Gerald R. Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier

The Gerald R. Ford class is a class of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers built for the United States Navy, with its lead ship, USS Gerald R. Ford, commissioned in 2017 as the intended successor to the long-serving Nimitz class. Its most significant technical departure from the Nimitz design is the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, which uses linear electric motors rather than the steam-powered catapults every prior American carrier class relied on, along with a redesigned, more compact island superstructure moved further aft and a reworked flight deck layout, changes intended together to increase the rate at which the ship can launch and recover aircraft while requiring a smaller crew than a Nimitz-class carrier of similar size. Early Gerald R. Ford-class ships faced widely reported technical difficulties bringing the new launch and arresting systems and other novel equipment to full reliability, delays and cost growth that were extensively covered in American defense-oversight reporting even as the class continued into serial production as the Navy's new standard carrier design.