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!
It was a mostly peaceful sinking, didn’t even leave a dent and they were able to raise it the next day and pump all the water out. The stealth air craft were so stealthy they didn’t even show up on camera.
I wonder if the Pres Trump ABC media outlets were in on this
TYPO. It’s the anti Pres Trump ABC media outlets were in on this. Lot of typos lately i’m typoing
Jeff, I think we assume you have typos in your posts. After all you didn’t even capitalize your name.
Gad zoots, holy moly, For all the tea in China I never noticed it after all the years on the site. I do make a number of typos on my Galaxy Smith Corona portable typewriter and use those 3X2 inch plastic typo removers…
A couple of times when I was in a rush I put a check in my Mechanical Paymaster Mod 5800 and pulled back the handle and got 3 zeros on the check… forgot to set the money amount on the machine..
In Navyspeak ships are referred by name as proper nouns, so USS Neverdock is called just that, USS Neverdock.
Never “The USS Neverdock.”
Thank you. Back to your regularly scheduled rantings.
Noted. And will probably forget in future, but thanks. In the Army we used “articles” and other fancy grammatical things.
The Army taiught me to use the word “fuck” instead of a comma. Actually, no, that was my dad. The Army just sharpened the skill.
It may take longer to build and get ready because it is the largest warship ever constructed. She is three to four times the tonnage of an Essex Carrier or ten times the tonnage of a light WWII Carrier (CVL). It is also the most complex vessel ever constructed.
It generates more electricity than the R. E. Ginna Nuclear Power plant in New York that cost $365,000,000 to build 60 years ago (or about $3.5 Billion in today’s dollars) and that took four years to build.
Compare it to the fossil fuel powered CNS Fujian which is about 80% the size of a Ford. The Fujian was also laid down in 2015 but commissioned in November 2025 even though it still isn’t ready for prime time.
These aren’t WWII boats, not by a long ways.
Two weeks ago, I took the extended family to Charleston SC and we spent a cold rainy day at Patriots Point and toured the USS Yorktown CV-10 the second Essex class. Granted it had been out of action from 1947-1952 to get its angled flightdeck retrofit. While I limited my time to the hangar deck, island and flight deck. The others investigated the bowels of the ship and were amazed at the size of the engines.
About 35 years ago I had the opportunity to take a ride aboard USS Coral Sea CV-43 for a day cruise off Virginia Beach. This little carrier compared to the Nimitz Class they were building in Newport News. I was impressed by its size and can only imagine the size of the nukes.
For comparison purposes the unloaded Yorktown is 27,000 long tons and Ford carrier is 100,000 long tons. Fully loaded the Yorktown would have been 37K and the Ford, the Navy isn’t saying exactly.
I visited the Yorktown, Clamagmore, Laffey and Hunley on a CGSC Staff ride that covered the Battles of Charleston about 20 years ago. The vessel visits other than the Hunley were an added feature. We also toured the WWI-II fortifications as well which gave some fascinating insights to the Cold War.
The Hunley museum is worth a visit for sure and if you have never been on a sub before the WWII Clamagore is worth a visit as well. The Clamagore is parked next to the Destroyer Laffey so it is easy to visit both at the same time.
I say Charleston is nearly ready to play Battleship, or if the aliens visit again they should have the mini fleet up and running again in no time.
I’ve done the trifecta – a US sub, a German U-boat, and a Russian sub.
We had one GE Steam turbine running on 600 Lb’s of steam. I spent a short time in M DIV before going into A-Gang (A Div) so one of the guys put one of those crank keys with the suction cup that he bought at an auto supply store that were usually put onto the back of a Volkswagon and put the key onto the turbine. I was in main control when the Warrant Officer Chief Engineer comes in and spots the Volkswagon key, and says to one of the guys, what’s that doing on the engine and the guy says, Sir, thats the key to the main engine. Chief smiles and then his facorite 2 words come out, God Damit, get that off. We gave Mr. Graves a nice fishing set for his retirement.
So has the Navy said when Enterprise will be ready?
The Navy last said 2030. I have doubts.
For an interesting read, here are two links on the Millennium Challenge (2002), a $250M war game where Marine LtGen Paul Van Riper ran the OPFOR and used this kind of tactic to sink a US carrier and more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/millenium-challenge-2002-stacked-deck/
In the years since the exercise, some folks claim that Van Riper had magical teleporting motorcycle messengers (to avoid signals intercepts) and heavier-than-possible anti-ship missiles, which made it unrealistic, but I think it’s still a very good read.
When Blue Force Tracker was new in 11th Signal Brigade, they got completely enamored by it and tried to use it for everything. We got tasked on an exercise to create, profile, and map a microwave link over the Huachuca mountains to Parker lake, and diagram the site defense. All on BFT. My BN CDR was a little tired of their crap. Soooo I asked for his blessing to abuse them just a little. He said “gittem”, didn’t ask questions. I put in a beautiful link, supplied all the data. Then, I built the site defense. I put a carrier group (I think it was the Nimitz) in Parker Lake, Arizona. BDE S3 promptly stopped their games.