Watch the Navy Spend $13 Billion on a New Aircraft Carrier—In Just Three Minutes
Time-lapse video depicts construction of next-gen flattop ‘Gerald R. Ford’
The U.S. Navy’s new aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford is the biggest warship ever built. More than a thousand feet long, she includes 90,000 tons of steel covered in 200,000 gallons of paint, plus 14 million feet of cabling. Among her new technologies: an advanced, higher-output nuclear reactor and a more reliable electromagnetic catapult for launching an air wing of more than 70 planes.
But all that hardware comes at a high cost: $12.8 billion including research and development, making the new flattop the most expensive warship ever.
Five thousand shipbuilders at Huntington Ingalls’ yard in Virginia assembled Ford from roughly 500 major sections—a process that took four years, but is accelerated to just three minutes in Huntington Ingalls’ incredible time-lapse video, below.
Gerald R. Ford was christened Nov.9 and should enter front-line service in 2016.
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