News Story: Inflation adds $3.4B to cost of next 6 US nuclear aircraft carriers

USS Gerald R. Ford (Image: Wiki Commons)

The US Department of Defense has added $3.4 billion to the costs of its 30-year-long program to build six new super nuclear-powered Ford-class aircraft carriers, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) noted in a report.

In 2006, the Congress placed a limitation [cost cap] of $8.1 billion on the amount the Navy could spend on the second and following ships in the Ford class," the report said on Wednesday. "As a result of such adjustments, the Navy - in 2013 - raised the cost cap to $11.5 billion."

The Department of Defense submitted to the Congress the Navy's 2016 shipbuilding plan in April 2015 to purchase six Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carriers over the 2016-2045 period, the report noted.

"Actual inflation in the prices of labor and materials was the most important contributor to the rise in the cost cap, accounting for $2.5 billion of the $3.4 billion increase, according to analyses by both the Navy and CBO" the report continued.

From 2007 to 2013, economic inflation specific to the US aircraft carrier program totaled 31 percent, an average annual rate of 3.96 percent, the CBO documented.

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