USS Enterprise To Sail Again
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More information has emerged on the future USS Enterprise, set to sail in 2025.
CVN-80, the third ship of the new Gerald R. Ford-class carriers, will carry the historic name.
The latest USS Enterprise will be the ninth ship bearing that name.
“The USS Enterprise was the first of its kind, and for fifty-one years its name has been synonymous with boldness, readiness and an adventurous spirit,” said Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. “Rarely has our fleet been without a ship bearing the name. I chose to maintain this tradition not solely because of the legacy it invokes, but because the remarkable work of the name Enterprise is not done.”
“The Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier will be 1,092 feet in length and have a beam of 134 feet,” said a Navy press release. “The flight deck will be 256 feet wide, and the ship will be able to operate at speeds in excess of 34 knots. Enterprise will be built by Huntington Ingalls Industries-Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va.”
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I realize this is a massive vessel and must be planned a good ways in advance.
But launching in 2025?!?! We need that much lead time? Aren’t we a little more agile than that with ship design?
Haha I guess not. I was hoping we’d at least have a Constitution class Enterprise by then 😛
There are still two other carriers ahead of the Enterprise–including the prototype, the USS Gerald R. Ford, which is still under construction. It takes about four years to build a carrier’s hull, but another three years of onboard systems integration & testing before it officially joins the fleet.
No, avtually they don’t beed that much lead time. There is some politics in this. The Ford class has not hit the water yet–the Ford herself will do so in the fall or winter. The second ship of the class, John F. Kennedy, is having her keel laid down this year, but won’t hit the fleet until 2020. The Enterprise is not scheuled to begin construction until 2018. The seemingly slowness is because this class is to be a one-for-one replacement for ships of the Nimitz class–as they reach retirment, a Ford is built to replace them.
Normally, the name of the third ship probably wouldn’t have been decided on this early. But Mabus has been running into some blowback on some pretty-overt naming of ships for Democrat politicians (the Giffords being the most egregious), and the fact is that the Navy just retired the first J.F.K. CV. The second ship of the Ford class should not have been named Kennedy, because President Kennedy is just not that stupendous a figure of American history to demand never not having an aircraft carrier named after him. He just isn’t.
And this is where Mabus had to name CVN-80 the Enterprise–because the reason why NCC-1701 got called the Enterprise is because of CVN-65, and CVN-65 got the name because of CV-6–the ship with the second-most illustrious combat record in the entire history of the United States Navy (after the Constitution). The United States Navy does not exist to glorify the names of politicians. It has its own traditions and heritage, and the bloody fact is that right now we do not have a single ship in service named after any of the three carriers that fought the Navy’s most glorious victory ever–Midway. This is simply unacceptable.
The politicians, left and right, gave been going nuts the last decade with carrier names–neither the Bush, Ford, or J.F.K. should have been so named, not when there is not a Hornet, Yorktown, Lexington, or Saratoga. It is simply unacceptable, and after naming things Tripoli (right after the intervention in Libya, but supposedly for the 1805 action), the J.F.K., the L.B.J., the Murtha, and the Giffords (the last being absolutely political, Giffords having no time in uniform), Mabus was starting to get on thin ice. Thus, voila–CVN 80 is the Enterprise.
The Nimitz herself was I think a statement regarding the F.D.R., Forrestal, and J.F.K. (Democrats started the trend in ’45 with the FDR). The pols can kid themselves that sailors are inspired by riding in a ship named for a politician (Stennis, Vinson)–but they aren’t. They just aren’t.
And I do not mean to hijack this, but if you think, as things are now, that you would ever get in Starfleet a Farragut, Hood, Potemkin, Yamato, etc. over a Biden, Pelosi, and cities of the Federation, you are quite mistaken. It is rather a corrupt system.
Never forget the astronauts picked the names of the Apollo spacecraft. The shuttles did okay. I tremor to think about the future. Sorry to go on–ship names is a peeve of mine, a situation I view only with disgust as far as what is going on now.
Amazing with the DEAR LEADER destroying the Military that a new Enterprise is even on the drawing boards.
Hm, Where does this leave the laundry ship USS Walter Mondale?
Kang, I had to log in just to respond to this- BRAVO SIR!!! :). Great reference!!! Thanks for the laugh!
But that’s implying that the new ship is NEEDED before then.
This is called “planning”.
why the number on the computer graphic is 08 instead of 80…