Facing A Navy-Wide Sailor Shortage, USS Ford Sheds 500-600 Crew

In the face of a massive shortage of Navy sailors, America’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has downsized, cutting the crew aboard by hundreds of sailors.

The cuts appear to be deep and dramatic. Over the past six months to a year, some 500 to 600 sailors have left the USS Ford and not been replaced. In fact, the USS Ford has shed so many crew members that the ship’s company (core crew members that operate the vessel) is now below the Ford-class Carrier Program’s original Acquisition Program Baseline objective of 2,391 billets—a goal set back in 2004 that many observers considered unrealistic.

In an emailed statement attributed to the commanding officer of the USS Ford, Captain Rick Burgess, the carrier is now “home to approximately 4,070 sailors: 2,380 ship’s company, 1,550 assigned to Carrier Wing EIGHT, and 140 embarked with Carrier Strike Group TWELVE and Destroyer Squadron TWO staffs.”

That represents an enormous reduction in the carrier’s workforce.

Just one year ago, the carrier’s previous commander, Captain Paul Lanzilotta, led far larger crew of between 4,600 and 4,700 sailors through a short shakedown deployment, telling Naval News, “the crew assigned to the ship is 2,700 personnel. That’s just the ship’s company. The airwing adds about 1,700 people on top of that, and we would embark normally 200-300 additional folks for the strike group staff and destroyer squadron staff.”

At the time of publication, the Navy’s “Fact File” says the Ford-class’s normal crew, air wing and staff compliment should be at around 4,539 sailors, within 90 percent of the 5,000 to 5,200 sailors aboard older Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. But now, after the apparent crew cuts, the USS Ford is apparently living up to the marketing rhetoric, and operating with a crew 20 percent smaller than a fully-staffed legacy Nimitz class carrier.

The current complement appears to be unusually low. Even the aircraft carrier’s December 2021 Selected Acquisition Report projected a “ship’s force” of 2716 billets, far higher than the 2,380 sailors currently aboard.

To put things in perspective, the USS Ford has apparently shed almost enough sailors to staff two Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. And, according to a string of Navy statements over the past several months, the cuts didn’t happen after a long run of analysis and tests. Most of the cuts appear to be organic, occurring while the USS Ford was on an active deployment, as the carrier operates on the fringes of a major conflict.

Did Cuts Take Place During An Active Deployment?

Since Captain Burgess took command of the USS Ford at the end of April, leading the carrier off to it’s first deployment in early May, a good segment of the aircraft carrier’s crew appears to have vanished.

While publicly released documents from the Navy and the USS Ford suggest the deployed crew on the USS Ford has shrunk, a Navy public affairs official would not confirm any firm figures, saying only that the ship deployed with “a full compliment and has maintained it.”

But the Navy’s own statements suggest steady attrition. As the USS Ford left Norfolk in May for the aircraft carrier’s first official deployment, the aircraft carrier’s very own magazine, The Wolverine, described the effort put into feeding a crew of “approximately 4,500 sailors.”

Then, in August, The Wolverine reported the crew size was “over 4,200 people.”

By September, The Wolverine said the crew size was 4,200.

Then, in October, a Navy story, detailing the USS Ford’s dedicated cadre of stationary bicycle “Spin” aficionados, reported the Ford’s crew had reportedly dwindled to 4,179.

And now, after barely two months—and if the figures from the Ford’s Skipper are accurate—the USS Ford appears to have lost about another 100 sailors.

What’s Going On?

Desertion, disease or even a mysterious, sailor-eating monster might be to blame for the USS Ford’s vanishing workforce, but the most likely scenario, according to long-time Navy observers in Washington DC, is that, after the Navy’s massive 20 percent miss in FY 2023 enlisted sailor recruitment goals, the Navy simply has no sailors to spare.

An alternative scenario is that the ship has enjoyed an incredible uptick in efficiency, defying predictions based upon the USS Ford’s last six and a half years of commissioned service.

It could be a bit of both. The Navy desperately wants to position the Ford carrier program for success, and, given that the extended deployment will delay key, high-profile testing events, shedding crew offers an immediate boost to the platform’s lifetime operational and maintenance savings, making the platform’s ragged business case far more viable.

Unfortunately, as this article went to press, the Navy had yet to respond to a query asking if the current staffing level was a temporary transient due to recruiting problems or if it was a more permanent change, reflecting an optimized crew.

The future size of the Ford’s crew may well be a moot point. Even if the massive cut to the USS Ford’s crew is temporary, and the Navy gradually fixes recruitment problems and increases the Ford’s compliment back to 4,600 to 4,700 sailors, this is a huge victory for the Ford-class carrier program.

Nobody—outside of a few stalwart carrier advocates—thought the USS Ford could operate effectively with fewer than 2,391 sailors. Many Navy observers thought the carrier was understaffed. A few years ago, the Pentagon’s testing arm even worried that “recent estimates of expected combined manning of CVN 78, its air wing, embarked staffs, and detachments range from 4,656 to 4,758.” As such, the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) wondered if the crew would end up outstripping the ship’s 4,666 berths.

This is a big deal.

Major and rapidly implemented crew cuts usually come with serious consequences, reducing vessel endurance, readiness and survivability. It doesn’t seem to be the case right now. The USS Ford might be understaffed—or, as a platform that is at the tail end of a deployment and still working out operational kinks, it may be serving as, essentially, a billet donor to other, more battle ready aircraft carriers.

But, rather than break down, the carrier is breaking performance records. In fact, the ship recently spent ten weeks away from port, in what appears to be the vessel’s longest uninterrupted period at sea since it was launched.

The aircraft carrier is performing, too. According to Captain Burgess, “Since October 9^th, Carrier Air Wing EIGHT has flown more than 2,500 sorties without interruption from FORD while stationed in the Mediterranean Sea.”

While 2,500 sorties in nine weeks is still far less than the Navy’s old-school sortie generation testing goal of around 4,800 sorties over the course of thirty days, it isn’t half bad. And though USS Ford is still generating far fewer sorties than the 3383 strikes 4,104 Sailors aboard the World War II-era carrier USS Midway (CV-41) generated over the course of 42 nights of Desert Storm, USS Ford and its diminished crew are clearly holding their own.