A US Navy supercarrier packs a small city and decades of nuclear power

A modern American aircraft carrier is built less like a single warship and more like a floating town, carrying thousands of sailors, aviators, cooks, medics and mechanics along with the power plant needed to keep all of them running for months without ever pulling into port. The newest class of these ships pushes that idea further than any carrier built before it, trading decades-old steam systems for electrical ones and packing enough nuclear fuel to keep its reactors running for roughly twenty years before they need a refueling overhaul. Looking at what actually sits inside one of these vessels explains why each one costs billions of dollars to build, why construction and testing schedules routinely slip by years, and why so few navies on Earth can field anything comparable.

Two A1B Reactors Built to Run for Two Decades

At the center of the Gerald R. Ford class sit two A1B pressurized-water reactors, a design built specifically so the ship’s nuclear core can power it for about 20 years without a refueling overhaul. That single design choice removes one of the biggest constraints on a warship’s range: as long as the crew is fed, medically supported and resupplied with parts, the carrier’s propulsion and power generation can keep running almost indefinitely, crossing oceans without ever needing to top off a fuel tank. The A1B reactor also produces roughly three times the electrical output of the reactors that power the older Nimitz-class ships, and that surplus of raw electricity, not just the added horsepower, is what makes almost every other change to the newer design possible. Naval engineers designed the reactor plant with fewer moving parts and simplified maintenance routines than earlier reactor generations, part of a broader push to reduce the number of specialized technicians needed to keep the plant running safely at sea.

A Flight Deck Built to Launch Aircraft Around the Clock

The ship’s flight deck spans roughly five acres, large enough to spot dozens of fighters, helicopters and support aircraft at once while flight crews keep running launch and recovery cycles through day and night operations. Aircraft come aboard using arresting wires strung across the deck, and they leave by catapult, a sequence that has to repeat dozens of times in a single day during sustained combat flying. Moving that many jets safely also depends on a dense layout of weapons elevators that haul bombs and missiles up from magazines deep in the hull, a job that used to rely on cables and now runs on the same electrical system that powers the catapults. None of it works without the huge power surplus the reactors were specifically redesigned to provide, and the deck crews who choreograph that traffic, directing aircraft, fuel lines and ordnance carts across a crowded working surface, are considered among the most dangerous jobs in the entire Navy.

EMALS Trades Steam Pistons for an Electric Catapult

Earlier carrier classes launched aircraft with steam catapults, a system that draws steam out of the reactor’s own plumbing to fire a piston down a track built into the deck. The lead ship of the class, the USS Gerald R. Ford, instead uses the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, which fires aircraft off the bow using a linear induction motor powered directly by the reactors’ electrical output rather than by steam pressure. Because an electromagnetic launch can be tuned far more precisely than a steam piston, it also puts less structural stress on lighter airframes, a detail that matters as carrier air wings increasingly mix small unmanned aircraft in among heavier manned fighters. The same electromagnetic principle carries over to the ship’s arresting gear, which absorbs a landing aircraft’s momentum electrically instead of through the hydraulic system older carriers relied on, another change the Navy attributes to easier long-term maintenance.

A Crew and Air Wing the Size of a Small Town

The ship’s core crew runs to roughly 2,600 sailors, and once the embarked air wing, staff officers and support personnel are added aboard, the total population climbs toward 4,500 people, all fed, housed and treated by onboard medical staff without ever leaving the ship. Supporting that many people at sea for months at a time takes its own bakery, laundry, hospital bays, barbershop and post office, all running continuously whether the carrier sits in port or is months into a deployment far from resupply. Automation and a redesigned layout have actually cut crew requirements compared with the older Nimitz class, which needed several hundred more sailors to operate a smaller, less electrically capable ship, freeing berths and support staff for the mission systems the newer design prioritizes instead.

From Nimitz to Ford: A Reactor-Driven Redesign

Every major change in the newer class traces back to the same starting point: far more electricity generated by two reactors that, on older carriers, existed mainly to make steam and turn propellers. Radar systems, elevators, catapults and arresting gear were all reworked around electrical power instead of hydraulics or steam, a shift the Navy argues will cut long-term maintenance costs even though it added expense and delay to the lead ship’s construction and early deployments. The result is a vessel that behaves less like an evolved Nimitz-class carrier and more like a new category of ship, built around a simple question: what becomes possible once a warship generates far more electrical power than it needs just to move through the water. Later ships in the class are expected to benefit from lessons learned building and testing the lead ship, with each successive hull aiming to reach full combat readiness on a shorter timeline than the one before it.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors.

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