The new vessels have a hull similar to the Nimitz class, but they carry technologies since developed with the CVN(X)/CVN-21 program,[N 1] such as the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), as well as other design features intended to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs, including sailing with smaller crews.

Carriers of the Gerald R. Ford class have:[1] The biggest visible difference from earlier supercarriers is the more aft location of the island (superstructure).

[27][28] Director of Operational Testing Michael Gilmore has criticized the assumptions used in these forecasts as unrealistic and has indicated sortie rates similar to the 120/240 per day of the Nimitz class would be acceptable.

[28][29] The current Nimitz-class aircraft carriers in US naval service have been part of United States power projection strategy since Nimitz was commissioned in 1975.

Displacing about 100,000 tons when fully loaded, a Nimitz-class carrier can steam in excess of 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph), cruise without resupply for 90 days, and launch aircraft to strike targets hundreds of miles away.

[31] The Nimitz design has accommodated many new technologies over the decades, but it has limited ability to support the most recent technical advances.

4 on the Nimitz class cannot launch fully loaded aircraft because of low wing clearance along the edge of the flight deck.

[35] These elevators are located so that ordnance need not cross any areas of aircraft movement, thereby reducing traffic problems in the hangars and on the flight deck.

In 2008, Rear Admiral Dennis M. Dwyer said these changes will make it hypothetically possible to rearm the airplanes in "minutes instead of hours".

Engineers took extra steps to ensure that integrating unforeseen technological advances onto a Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier would be possible.

The EMALS also weighs less, is expected to cost less and require less maintenance, and can launch both heavier and lighter aircraft than a steam piston-driven system.

The current[needs update] system is unable to capture unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) without damaging them due to extreme stresses on the airframe.

[44] Another addition to the Gerald R. Ford class is an integrated active electronically scanned array search and tracking radar system.

The dual-band radar (DBR) was being developed by Raytheon, for both the Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyers and the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.

The AN/SPY-3 consists of three active arrays and the Receiver/Exciter (REX) cabinets above-decks and the Signal and Data Processor (SDP) subsystem below-decks.

The VSR has a similar architecture, with the beamforming and narrowband down-conversion functionality occurring in two additional cabinets per array.

Co-developed with the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, PyroGenesis Canada Inc. - was in 2008 awarded the contract to outfit the ship with a Plasma Arc Waste Destruction System (PAWDS).

After having completed factory acceptance testing in Montreal, the system was scheduled to be shipped to the Huntington Ingalls shipyard in late 2011 for installation on the carrier.

[51][52][53] Newport News Shipbuilding used a full-scale three-dimensional product model developed in Dassault Systèmes CATIA V5 to design and plan the construction of the Gerald R. Ford class of aircraft carriers.

These cleaning treatments cost about $400,000 each time, resulting in a substantial unplanned increase in the lifetime expense of operating these ships according to the GAO.

[61] In 2013, the life-cycle cost per operating day of a carrier strike group (including aircraft) was estimated at $6.5 million by the Center for New American Security.

In a speech on 6 April 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that each Gerald R. Ford-class carrier would be built over five years, yielding a "more fiscally sustainable path" and a 10-carrier fleet after 2040.

[63] That changed in December 2016, when Navy Secretary Ray Mabus signed a Force Structure Assessment calling for a 355-ship fleet with 12 aircraft carriers.

The Navy anticipates additional design changes stemming from remaining advanced arresting gear development and testing.

[70] On 20 January 2020, during a ceremony in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly named a future Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier in honor of World War II hero Doris Miller.