Chinese Espionage: U.S. Expelled Chinese Officials After Breach of Military Base

Chinese Embassy officials trespassed onto a Virginia base that is home to Special Operations forces. 
By Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes

Spy nest: The Chinese Embassy in Washington. The expulsions show the American government is now taking a harder line against espionage by China.

WASHINGTON — The American government secretly expelled two Chinese Embassy officials this fall after they drove on to a sensitive military base in Virginia, according to people with knowledge of the episode. 

The expulsions are the first of Chinese diplomats suspected of espionage in more than 30 years.American officials believe at least one of the Chinese officials was an intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover, said six people with knowledge of the expulsions. 

The group, which included the officials’ wives, evaded military personnel pursuing them and stopped only after fire trucks blocked their path.
The episode in September, which neither Washington nor Beijing made public, has intensified concerns in the Trump administration that China is expanding its spying efforts in the United States.

American intelligence officials say China poses a greater espionage threat than any other country.In recent months, Chinese officials with diplomatic passports have become bolder about showing up unannounced at research or government facilities, American officials said, with the infiltration of the military base only the most remarkable instance.
The expulsions, apparently the first since the United States forced out two Chinese Embassy employees with diplomatic cover in 1987, show the American government is now taking a harder line against espionage by China, officials said.

On Oct. 16, weeks after the intrusion at the base, the State Department announced sharp restrictions on the activities of Chinese diplomats, requiring them to provide notice before meeting with local or state officials or visiting educational and research institutions.
At the time, a senior State Department official told reporters that the rule, which applied to all Chinese Missions in the United States and its territories, was a response to Chinese regulations imposed years ago requiring American diplomats to seek permission to travel outside their host cities or to visit certain institutions.
Two American officials said last week that those restrictions had been under consideration for a while because of growing calls in the American government for reciprocity, but episodes like the one at the base accelerated the rollout.
The base intrusion took place in late September on a sensitive installation near Norfolk, Va. 

The base includes Special Operations forces, said the people with knowledge of the incident. 

Several bases in the area have such units, including one with the headquarters of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six.

The Elizabeth River in Norfolk, Va. The military base intrusion took place in late September on an installation considered especially sensitive in the area.

The Chinese officials and their wives drove up to a checkpoint for entry to the base, said people briefed on the episode. 

A guard, realizing that they did not have permission to enter, told them to go through the gate, turn around and exit the base, which is common procedure in such situations.
But the Chinese officials instead continued on to the base, according to those familiar with the incident. 

After the fire trucks blocked them, the Chinese officials indicated that they had not understood the guard’s English instructions, and had simply gotten lost, according to people briefed on the matter.
American officials said they were skeptical that the intruders made an innocent error and dismissed the idea that their English was insufficient to understand the initial order to leave.
It is not clear what they were trying to do on the base, but some American officials said they believed it was to test the security at the installation, according to a person briefed on the matter. 

Had the Chinese officials made it onto the base without being stopped, the embassy could have dispatched a more senior intelligence officer to enter the base.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry and Chinese Embassy in Washington did not reply to requests for comment about the episode. 

Two associates of Chinese Embassy officials said they were told that the expelled officials were on a sightseeing tour when they accidentally drove onto the base.
The State Department, which is responsible for relations with the Chinese Embassy and its diplomats, and the F.B.I., which oversees counterintelligence in the United States, declined to comment.
Chinese Embassy officials complained to State Department officials about the expulsions and asked in a meeting whether the agency was retaliating for an official Chinese propaganda campaign in August against an American diplomat, Julie Eadeh. 

At the time, state-run news organizations accused Ms. Eadeh, a political counselor in Hong Kong, of being a “black hand” behind the territory’s pro-democracy protests, and personal details about her were posted online. 

A State Department spokeswoman called China a “thuggish regime.”
So far, China has not retaliated by expelling American diplomats or intelligence officers from the embassy in Beijing, perhaps a sign that Chinese officials understand their colleagues overstepped by trying to enter the base. 

One person who was briefed on reactions in the Chinese Embassy in Washington said he was told employees there were surprised that their colleagues had tried something so brazen.

The American Consulate in Hong Kong in September.

In 2016, Chinese officers in Chengdu abducted an American Consulate official they believed to be a C.I.A. officer, interrogated him and forced him to make a confession. 

Colleagues retrieved him the next day and evacuated him from the country. 

American officials threatened to expel suspected Chinese agents in the United States, but apparently did not do so.
China is detaining a Canadian diplomat on leave, Michael Kovrig, on espionage charges, though American officials say he is being held hostage because Canada arrested a prominent Chinese technology company executive at the request of American officials seeking her prosecution in a sanctions evasion case.
For decades, counterintelligence officials have tried to pinpoint embassy or consulate employees with diplomatic cover who are spies and assign officers to follow some of them. 

Now there is growing urgency to do that by both Washington and Beijing.
Evan S. Medeiros, a senior Asia director at the National Security Council under Barack Obama, said he was unaware of any expulsions of Chinese diplomats or spies with diplomatic cover during Obama’s time in office.
If it is rare for the Americans to expel Chinese spies or other embassy employees who have diplomatic cover, Medeiros said, “it’s probably because for much of the first 40 years, Chinese intelligence was not very aggressive.”
“But that changed about 10 years ago,” he added. 

“Chinese intelligence became more sophisticated and more aggressive, both in human and electronic forms.”
For instance, Chinese intelligence officers use LinkedIn to recruit current or former employees of foreign governments.
This year, a Chinese student was sentenced to a year in prison for photographing an American defense intelligence installation near Key West, Fla., in September 2018. 

The student, Zhao Qianli, walked to where the fence circling the base ended at the ocean, then stepped around the fence and onto the beach. 

From there, he walked onto the base and took photographs, including of an area with satellite dishes and antennae.
When he was arrested, Zhao spoke in broken English and, like the officials stopped on the Virginia base, claimed he was lost.
Chinese have been caught not just wandering on to government installations but also improperly entering university laboratories and even crossing farmland to pilfer specially bred seeds.
In 2016, a Chines, Mo Hailong, pleaded guilty to trying to steal corn seeds from American agribusiness firms and give them to a Chinese company. 

Before he was caught, Mo successfully stole seeds developed by the American companies and sent them back to China, according to court records. 

He was sentenced to three years in prison.
The F.B.I. and the National Institutes of Health are trying to root out Chinese scientists in the United States who are stealing biomedical research for China. 

The F.B.I. has also warned research institutions about risks posed by Chinese students and scholars.

Last month, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former C.I.A. officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison, one of several former American intelligence officials sentenced this year for spying for Beijing.
His work with Chinese intelligence coincided with the demolition of the C.I.A.’s network of informants in China — one of the biggest counterintelligence coups against the United States in decades. 

From 2010 to 2012, Chinese officers killed at least a dozen informants and imprisoned others. 

One man and his pregnant wife were shot in 2011 in a ministry’s courtyard, and the execution was shown on closed-circuit television, according to a new book on Chinese espionage.
Many in the C.I.A. feared China had a mole in the agency, and some officers suspected Lee, though prosecutors did not tie him to the network’s collapse.
For three decades, China did have a mole in the C.I.A., Larry Wu-Tai Chin, considered among the most successful enemy agents to have penetrated the United States. 

He was arrested in 1985 and convicted the next year, then suffocated himself with a trash bag in his jail cell.

Pentagon's Chinese Fifth Column

Congress investigating taxpayer-backed school over ties to Chinese military
By Catherine Herridge, Pamela K. Browne, Cyd Upson 

Four congressional committees are demanding answers from the FBI and departments of Justice and Defense about a taxpayer-funded school that markets to the military, after a Fox News investigation exposed ties between the university's leadership and the Chinese military.
The ongoing Fox News investigation has focused on the Virginia-based University of Management and Technology, its president Yanping Chen Frame and the school's academic dean, J. Davidson Frame, Chen's husband. 

UMT was raided by the FBI in 2012 as part of a counterintelligence investigation, but multiple sources told Fox News the case ran into roadblocks once it reached the U.S. attorney's office.
"There's not only a lot of smoke coming out of this one, there's some fires out there that need to be extinguished and some people that really have to answer the questions," House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said.
In a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis on April 12, Chaffetz said military service members and their personnel records remain at risk. 

He questioned why the Defense Department continues to fund the school with taxpayer dollars through the GI Bill and the tuition assistance program.
"There was no obligation to give this money. They didn't have to give this money. Somebody made a proactive decision to authorize this, to move forward, and then why not cut it off?" Chaffetz said.
Since the 2012 FBI raid, UMT received more than $6 million. 

Some $250,000 has been received by the school since Fox News aired its first report in February.
"It's a bad deal for the soldiers … it's a bad deal for the taxpayer," said former UMT employee Stephen Rhoads, a U.S.-veteran-turned-whistleblower who says he worked as an FBI informant on the case. 

"It absolutely disgusts me and needs to stop."

Undated photo of Yanping Chen and family wearing PLA uniforms. (Exclusively obtained by Fox News)

After the Fox News investigation, the Defense Department put the school under review but continues to fund it. 

When he worked there, Rhoads said the school got more than 250,000-$300,000 per month in taxpayer dollars.
Photos obtained by Fox News apparently show Chen wearing the uniform of a young officer in the Chinese military of the People's Liberation Army, known as the PLA, along with her family. 

In another undated photo, Chen appears to salute the grave of her father, Chen Bin, who was a senior general in the PLA in charge of technology and arms acquisition.

Undated photos of Yanping Chen’s father, Gen. Chen Bin. (Exclusively obtained by Fox News)
"Her father joined the Communist Party in the 1930s. He supposedly participated in the Long March and that … gives her credentials not unlike being an officer in the continental army," said Peter Mattis, a fellow with the Jamestown Foundation and leading expert on China. 

"The Long March," between 1934-1935, has long been referred to as a bloody pillar of the Chinese Communist Revolution which ultimately led to the creation of the People's Republic of China.
Mattis said a school like UMT would be attractive to the Chinese military.
"You get what you'd call a curated database. You're not just getting a database of a lot of Americans. You're getting a database of people who are interesting to you, people who work in the U.S. military, who have access to a sensitive technology," Mattis said. 

"This is valuable to China for two reasons. The first is, militaries everywhere want to know what a potential adversary might look like -- what are their capabilities, how will they act? The second is this might also serve as a vehicle for recruiting individuals."
Mattis added, "If intelligence is a numbers game and maybe one out of 100 or one out of 500 people are willing to commit treason, then the faster you can go through those numbers, the better off you are. They're looking for former officials, classmates, spouses, friends and they have no problem recruiting someone with only secondhand access to information."
Fox News has confirmed that the Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) is also investigating the UMT. 

Separately, multiple sources told Fox News that the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, James P. Gillis, declined to prosecute in 2014, but that may be about to change.

Undated photo of Yanping Chen and her husband J. Davidson Frame, who run the University of Management and Technology in Virginia.

The FBI, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Defense Department declined to comment, citing the ongoing probe.
Chaffetz stressed his dismay with the reaction of the Department of Justice. 

"Just turning the other cheek on something that appears at least on the surface to be so blatant -- that begs the question, what are the 100,000-plus people at [the Department of Justice] doing?"
Fox News has an open invitation for an interview with Yanping Chen and J. Davidson Frame. 

They told Fox News in February they were too busy. 

DoD-paid Chinese Spies

DoD-funded school at center of federal probes over Chinese military ties
By Catherine Herridge, Pamela K. Browne, Cyd Upson

Spying for sex: J. Davidson Frame, right, salutes his wife, left, UMT president Yanping Chen Frame, who is holding a People's Liberation Army uniform.

Based just four miles from the Pentagon in northern Virginia is an innocuous-sounding online school for "management and technology" – which a Fox News investigation reveals has been at the center of multiple federal probes about its leadership's ties to the Chinese military and whether thousands of records from U.S. service members were compromised.
The University of Management and Technology in Rosslyn, Va., which opened in 1998, touts a campus in Beijing and “partnerships” with universities around the world. 

The U.S. taxpayer-funded school claims to have had 5,000 graduates in the last five years and to be "especially proud of our students stationed in US military bases around the globe."
However, there is another side to the school's leadership that drew the attention of the FBI, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) since at least 2012 -- and perhaps as early as 2009.
In December 2012, the FBI made two very public raids of UMT and the northern Virginia home of university president Yanping Chen Frame and its academic dean, her husband J. Davidson Frame. Documents reviewed by Fox News show it was a counter-intelligence case, known as a "200d," one of the most highly sensitive categories for a federal probe.
Photos, exclusively obtained by Fox News, appear to show Chen as a young officer in the People's Liberation Army, the military wing of China's communist party. 

Another photo shows Frame saluting his wife, Chen, who is holding a uniform. 

Experts said it was a Chinese military colonel’s uniform.

Honey trap: This undated photo appears to show Yanping Chen Frame before she came to a U.S. graduate school.

Yet since those FBI raids, UMT has continued to collect more than $6 million from Defense Department tuition assistance programs as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs through the post-9/11 GI bill.
"It's a bad deal for the soldiers, and it's a bad deal for the taxpayer," Stephen Rhoads, a military veteran turned whistleblower who says he worked with the FBI on the case, told Fox News in an exclusive interview. 

"Nobody's getting what they paid for."
Rhoads said he worked at UMT recruiting vets when the FBI approached him in 2012 regarding the federal investigation. 

Emails and other documents reviewed by Fox News corroborate key elements of Rhoads' story.
"One of the first sentences she [Chen] ever threw out -- after she found out I was an Army officer, was, ‘Well … I was a colonel in the army,’" Rhoads explained. 

"During our first face-to-face encounter, absolutely ... she did not deny it."
Rhoads said he thought Chen meant the U.S. Army, and asked whether she trained in Texas. 

"She laughed and said, ‘Oh, no, I was in the Chinese army, you know.’”
Chen, 64, came to the United States in 1987 from Beijing on a non-immigrant visa with her daughter Lele Wang. 

The Chinese government funded Chen's research at George Washington University where she received a Ph.D. in Public Policy in 1999, the year after UMT was created.
While Rhoads says Chen was upfront about her Chinese military experience, he claimed she hid those ties on immigration applications. 

Fox News reviewed Chen's immigration records where she consistently denied ties to the Chinese or any foreign military. 

When asked, "Have you ever been a member of, or in any way affiliated with, the communist party or any other totalitarian regime?" Chen checked "no." 

She would later become a naturalized U.S. citizen.
While there are no U.S. laws preventing a naturalized citizen from running a school like UMT, the Fox News investigation found that Chen's ties to the Chinese military run deep.
Three outside experts consulted by Fox News confirmed the authenticity of the Chinese uniforms in the photos of Chen and Frame.
"If somebody was wearing that uniform, I would say that they were in the People's Liberation Army," Dennis Blasko, a leading Chinese military expert said, referring to the photo of what appears to be Chen in uniform.
Asked about the photo of Frame saluting his wife, Blasko observed, "This is a P.L.A. officer's uniform — active duty — from between 1987 and 2007 ... And from the epaulettes, we can see this -- three stars and two red stripes would be a full colonel."
Blasko emphasized that P.L.A. insignia can only be purchased with the permission of the Chinese military, and "you would have to have a certificate from your unit to buy [it.]"
Blasko, a West Point graduate who worked as a military attache in China, wrote "The Chinese Army Today: Tradition and Transformation for the 21st Century," one of the definitive books about the Chinese military.
In her George Washington University dissertation, Chen thanks her father, a P.L.A. general, who directed arms and technology development. 

"My father, General Chen Bin, gave me the inspiration to pursue this area of study," Chen wrote. 

"As former Chairman of COSTIND (1982-87), he was an important player in supporting and directing the (Chinese) space program."
In her 2012 FBI interview, Chen denied she ever was a colonel in the P.L.A., emphasizing she had worked as a doctor in the Chinese space program. 

Chen said it was a “civilian agency.” 

The interview summary suggests federal agents challenged Chen’s characterization. 

Outside experts told Fox News the Chinese civilian and military space programs are intertwined.
While Chen's immigration application is more than a decade old, and past the five-year statute of limitations, there may be a "continuation” of fraud, according to Ray Fournier who worked with the State Department's office of diplomatic security for more than 20 years. 

Fournier, an expert on visa and passport fraud, worked for the Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego, where his investigative work led to an arrest warrant for the American-born cleric Anwar Awlaki, who was later killed by the CIA.
Fournier said, "If she has marked ‘no’ on the petition, but if in fact, the answer is yes … then we have a false statement. And where that comes into play, most assuredly, is in the arena of passport fraud. It is this application." 

With each renewal of Chen's U.S. passport, Fournier said, investigators should determine whether the falsehood was repeated. 

"These are issues of inadmissibility," he said.
While going through the immigration process, Chen was also launching what would become a multi-million-dollar online academy. 

But that academy's work would eventually attract the attention of federal investigators, who questioned whether students’ records were remotely accessed from China.
Before the 2012 raid, Chen's daughter Lele Wang who also works at UMT, told the FBI that "'Contractors' in the UMT Beijing Office have [administrator] privileges" to access the student database.
Rhoads said UMT recruited service members who provided their military history when they enrolled. 

"It got uploaded into an O-drive, they called it ... their personal military bio, you know, where they were trained, how they were trained, how long, that could be remotely accessed."
Rhoads said Chen had a particular interest in Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which is a research and technology hub.
And there was more. 

"She wanted me to go out to these remote reserve and National Guard centers, you know … in small-town America and start gettin' U.S. soldiers from those centers. Get their information, basically. Who's out there in the woods? How many units we got?"
Rhoads recalled to Fox News that he was instructed by the FBI to tell Chen that he was going to testify before a Virginia grand jury. 

"They wanted to, I guess see how … she would react."
At the time, Rhoads said Chen had no idea he was working with the bureau.
He said, "Well, at this point, she didn't know I was working for them at all. And she's like, ‘Oh, you don't tell them anything. We don't know each other. You don't … know what you don't know,’ was her buzz phrase. ‘You don't -- you don't know I was a colonel in the P.L.A. They'll never have proof to say that’."
Emails obtained by Fox News show Rhoads and at least one FBI agent alerted the Defense Department, but another Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed in 2014 through 2019 allowing UMT to collect millions in federal taxpayer aid.
An FBI agent in one email exchange wrote, "I let my management and the AUSAs [assistant U.S. attorneys] know about her renewal with DoD. Incredible."
Asked about the renewal, as well as whether DoD personnel were warned and additional steps were taken to vet UMT, the DoD chief for Voluntary Education Assistance, Dawn Bilodeau, referred questions to Pentagon spokesperson Laura Ochoa. 

In an email, Ochoa said, "In light of reports regarding University of Management and Technology (UMT), the Department is reviewing the DoD MOU signed between the institution and the DoD for compliance."
No one has been charged with any crime in connection with the investigation. 

Sources told Fox News that Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia James P. Gilllis got the case, but there was a disagreement with the FBI over how to proceed, based on the case law and the extent to which sources and methods would be revealed.
Neither the FBI nor a spokesman for Gillis would comment to Fox News but separately, a spokesman for NCIS said they cannot comment on an "ongoing investigation." 

A FOIA request filed by Fox News Senior Executive Producer Pamela Browne confirmed an NCIS investigative file for UMT.
Fox News made repeated requests by phone and via email for interviews with Yanping Chen and J. Davidson Frame. 

After Chen’s daughter said they were too busy to prepare and traveling out of town, Fox News went to their offices in Rosslyn, Va.
A school representative, who would not identify himself, confirmed Chen and Frame were in the office that day, but after learning Fox News was at the front desk, the couple refused to come out. 

Fox News’ questions covered how UMT was run, Chen's military ties, whether service members' records are secure, and how millions in taxpayer dollars are spent.
Fox News also sent a series of questions to the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., but there was no immediate response.
According to UMT, nearly 20,000 students have studied there, while 10,710 have earned degrees.

Why China Fears America's New Ford-Class Aircraft Carriers

By Kyle Mizokami

In 2009, the U.S. Navy finally began construction of the first new type of aircraft carrier in nearly thirty-five years. 

Named after former president and naval aviator Gerald R. Ford, the USS Ford fully takes the nuclear supercarrier into the twenty-first century. 

The technological innovations built into the new ship, while causing the inevitable delays involved in building a first-in-class vessel, will keep the Navy’s unique fleet of super flattops the largest and most advanced in the world for the foreseeable future.
USS Ford follows in the steps of the highly successful Nimitz-class carriers. 

Construction began in 2009 at Huntington Ingalls Industries in Newport News, Virginia—the same location where the Ford’s predecessors were built. 

Indeed, the Ford class resembles the Nimitz ships in many ways: they measure 1,106 feet long versus the Nimitz’s 1,092 feet. 

Both classes weigh the same: approximately one hundred thousand tons fully loaded. 

Layout is similar, too, with an island on the starboard side, four catapults and an angled flight deck.
The ship is powered by two new-design AB1 nuclear reactors. 

The reactors are manufactured by Bechtel, which beat out longtime naval reactor giants General Electric and Westinghouse for the reactor contract. 

Together, the two reactors create six hundred megawatts of electricity, triple the two hundred megawatts of the Nimitz class. 

That’s enough electricity to power every home in Hampton, Virginia; Pasadena, California; or Syracuse, New York.
Ford is going to need that power, not only to reach its estimated top speed of thirty-plus knots but also the new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), which uses electric currents to generate strong magnetic fields that can quickly accelerate an aircraft to takeoff speeds. 

The system is touted as easier on aircraft, extending their service lives, easier to maintain in general and capable of generating up to 25 percent more sorties than the older steam catapult system.
The new carrier will also use a new system to land aircraft. 

The new Advanced Arresting Gear uses a water turbine and induction motors to halt the momentum of landing carrier aircraft. 

Like EMALS, the AAG is expected to be more reliable than the existing aircraft arresting system on Nimitz-class ships and easier on airframes.
Ford will also have the most modern radar systems in the fleet. 

The Ford will have the new Dual Band Radar, which combines both the X-Band AN/SPY-3 Aegis radar and the S-Band Volume Surveillance Radar. 

DBR is capable of search, track and multiple missile illumination, detecting enemy aircraft and missiles and then guiding Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) to intercept.
For self-defense, Ford will have two Mk. 29 missile launchers with eight ESSM each, and two Rolling Airframe Missile launchers. 

It will also have four Phalanx Close-In Weapon Systems for point defense against aircraft, missiles and small ships, and four M2 .50 caliber machine guns. 

Ford’s generous electrical capacity means that the ship could someday mount laser self-defense weapons. 

Powered by the ship’s nuclear reactors, such a system would have a virtually limitless ammunition supply, vastly increasing the ship’s defensive capability.
The carrier air wing will form the carrier’s primary means of deploying both offensive and defensive firepower. 

The Ford class will embark two squadrons of ten to twelve F-35C Joint Strike Fighters, two squadrons of ten to twelve F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, five EA-18G Growler electronic attack jets, four E-2D Hawkeye airborne early-warning and control aircraft, and two C-2 Greyhound carrier onboard delivery (COD) planes. 

It will also carry eight MH-60S Seahawk helicopters. 

Down the road, it will embark the MQ-25 Stingray refueling and intelligence collection drone, the eventual planned sixth-generation fighter to replace the Super Hornet, and, if Sen. John McCain has his way, a new long-range strike drone. 

The V-22 Osprey tiltrotor is also set to replace the C-2 Greyhound in the COD role.
Ford’s entry into active service will once again raise the Navy’s carrier force to eleven ships. 

The Navy’s carrier fleet is unique in having a congressionally mandated minimum force level: U.S. Code § 5062 states, “the naval combat forces of the Navy shall include not less than 11 operational aircraft carriers.” 

For, now the Navy is operating with a waiver.
More ships will follow. 

USS John F. Kennedy, the second aircraft carrier to bear the name of the thirty-fifth president of the United States, is under construction at Newport News and expected to enter service in 2020. 

The third carrier, Enterprise, is expected to begin construction next year and will join the fleet in the early 2020s. 

The current push by President Donald Trump and the chief of naval operations to a 350–355-ship fleet will likely include at least one additional Ford-class carrier in the near term.
Designed with the latest technology, Ford is not without problems. 

Both EMALS and the Advanced Arresting Gear System have run into considerable problems, and the Navy briefly pondered finishing Kennedy with a more traditional, proven arresting gear system. Despite developmental delays, it appears both new takeoff and landing systems are nearly ready. According to the Navy, Ford is 99 percent done and 93 percent of testing is complete. 

Ford is scheduled for delivery to the Navy this April.