US Navy’s largest aircraft carrier returning to US after extended deployment in Mediterranean
The US Navy is pulling the world’s largest warship, sent to the eastern Mediterranean Sea after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, back to the United States as it reevaluates its global force requirements, the US Sixth Fleet said in a statement Monday, CNN reports.
The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford will head back to its homeport of Norfolk, Virginia, after its first combat deployment, an eight-month cruise that began on May 2, the statement said.
The Ford – described by a Navy spokesperson as the “most adaptable and lethal combat platform in the world” – was commissioned in 2017 and is the US Navy’s newest aircraft carrier and the lead ship in the Navy’s first new carrier class designed in over 40 years.
The 100,000-ton warship, with a contingent of F/A-18 Super Hornet jet fighters aboard, arrived off the coast of Israel in the days following Hamas’ terror attacks that killed more than 1,200 people.
That movement was ordered so the Ford could contribute to US “regional deterrence and defense posture,” the Sixth Fleet said.
With the Ford’s departure, the USS Eisenhower is the lone US aircraft carrier in the region as tensions increase over Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
