The next Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), is 75 percent structurally complete, shipbuilding Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] said on Monday.
HII said this amount was achieved when it installed the 750-metric ton forward area of the ship’s main deck in the dry dock. CVN-79 is being built with modular construction, wherein small portions of the ship are welded together into a unit called a superlift.
Each superlift is then outfitted with electrical equipment, piping, cable, ventilation, and joiner work before being lifted from the assembly area into the dry dock at the company’s Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) facility.
This 75 percent milestone only covers how structurally complete and erected the vessel is. HII noted the ship is now more than 40 percent complete.
The forward section of the main deck includes machinery spaces over the ship’s forward diesel generators and the first piece of the flight deck. The latter includes pilot ready rooms, command and control, other support spaces, components of the advanced arresting gear (AAG), and a jet blast deflector.
The company earlier announced the ship was 70 percent structurally complete in February (Defense Daily, Feb. 22).
After adding the most recent superlifts, HII said 341 of a total 447 sections have been put in place. As it currently stands, the Kennedy is about 100 feet high and after the island and main mast are added it will eventually reach its full height of 252 feet.
“Many of the improvements we have made over the construction of CVN-78, including increased pre-outfitting and performing more complex assemblies in our shops, will allow us to launch the ship three months earlier than planned,” Lucas Hicks, vice president of NNS CVN-79, said in a statement.
HII also noted a separate milestone was recently achieved when the first tow generators that will support the electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) were installed.
HII first laid the keel of CVN-79 in August 2015. CVN-79 is planned to be christened in the fourth quarter of 2019 and delivered to the Navy by 2022.