Pentagon budget 2025: US Navy continues Ford-class carrier funding, bu…

The US Navy's FY2025 budget requests includes funding for carrier Enterprise, being built now at Newport News Shipbuilding. (Michael Fabey)

The US Navy (USN) is requesting about USD1.9 billion in its fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget request to continue incremental funding of Ford-class aircraft carriers Enterprise (CVN 80) and Doris Miller (CVN 81), roughly the same amount requested for similar needs in FY 2024, according to budget documents released on 11 March.

The FY2025 represents the eighth increment of funding for CVN 80 and the seventh for CVN 81.

However, according to the FY 2025 request, CVN 82, which was slated to be acquired in FY 2028 in a five-year Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP), is no longer listed for acquisition in that year, nor in the FYDP in the FY 2025 request, which ends in FY 2029.

CVN 82 acquisition is being shifted to FY 2030, Rear Admiral Ben Reynolds, deputy assistant secretary of the navy for budget and director of the USN Fiscal Management Division, said during an embargoed 8 March briefing on the proposed budget.

“The release of the fiscal year 2025 budget is the first step in a long process, so it would be inappropriate to speculate on the specific outcomes which will result from congressional consideration of this request,” Todd Corillo, a spokesman for HII's Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) unit, which builds the carriers, told Janes .