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Some nations have aircraft carriers. The USA has super-carriers. The French Charles De Gaulle Class nuclear carriers displace about 43,000t. India’s new Vikramaditya/ Admiral Gorshkov Class will have a similar displacement. The future British CVF Queen Elizabeth Class and related French PA2 Project are expected to displace about 65,000t (British) – 74,000t (French), while the British Invincible Class carriers that participated in the Falklands War weigh in at around 22,000t. Invincible actually compares well to Italy’s excellent new Cavour Class (27,000t), and Spain’s Principe de Asturias Class (17,000t). The USA’s Nimitz Class and CVN-21 Gerald R. Ford Class, in contrast,...

Navalizing the F-22 Raptor Restoring America's Maritime Air Dominance 07:36 GMT, February 23, 2009 May 7th, 1942, during the Battle of the Coral Sea, was the day when naval warfare changed forever. This was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other. It was also history’s first naval battle in which neither side's ships sighted or fired directly upon each other. Although technically a win for the Japanese Navy, its forces were sufficiently weakened that in the subsequent Battle of Midway, the United States Navy convincingly defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy. Since then, the USN has never...

The Navy will name its next aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford in honor of the president who was buried Wednesday in his home town of Grand Rapids, Mich., officials said. The Navy had not planned to make the announcement yet, but Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary who served in the Ford administration, divulged the news during his eulogy at the funeral. "How fitting it would be that the name Gerald R. Ford will patrol the high seas for decades to come in defense of the nation he loved so much," he said. Later at the Pentagon the...

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (NNS) -- The beveling of a 15-ton metal plate kicked off advance construction of the newest class of aircraft carrier, the CVN 21 project, Aug. 11 at Northrop Grumman Newport News' shipyards in Virginia. The new carrier is designed to modernize the “flat tops” for the 21st century. Advance construction will take an estimated two years before construction can begin on the actual ship itself. This gives technicians and engineers the time needed to test and design the ship, and all the new technologies that will be put into the vessel. “We’re going to kind of mark...

WASHINGTON — A war averted more than a decade ago may be pointing the way toward 21st-century warfare for the U.S. Navy. In September 1994, a U.S. flotilla positioned itself off the coast of Haiti to help restore a democratically elected president to power. The flagship, the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, was stripped of its fighter planes and turned into a landing hub for Army helicopters and barracks for 2,000 soldiers. Operation Uphold Democracy, as it was called, ended in a few weeks and the Norfolk-based Eisenhower headed to the Mediterranean for a more conventional deployment. But Navy leaders...

CVN 21 said to offer biggest changes in decades, seeking a ‘leap ahead’ in technology by Harold Kennedy The U.S. Navy is moving ahead with plans for its much-debated, next-generation aircraft carrier, now called CVN 21. The service has requested $1.5 billion in its fiscal year 2004 budget for research, development and engineering and advanced procurement for the ship. CVN 21 is scheduled to begin construction in 2007 and to be delivered in 2014, according to Rear Adm. Dennis M. Dwyer, the Navy’s program executive officer for aircraft carriers. The budget for the entire project “now stands at $11.7 billion,”...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA -- To reduce the crew size of the Navy's next-generation carrier by 800 compared to a Nimitz-class hull, ship designers will assess how almost everything on the new ship -- from light bulbs to the nuclear propulsion plant -- could reduce the crew's workload. Current Nimitz-class carriers carry 3,200 for the ship's company and 2,480 for the air wing. The Navy wants the new CVN-21, the first in a new class of carriers, to reduce the ship's company, but not the air wing, said Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Danny Hernandez. The Bush administration's fiscal year 2004 budget...