The new ($11.5 billion) Ford model

[unhappycamper]

The new Ford model
November 5th, 2009 | Carriers | Posted by Andrew Scutro

Northrop Grumman has announced a date for the ceremonial keel-laying of the Navy’s new class of aircraft carrier. On Nov. 14, dignitaries and media will crowd into the Newport News shipyard for a ceremonial beginning of the Gerald R. Ford, CVN 78.

The last of the Nimitz-class carriers, the George H.W. Bush, was commissioned on a bright but chilly Jan. 10 by the former president himself. President Ford’s daughter Susan Ford Bales is CVN 78’s sponsor and her initials will be welded into the ship’s steel.

Like the first President Bush, Ford served in the Navy during World War II. The first of the Ford carriers is expected to join the fleet in 2015 with a host of new technologies and design changes from the Nimitz ships.


Article about the new $11.5 billion dollar wonder at: http://militarytimes.com/blogs/scoopdeck/2009/11/05/the-new-ford-model/



unhappycamper comment: The last carrier of the Nimitz class was the $6.8 billion dollar George H.W. Bush. Prior incantations of the Nimitz class cost around $4.5 billion dollars. All prices are sans people and planes.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. So much money. The real truth is that if we cut the military about 2%, w'd pay for health care.

Cut it another 2%, and every school in the country would be well funded.

[AndyA]

2. Shows where the real priorities are, doesn't it?

No wonder there's so much push for war, everyone knows that's a sure way to get the cash flowing.

And deficits don't matter, remember? Former Vice President Dick Cheney said that. He is a Republican, too, which makes me wonder why every Republican that's so against deficits now didn't speak up when the deficit was being doubled by the Bush Administration.

I hear the majority of our current deficit was still created by Bush/GOP. HYPOCRITES!

[liberal N proud]

3. Destruction over compassion

We just keep building the war machine while millions go hungary and are without proper health care.

[Rabrrrrrr]

5. We need somehow to create the meme that bombing is another form of socialist sharing of our taxes

then the rightwing would be against it.

I mean, from one perspective, spending all that money on bombs - and where do they go? They go to foreigners. Americans never get them. (excepting, of course, when Reagan sells them to Iraq and then Bush attacks Iraq and they use our own bombs against us).

[Turbineguy]

4. They could build

96 container ships for that. Or 30 cruise ships.

Of course they'd have to buy more flags.