [performance is] with a test that we do called a sortie generation rate test that Ford conducted,” Caudle said. “She did it in between her transfer from SOUTHCOM over to EUCOM and eventually into CENTCOM, and we were told numbers in that they were… between 120 to 130 percent of Nimitz-class on the sortie generation rate, and so that’s part of that’s due to the entire set of things that were done on Ford to make it better.”

Aviation Week first reported Caudle’s comments.

Per the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation office, the sortie generation rate of the Nimitz-class is about 120 launches and recoveries in a 12-hour day of flight operations with a surge capability of 240 sorties over 24 hours. Based on those numbers, 130 percent of the Nimitz-class rate would put Ford at around 160 sorties for the same 12-hour flight period and around 312 surged over 24 hours. Caudle did not offer more specifics.

USNI News previously reported Navy leadership was pleased with the results of the four-day test, but the service has yet to release any specifics.

“It’s not just the catapults and the arresting gear. It’s all the technologies, the whole system,” Caudle said. “That’s due to the entire set of things that were done on Ford to make it better.”

An artist’s concept of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS). General Atomics Image The Ford-class was designed to generate more aircraft launches with fewer sailors than the previous generation of carriers by including technologies like EMALS, the AAG and positioning systems like weapons elevators and fuel hoses to maximize efficiency and speed. The Navy consulted with NASCAR pit crews to help design the layout to improve the throughput of aircraft.

The new technology was designed to be introduced across three aircraft carrier hulls starting with USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) and then into what would become Ford and the future John F. Kennedy (CVN-79). Instead, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld opted to include all of the technologies in Ford. The decision led to delays in perfecting the technology for Ford rather than allowing it to develop in parallel with the construction of the carriers, which led to reliability issues, USNI News understands.

The new information comes as the Navy and Pentagon has been ordered by President Donald Trump to assess returning the Ford-class back to steam catapults via an Aug. 13 executive order starting with the future Doris Miller (CVN-81).

“The president has lived through the entire journey and has expressed concerns that the reliability may not be there, and as you know, he signed out his presidential memorandum for us to go look at this over the next 60 days,” Caudle said. “We’ll give the president a full and complete picture of what we’re talking about here. If we were to go back to steam and hydraulics with the elevators, we need to really understand the total cost of that. I can tell you that will be a significant design change.”