An F-35C Lightning II from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 (VX-23) caught a wire aboard the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) in the western Atlantic on Oct. 13, 2026. It was the first arrested landing by the Navy’s carrier variant of the F-35 on any Ford-class carrier. The landing came during Aircraft Compatibility Testing, the at-sea evaluation of how a new carrier’s launch and recovery gear works with the aircraft it will operate.
Kennedy is still a ship in transition. The Navy took preliminary acceptance of the carrier from Newport News Shipbuilding on Sept. 29, 2026, a step that lets the crew begin operating and testing the ship before contractual delivery. Formal delivery has not happened yet.
The Oct. 13 trap was reported by The War Zone on Oct. 14, 2026, in an article by Thomas Newdick built on Navy photos and captions. It opens: “A U.S. Navy F-35C has made the first arrested landing for the type aboard a Ford class aircraft carrier.” The Navy itself announced the event in an Oct. 14 social media post, “recording the first F-35C landing aboard a Ford-class aircraft carrier,” as quoted by The Aviationist.
One jet on deck, two in the photos
According to TWZ, two VX-23 test pilots flew out to the ship. “The imagery released shows two jets, although only one is seen landing on the flattop,” the outlet wrote. The second F-35C carried inert GBU-38 JDAM bombs as external stores, per The Aviationist’s Oct. 14 report, which identified the squadron as the “Salty Dogs” of VX-23, part of the F-35 Integrated Test Force at Patuxent River, Md. Several of the Navy photos are credited to Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Kaitlyn Bailey.
TWZ said the evaluation is being run by a Patuxent River F-35 Integrated Test Force team detached to the ship, flying a specially instrumented F-35C. Aircraft Compatibility Testing, in TWZ’s words, “assesses the operational capabilities of a ship’s aircraft launch and recovery equipment.”
The landing is a first, not a finish line. TWZ wrote that “further testing — not least an EMALS takeoff — needed before the milestone can begin to translate into an operational capability.” EMALS is the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, the Ford class’s electromagnetic catapult; its recovery counterpart is the Advanced Arresting Gear, or AAG. A single trap does not certify the ship for F-35C operations, and neither TWZ nor the Navy has said it does.
Why Ford never trapped an F-35C
The class’s lead ship ran the same kind of test six years earlier without the jet. A Navy release dated Feb. 5, 2020 says USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) finished Aircraft Compatibility Testing on Jan. 31, 2020, after 16 days at sea and 211 launches and recoveries. It tested five airframes: the T-45 Goshawk, E/A-18G Growler, E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, C-2A Greyhound and F/A-18F Super Hornet. The F-35C was not among them. The release said the testing “conducted catapult launches and arrested landings in order to verify EMALS and AAG performance mandates.”
The gap was a choice. According to TWZ, “the Navy deferred several upgrades to a later modernization period rather than delaying the ship’s delivery,” while Kennedy was set up to take the F-35C-related modifications during construction. The Aviationist reported that those modifications were required by Congress for Kennedy and that Ford still lacks them.
TWZ added that the Navy has identified other work tied to the stealth jet, including “more robust jet blast deflectors (JBDs)” and upgrades to maintenance spaces and information systems.
What comes before delivery
The Navy’s Sept. 29, 2026 preliminary acceptance release says the step followed Acceptance Trials completed in August and that formal delivery is expected in spring 2027. “Achieving preliminary acceptance marks a new phase for the ship and her crew,” Capt. Mark Johnson, the Navy’s program manager for Ford-class new construction, said in the release.
Between now and that delivery, the remaining compatibility work includes the EMALS launch of an F-35C that TWZ said is still required.
Top image: An F-35C from VFA-101 comes aboard USS George Washington (CVN 73) in August 2016. The Oct. 13, 2026, trap on the future USS John F. Kennedy is not shown. Image Credit: MC3 Clemente A. Lynch / U.S. Navy — Public domain / Wikimedia Commons