As Rear Admiral Meier put it: “It is not difficult to see the air wing of the future operating off of this deck with much greater speed, agility and reach than the legacy air wing.”
While the Navy’s newest class of super-carrier has the same overall footprint as the predecessor class, its use of space is different: The Ford’s “island,” which houses its command center, is set 140 feet further aft and has been slightly redesigned. It creates a more substantial stretch of aircraft flight line at the fore, with five usable acres compared with the Nimitz’s four and a half.
The USS Gerald R. Ford is the lead ship in a new generation of large-deck, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Like every other major effort to transform U.S. Navy warfighting capabilities, the Ford has been criticized for taking too long, costing too much, and not living up to its advanced billing.
This video message is from Huntington Ingalls Industries CEO Mike Petters where he addresses HII stakeholders, including the supplier base, on their continuing actions with regard to COVID-19.
In a ceremony on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly announced the fourth Ford-class aircraft carrier (CVN 81) will be named after Doris Miller, an African-American sailor whose actions during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack here earned him a Navy Cross for valor in combat.
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