Keel laying for future carrier JFK set for Saturday - NavyTimes.com

Laying a keel is the symbolic beginning of a ship’s construction, but work on the next second-in-class supercarrier actually started in 2010. To date, more than 450 of her 1,100 structural units have been constructed, according to Newport News... The carrier, the second in the Gerald R. Ford-class, is scheduled to launch in February 2020 and be delivered in June 2022. Kennedy will be nearly an exact replica of Ford — she will employ the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System , boast an... They will live in 40-man berthing areas (carriers today cram as many as 180 into a berthing area) with attached heads and common areas. Ford’s $12. 9 billion price tag was cut to $11. 35 billion for JFK. Lessons learned and the transfer of specially built tools from Ford will decrease construction man hours by 18 percent, officials said. the Navy is under mounting pressure to keep ballooning costs down on the Ford-class. JFK opted out of Ford’s dual-band radar, a move that will cut hundreds of millions from the bottom line. Source: www.navytimes.com