CVN-78 Gerald Ford

USS Ford will lead the next pack

NEWPORT NEWS — The newest aircraft carrier now being designed at Northrop Grumman Newport News will bear the name of former President Gerald R. Ford.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld let the news slip Wednesday during his eulogy at Ford’s memorial service in Grand Rapids, Mich., when he spoke of giving the former president a souvenir last year.

“Without giving away any secrets, I can report that during (a) visit with President Ford, I brought him a cap with ‘USS Gerald R. Ford’ emblazoned across the top of it,” Rumsfeld told the crowd. “How fitting it will be that the name Gerald R. Ford will patrol the high seas for decades to come in the defense of the nation he loved so much.”

Navy officials, who had kept the name of the newest flattop a closely guarded secret in recent months, were caught off guard and left scrambling by Rumsfeld’s sudden revelation. Later in the day, the Navy confirmed that the ship would indeed be named the USS Gerald R. Ford. The announcement had not been expected until Jan. 16.

Because the new carrier is a first-in-class ship, the Ford name will be associated with carriers for decades to come - even long after the ship is retired. Just as the nine ships following the USS Nimitz are known as “Nimitz-class” carriers, the new batch of what could be 10 ships will carry the “Ford-class” designation.

The aircraft carrier, to begin major construction at the Newport News yard in 2008, is scheduled to be completed in 2015, and is scheduled to replace the USS Enterprise.

The new ship, also known as the CVN-78 - and often referred to as the CVN-21, “the carrier for the 21st century” - will sport an all-new nuclear power plant, require fewer sailors and launch more daily flying missions.

The push to name the ship after Ford, himself a Navy veteran, began last year when U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, then the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, then the ranking member of the committee, included a mandate that Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter name the ship the USS Gerald R. Ford in an early version of the Department of Defense Authorization Act.

Before that bill became law, the language was watered down in committee to become a “sense of Congress” that Winter name the ship for Ford.

Excellent. The Jerry Ford! I love it.

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