New Footage Shows Severe Fire Damage to U.S. Navy’s Most Powerful Warship USS Gerald Ford

Exclusive footage obtained by CNN and released on June 4 has shown extensive fire damage aboard the U.S. Navy’s most advanced nuclear powered supercarrier USS Gerald Ford, following a major fire that occurred when the ship was deployed to support an assault against Iran from February 28. The carrier's fire-control system reportedly failed to operate as intended, forcing the crew to manually combat the fire. It took approximately 30 hours to fully extinguish the fire, with the incident impacting the accommodations for around 600 sailors. Although U.S. sources have reported that the damage was the result of a malfunction in the ship’s laundry spaces, analysts have widely raised questions regarding this explanation, while multiple unconfirmed reports have indicated that the ship may have been successfully targeted by Iranian forces. 

The USS Gerald Ford has suffered from a wide range of serious operational issues in recent months, with footage released on February 24, four days before the assault on Iran began, showing a major flood of raw sewage flowing through the ship, following persistent issues of clogged toilets and backed-up sewage. This followed years of reports that the ship’s narrow pipes have frequently been blocked, triggering sewage system breakdowns across the ship. Most of the USS Gerald Ford’s approximately over 600 toilets have reportedly become non-functional at times, forcing sailors to wait up to 45 minutes or more for working facilities. According to the Navy Times, the supercarrier received an average of one "sewage-related maintenance call per day" during its 2025 deployment.

Issues with the USS Gerald Ford have been wide ranging, affecting its weapons elevators, electromagnetic catapults, human waste management and sensors. While the warship belatedly entered service in June 2017, it could not commence its first operational deployment for over five years until October 2022. A Project on Government Oversight report accordingly referred to the program as an example of “how not to build a ship.” At over $17.5 billion, it is the most costly warship ever built. Issues with the Gerald Ford class carrier program more broadly, including major delays and cost overruns affecting the construction of the next ships of the class, have provided the Chinese shipbuilding industry and navy with an opportunity to significantly narrow the gap in carrier capabilities. China commissioned its first supercarrier, the Fujian, in November 2025, which is the sole warship in the world with broadly peer level capabilities to the Gerald Ford class. Chinese shipyards are currently producing both nuclear powered and conventionally powered supercarriers, and are expected to bring these into service far more quickly, with far less performance issues, and at a fraction of the cost of the Gerald Ford class ships.