Wealth Concentration Node

USS Gerald R. Ford

Atlantic Ocean, United States Navy

Mythic · held by 258 collectors

The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is the United States Navy's most capable and most expensive warship — the lead ship of the Gerald R. Ford class of supercarriers, commissioned in July 2017, displacing 100,000 tonnes at full load, 337 metres in length (longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall), carrying 75+ aircraft (F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, F-35C Lightning IIs, EA-18G Growlers, E-2D Hawkeyes, MH-60R/S Seahawks, CMV-22B Ospreys) on a flight deck of 78,000 square metres, powered by two A1B nuclear reactors (no refuelling required for 25 years of service), and accommodating a crew of approximately 4,660 sailors and airmen. The ship's construction cost of $13.3 billion (over the $8.1 billion originally budgeted) makes it the most expensive warship ever built, and its specific technological innovations — the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EALS, replacing steam catapults), the Advanced Arresting Gear, the Dual Band Radar, and the advanced weapons handling system — represent the state of the art in carrier aviation technology at the time of commissioning. As a Wealth Concentration Node, USS Gerald R. Ford maps the class of objects whose intelligence value derives from what they reveal about the allocation of national power: the decision to build and operate aircraft carrier battle groups — the Ford requires an escort of 2 cruisers, 2–3 destroyers, and a submarine to constitute a Carrier Strike Group — represents the United States' commitment to maintaining a mobile sovereign air power capability anywhere on earth within 96 hours of deployment order, a capability maintained by no other nation at equivalent scale and whose cost ($13.3 billion per hull, plus $2–3 billion annually per Strike Group in operating costs) is justified by the political and strategic optionality it provides. The locked+limited designation reflects the absolute inaccessibility of the Ford's operational environment: the carrier's flight deck, its nuclear propulsion spaces, and its combat information centre are among the most security-restricted physical environments on earth, making direct access to the ship's operational experience available to fewer individuals annually than any other structure of comparable cultural significance.

Aircraft Carrier · US Navy · Power · Military · Engineering