USS Gerald R Ford

choi

Roxana Tiron, US Navy Bets $42 Billion on Carriers in China’s Sights. Bloomberg, June 19, 2012.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/20 ... china-s-sights.html

Quote:

(a) "With an electromagnetic system to launch aircraft similar to those used to propel roller coasters at Walt Disney World, the Ford-class carriers are

(b) "The number of aircraft regularly launched from the new carriers, or the sortie rate, will increase to 160 a day from 120 a day now on the Nimitz class, according to the Navy.

"Dispatching more jets from a carrier doesn’t provide a tactical advantage in an age of precision-guided weapons and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from submarines, according to Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and author who has been a consultant to secretaries of the Navy.

“'Do we need a new class?' Polmar said in an interview. 'The answer is absolutely not. You want to kill someone’s airfield, you launch 20, 30 Tomahawks, which go farther and are more accurate than planes, and you do not risk pilots.'

"While a missile-armed submarine can move alone beneath the sea, a carrier must travel with a strike group

(c) "The Ford carriers will accommodate 4,660 personnel, down from 5,922

Note:
(a) Huntington Ingalls Industries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington_Ingalls_Industries
(formed on in 2011 as a spin-off of Northrop Grumman)

Quote: "Formerly known as Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding (NGSB), it was created in 2008 by the merger of Northrop Grumman's two shipbuilding sectors, Northrop Grumman Ship Systems and Northrop Grumman Newport News. It takes its name from the founders of its two main facilities: Robert Ingalls (Pascagoula, Mississippi) and Collis P Huntington (Newport News))

(b) man-of-war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-of-war
(c) USS Nimitz was commissioned in 1975.  Each supercarrier of its class uses two A4W pressurized water reactors.