Let’s talk Carrier Friday
The Harry S. Truman (yes, it should be Harry S Truman but the Navy thinks otherwise) is the 8th Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in the series. Who knew she was going to be immortalized and sunk multiple times. Huh?
It’s pretty safe to say that our relations with Russia are a tad strained in the last few years. Recently, though, their propaganda has ratcheted up a bit.
“Reports claim Russia struck a U.S. aircraft carrier allegedly involved in delivering advanced stealth fighter jets to Ukraine this afternoon. If confirmed, this marks a major escalation and a clear message against deeper U.S. involvement,” reads the caption of a Facebook post shared on January 16, 2026.
Attached to the post are two images: the top one shows an aircraft carrier engulfed in flames at sea, labelled “after strike”, while the bottom one shows a similar vessel sailing in open waters, labelled “before strike”.
How dare our government keep this from us – oh, wait…the floating funeral pyre? Turns out comes from an old AFP article – about Iran.
Remember a while back in 2015 when the mullahs claimed they could sink an aircraft carrier, and showed a mock-up on fire? Same picture.
The claim was shared by an account called “St. Chuks”, which predominantly posts pro-Russian content, including AI-generated material.
According to the article, a dozen Iranian speedboats attacked a replica of a US aircraft carrier during a drill dubbed “The Great Prophet 9” in the Strait of Hormuz, near a vital entrance to the Persian Gulf. AFP
So the Iranians sorta said they sunk her, the Yemenis claimed to have in 2024, and now Russian bots/sycophants are claiming her yet again. Kinda reminds you of the seventh USS Enterprise, which the Japanese claimed sinking three times during WWII.
Alive and well. Right purty when the paint is still new, too.
And a day we keep thinking will never come has arrived. The USS John F. Kennedy, the second Gerald Ford-class carrier, is finally undergoing sea trials.
The Navy ordered the new Kennedy in 2013, and it was laid down at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division in 2015. The ship was launched four years later, at which time the goal was for it to be delivered in 2022. The Navy had originally pursued a dual-phase delivery schedule for the carrier, in which it would arrive initially still lacking certain capabilities. A Congressional demand for the carrier to be able to support F-35C Joint Strike Fighters at the time of delivery contributed to an initial slip in that schedule to 2024. At the time of writing, Ford has yet to set sail on an operational cruise with F-35Cs aboard.
The extent to which Kennedy has been fitted out is unclear, but the carrier is set to be delivered with some notable differences from the first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). This most notably includes an AN/SPY-6(V)3 radar, also known as the fixed-face version of Raytheon’s Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR), in place of Ford‘s Dual Band Radar (DBR). The DBR has proven immensely troublesome over the years, as you can read more about here. (Kennedy on the left, Ford on the right.)TWZ
Schedule slips from 2022 to 2024 to 2027… geez, if this were WWII we’d all be speaking Japanese or German by now.
Wow, their media reports are even more fictional that our mainstream mess!