USS Gerald R. Ford is a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and the lead ship of a new class.
Today it is the largest aircraft carrier in the world.
It is also the largest warship afloat.
In 2017, the Navy took delivery of the ship.
At full load it displaces over 100,000 tons. That figure is the weight of the water the hull pushes aside, not a scale reading of the steel.
The crew and air wing can total 4,539 people.
That is about 700 fewer than on a Nimitz-class carrier.
The ship is bigger than its predecessor.
The crew is smaller.
New automated systems handle jobs that once took hundreds of sailors.
It carries more than 75 aircraft.
And those 100,000 tons?
That is about the mass of 67,000 cars packed into one hull.
A floating city of steel.
With fewer people than the ship before it.
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