The Panama Canal is no place for a shake down cruise. This is a radical design and needs to be near home port.
I think the ship had sea trials near Bath, Maine.
Bath Iron Works, BIW, makes excellent ships and always on-time or ahead of schedule and no cost over-runs and almost always under budget.
Home port is San Diego. It has to get there first.
The ship is on it’s way to San Diego for all that testing. Maybe it should have stayed on the east coast until all this was worked out.
“The Panama Canal is no place for a shake down cruise. This is a radical design and needs to be near home port.”
Have you looked in the White House lately?