Bush Sr's Ship Has Come In

The United States has christened the 10th and final Nimitz-class ship, the biggest military vessels the world has ever known.

Spraying bubbles from sparkling wine across the enormous grey bow of the USS George H.W. Bush, the Bush family christened the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier named after the 82-year-old former president Saturday.

"I know you join me in saying to our father, President Bush, your ship has come in," the current president said during a ceremony for the last of the Nimitz-class carriers, the CVN 77.

"She is unrelenting, she is unshakable, she is unyielding, she is unstoppable," Bush said, lauding the warship's state-of-the-art design before pausing for a punch line aimed at his mother's well-known steely constitution.

The USS George H.W. Bush, named after the former president, is a $6-billion US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that stretches 333 metres and will carry a crew of about 3,000 sailors when it enters service in 2008.

“This is any naval aviator’s dream come true,” said the former president, who was a navy pilot in the Second World War. Four of his fellow pilots from the war attended the ceremony.

During WW II George HW Bush enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 18, was commissioned an ensign, and for a time was the navy's youngest pilot. Serving in the Pacific theater, he flew 58 combat missions. He was once shot down and rescued by a submarine.

What comes next?
The next-generation aircraft carrier is known as the CVX. To be commissioned in 2013 still in its conceptual stages.


CVNX, the centerpiece of the Navy's next generation carrier Fleet, will be a large-deck, nuclear-powered ship. This next generation aircraft carrier will be achieved at an affordable, evolutionary pace beginning with CVN 77. CVN 77 will have a newly designed and integrated combat system that eliminates rotating antennas. CVNX 1 will incorporate this new CVN 77 integrated combat system, and will add both a new nuclear propulsion plant and a new electrical power and distribution system. The new nuclear propulsion plant will provide immediate warfighting enhancements, immediate life cycle cost reductions, and will enable future warfighting enhancements and further life cycle cost reductions. Subsequent carriers will feature additional new technologies including an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System (EMALS), an Electromagnetic Aircraft Recovery System (EARS), improved crew habitability, survivability improvements, performance improvements, and new functional arrangements and distributed systems.






USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) (foreground),

USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) (middle), USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and their associated carrier strike

Groups steam in formation while 17 aircraft from the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps fly over them

During a joint photo exercise (PHOTOEX) while preparing for exercise Valiant Shield 2006.