She is going for the construction of the new Ford class nuclear carrier.
The carrier's keel block has been laid and construction is at least 15% complete and ahead of schedule. The fabrication is happening at Newport News.
The Navy has a well-known name, The ENTERPRISE. The CVN-65 enterprise was the first nuclear-powered carrier and the CV6 enterprise was the sixth US carrier to serve in World War II.
The Navy is trying to find the most efficient way to scrap the nuclear reactor because it's difficult to dismantle it.
The Virginia yard is busy due to the logjam of carriers as the new Enterprise is being built along with the John F. Kennedy CVN-79.
The George Washington CVN- 73 and the John C. Stennis CVN 74 are undergoing mid-life refueling.
The block buy of $24 billion is made up of the new Enterprise and the Ford class CVN 81. If ordered individually, the cost would have gone up to $28 billion.
The Gerald R. Ford CVN 78 is almost ready for deployment, despite being plagued by delays. The Gerald R. Ford is a demonstrator of several different technologies.
Lessons learned from the Ford construction will be applied to the Enterprise build. Digital model techniques will be used for the first time to build the Enterprise.
The third member of the Ford-class will have a service life of over 50 years. The CVN 69 is being replaced by the ENTERPRISE. It has the ability to generate more sorties than the Nimitz class.
Someday, the enterprise may be able to use lasers. The new carrier will be able to steam at 30-plus knots with at least 75 aircraft and over 4,000 sailors and officers on board.
100,000 tons will be displaced by the enterprise The missile will be used to defend against missiles. Better air defense will be aided by the Rolling Airframe Missile. There is a ship with a beam of over 100 feet.
The Navy wants to build the Enterprise for less money than the Fords did. The money saved could be used to purchase more F-35C stealth fighters.
The Pentagon and Congress will be watching the build closely. The painful era of Gerald R. Ford is something that no one would want to go through again.
The Department of Defense will likely have an outside entity such as the RAND Corporation conduct an after-action review of the Ford's saga and series of delays in hopes that nothing will happen again.
The development of the enterprise seems to be going well at the moment. We hope the Navy can bring it in on time and under budget.
The author of " Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in warfare" is a defense and national security editor. He was a US Army infantry officer. You can follow him on the social networking site.
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