USS Enterprise (CVN-80)


USS Enterprise will be the third to be built for the United States Navy. She will be the ninth United States naval vessel and third aircraft carrier to bear [List of ships of the United States Navy United States ship naming conventions|named Enterprise|the name], and is scheduled to be in operation by 2030. Her construction began in August 2017 with a steel-cutting ceremony.

Naming

On December 1, 2012, during the presentation of a pre-recorded speech at the inactivation ceremony for, then-Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced that CVN-80 would be named Enterprise. She will be the ninth ship and the third aircraft carrier in the history of the United States Navy to bear the name. CVN-80 will also be the first American supercarrier not to be named in honor of a person since was commissioned in 1966. In December 2016, Mabus chose Olympic gold medalists Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles to sponsor the ship.

Construction

CVN-80 is being built by Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia. CVN-80 is the first aircraft carrier completely designed and built through digital platforms. The first cut of steel ceremony, marking the beginning of fabrication of the ship's components, was held on August 21, 2017, with the ship's sponsors Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles present. Construction began in advance of the purchase contract and construction award, in early 2018.
Steel from CVN-65 will be recycled and used in the construction of CVN-80. approximately of steel from CVN-65 has been salvaged and recycled for inclusion into CVN-80, with another still to be processed, for a total of. Enterprise will also incorporate four portholes taken from CV-6, her World War II predecessor.
Enterprise will replace and is scheduled to be launched in November 2025, with a planned delivery date of March 2028. This date has since slipped to July 2030, citing latest delivery of sequence critical material.
The ship's keel was laid, with no specific ceremony, on April 5, 2022, three weeks ahead of schedule. The shipbuilder held an official keel-laying ceremony on August 27 of the same year.