Construction
Construction began on components of CVN-78 in the spring of 2007, and is planned to finish in 2015. It is under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries (formerly Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding) in Newport News, Virginia, the only shipyard in the United States capable of building nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. In 2005, it was estimated to cost at least $8 billion excluding the $5 billion spent on research and development (though that was not expected to be representative of the cost of future members of the class). A 2009 report said that the Ford would cost $14 billion including research and development, and the actual cost of the carrier itself would be $9 billion.
A total of three carriers have been authorized for construction, but if the Nimitz-class carriers and Enterprise were to be replaced on a one-for-one basis, eleven carriers would be required over the life of the program. However, the last Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is not scheduled to be decommissioned until 2058.
In a speech on 6 April 2009, then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the Navy Aircraft Carrier program would shift to a five-year building program so as to place it on a "more fiscally sustainable path". Such a measure would result in ten carriers by 2040.
Read more about this topic: Gerald R. Ford Class Aircraft Carrier
Famous quotes containing the word construction:
“No real “vital” character in fiction is altogether a conscious construction of the author. On the contrary, it may be a sort of parasitic growth upon the author’s personality, developing by internal necessity as much as by external addition.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“There’s no art
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He was a gentleman on whom I built
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)