How much does the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier cost?

The construction contract for CVN-78 was signed in 2008 with the Newport News shipyard (Huntington Ingalls) based on an estimate of $10.5 billion. The cost kept rising to the legal cap of $12.9 billion set by Congress, which was later adjusted upward to absorb problems with the electromagnetic catapults, weapons elevators and the arresting system. The acquisition figure used by the Congressional Research Service and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is around $13.3 billion, plus about $4.7 billion in research and development shared across the whole class.

The price covers the hull, the two A1B reactors, the combat systems and testing up through its first deployment, in 2022. It does not include the air wing of about 75 aircraft, which at current prices for the F-35C, F/A-18E/F, E-2D and helicopters comfortably exceeds the cost of the ship itself, nor the carrier strike group's escorts, nor the crew of about 4,500 people. The Navy argues that the class's design cuts each ship's operating cost by about $4 billion over its 50-year service life compared with a Nimitz-class carrier, thanks to a smaller crew and less maintenance.

Later ships cost less thanks to the learning curve: the John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) runs about $11.4 billion, and the Enterprise (CVN-80) and Doris Miller (CVN-81) were contracted together in 2019 for about $24 billion, with an estimated savings of $4 billion compared to buying them separately. Even so, each carrier remains the single most expensive line item in the U.S. Navy's budget in the year it's purchased.