Though if he is worth anything as a Captain, he should be an Admiral by then and thus would be in charge of the Fleet the Enterprise is the flagship of. Admiral James Kirk will due.
$12.9 billion? Jeez, kids don’t know the value of a dollar these days. In my day, a Nimitz-class carrier cost $4.5 billion. The GHW Bush was built in 2009 and cost $6.2 billion. Inflation hasn’t been that high, it shouldn’t double in cost in less than a decade. I hope it’s just the first one that costs $12.9 billion in order to recoup R&D costs.
“Admiral?!? Admiral! Admiral… Never told you how Admiral Kirk sent seventy of us into exile on this barren sandheap…”
The Kennedys are still at it, I see.
Having served aboard the USS CARL VINSON (CVN 70), I think that ship is more than rather cool.
If they had built two of them, they could be the Erebus and the Terror. Or the Tweedledum and the Tweedledee.
Correct. After commissioning, it* becomes the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). Prior to that, is referred to as PCU Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), where PCU stands for pre-commissioning unit.
*While it is traditional to refer to a ship as “she,” is seems odd to use that pronoun when the vessel is named after a male person.
Call her Geri is it makes you more comfortable.
Is that formation just for a photo op? In your experience would the Task Force lead with a carrier? Seems like the destroyers should be well out to the front/rear/sides to provide a picket.
Maybe I’m stuck in WWII thinking.
That looks like a photo op formation.
Note this similar Wikipedia photo: linky
“Such a formation, referred to derisively as the “bullseye” formation, would not be used in combat.”
From the Wikipedia entry “U.S. Carrier Group tactics”, there is this:
Edit: I think the rule of thumb is that the horizon is visible out to 15 miles on a clear day, from sea level. (IIRC)
If your eye is at sea level, the horizon is exactly 0 miles (feet, inches, millimeters) away.
A rough formula is
distance to horizon in miles = 1.2 * (square root of height above surface in feet).
So for an observer standing at the waters edge, the horizon would be about 2.9 miles away. To get a 15 mile horizon, you need to be about 150 ft above the surface.
I’m waiting for the USS Robert S. MacNamara.
If there are two in the area, shoot at one of them, and see who starts yelling at you on the radio.
I can’t find a ship number for the one in the front of the middle column. What kind of ship is it? It almost looks like a mini-carrier from the front.
It’s the Japanese “destroyer” Hyūga (that is, the Japanese refer to it as a “destroyer”, because aircraft carriers are far too militaristic for the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force to have. Everyone else calls it a mini-carrier or helicopter carrier).
You can clearly see the Rising Sun ensign in picture number four, and if you zoom in on picture number one you can make out the hull number.
Thanks, I was wondering about that flat deck, too.
They’ve already done this several times. Builder’s trials and acceptance trials most recently.
I was disappointed in Trump’s comments about EMALS. Hopefully SecDef Mattis explains things to him.
I believe you are correct. Thanks for the clarification. Commission is expected sometime
It really is designed for helicopter operations more than what most people think of as “aircraft carrier” stuff - launching and recovering fixed-wing aircraft. The Japanese currently don’t have any formalized plans to acquire Harriers or F-35B’s that could operate from their “helicopter destroyers”, although a more bellicose North Korea / China could probably persuade them to make some.
[Monty Python]“You’ve… you’ve got a nice aircraft carrier here, Commander. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”[/MP]
During WWII there were Japanese pilots who would mistake a US carrier for one of their own and try to land on it. The Battle of the Coral Sea was one heck of a confusing battle, for example.