Charles de Gaulle Aircraft Carrier

The Charles de Gaulle is the flagship of the French Navy, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier commissioned on 18 May 2001 and named for wartime Free French leader and later French president Charles de Gaulle. Displacing 42,500 tonnes at full load and powered by two Areva K15 pressurized water reactors, it is the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier completed outside of the United States Navy, typically operating around 30 Rafale M fighters alongside E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft and helicopters. The carrier has deployed operationally in support of the 2001 campaign in Afghanistan, the 2011 intervention in Libya, and strikes against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria between 2015 and 2016, and it suffered a major COVID-19 outbreak in April 2020 affecting roughly sixty percent of its crew before returning to active deployments in the years since.