The Ford is the first complete carrier redesign since the launch of the Nimitz class in 1975. The Ford has a number of innovative features that distinguish it from Nimitz-class carriers:
It can launch about 33% more aircraft than previous carriers.
It has a crew of 2,600 sailors, 600 less than a Nimitz class carrier.
Two new nuclear reactors, giving he Ford 250—300% more electrical capacity than previous carriers.
It uses a new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) to launch aircraft rather than the old steam catapults. The linear acceleration puts less stress on aircraft frames.
Greatly improved duel-band (X and S) radar with a smaller footprint, allowing a smaller island (which is also situated further aft than previous characters).
A larger flight deck.
Aircraft lifts have been reduced from four to three.
Ordnance is moved via higher-capacity weapon lifts. “FEC’s Advanced Weapons Elevator demonstrates a 24,000-pound lift capacity, with 150% overload capacity. Designed to move at 150 feet per minute, it accelerates to full speed in 2 seconds. The state-of-the-art elevators increase capacity over 200% and speed by 50% compared to the legacy elevators.” Ordnance movement paths do not cross aircraft movement paths, reducing traffic problems in the hangars and on the flight deck and lowering rearming time.
Fully air-conditioned crew compartments.
The Ford’s more powerful reactors will allow it to mount laser defense weapons in the future.
Here’s a video of President Trump praising the ship’s namesake President and his naval career.
Here’s President Trump’s entire speech:
Here’s Captain Richard McCormack talking about the Ford’s shakedown cruise and the ship’s many innovations:
Here’s a video showing EMALS being tested:
The next Ford-class aircraft carrier, the USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79, not to be confused with the previous, already decommissioned USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) aircraft carrier, the US Navy’s last non-nuclear carrier) has already been laid down, and is scheduled to begin sea trials in 2018 and commissioned in 2020.
Note that in his speech, President Trump called for a 355-ship, 12-carrier navy, which has lead to some talk of bringing the non-nuclear USS Kitty Hawk out of retirement. I think that’s unlikely, though stranger things have happened…
The NRA’s Colion Noir brings the wood on #BlackLivesMatter, George Soros, dysfunctional Democrat-run cities, and the liberal media complex, among other topics:
“When you start calling everything that attacks the white liberal agenda ‘white supremacy,’ the term means nothing.”
It’s a wide-ranging discussion that touches on a lot of topics before focusing on black firearms ownership at the end, and I don’t think Noir is 100% accurate on some topics. (For example, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 probably did not “lock up millions of black fathers for [petty} drug offenses,” as incarceration rates after it was passed merely continued the same upward trend that had been evident since the launch of the War on Drugs in the early 1980s.) But he’s more correct than not.
Islamic State forces are completely surrounded in Raqqa, as coalition aircraft pound militant positions in the capital of the crumbling caliphate and the Syrian Democratic Forces continue to grind them down in street-to-street urban warfare. Here’s the livemap snapshot:
There are consistent but unconfirmed reports from a number of sources that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. As in past cases of jihadis reported dead long before they actually reached room temperature, a large dollop of caution is in order. Though this quote from a coalition spokesman (relayed via Stephen Green at Instapundit) is pretty glorious: “We strongly advise ISIS to implement a strong line of succession, it will be needed.”
Given the investment of Raqqa, there are conflicting reports as to where the Islamic State’s defacto capital is now: Some say Deir ez-Zor, others say Al Mayadin, AKA Mayadeen, which is all of 44km southeast of Deir ez-Zor, both in Syria on the Euphrates near what used to be the Iraqi border.
Under President Obama, U.S. Army Special Forces assigned to Syrian Democratic Forces needed special approval from Washington for virtually all tactical moves amid the politically complex theater of Americans, Arabs, Kurds, Turks and Syrians.
In Tabqa, where the city, its dam and its airfield were the objectives, the Green Berets decided they needed an airlift. Suddenly minus red tape, Arabs, Kurds and Americans were helicoptering into battle, and they quickly seized territory.
Under Mr. Obama, Islamic State terrorists could at times retreat from towns, immune from airstrikes if they used civilians as cover. The battle for Manbij in August became infamous when the SDF let 200 Islamic State fighters turn in their weapons and escape because they had threatened to kill town residents if they were not allowed to run away.
The new Trump strategy calls for surrounding towns, as opposed to pushing from one end or one side to another, in order to isolate Islamic State fighters and annihilate them.
Brett H. McGurk, special U.S. envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State who performed the same role for Mr. Obama, talked of “the delegations of authority which has made a difference in terms of the speed of execution. I think Tabqa was an example of that.”
“Our military people on the ground saw an opportunity to kind of surprise ISIS with a helicopter, moving them by helicopter, surprise them from behind and seize the airport, the dam and the town,” Mr. McGurk later told reporters at the Pentagon.
After Tabqa’s liberation, Mr. McGurk spoke to the city’s mayor, who gave a brief description of the war of annihilation.
“He also said he believes that most of these foreign fighters are now dead,” the diplomat said.
Mr. Mattis said: “No longer will we have slowed decision cycles because Washington, D.C., has to authorize tactical movements. I’ll leave that to the generals who know how to do those kind of things. We don’t direct that from here. They know our intent is the foreign fighters do not get out. I leave it to their skill, their cunning, to carry that out.”
Some videos:
House-by-house clearing in Raqqa:
The ruins of the Al Nuri Mosque in Mosul, from which al-Baghdadi declared his short-lived caliphate:
The Islamic State is by no means destroyed, but they’re definitely on the ropes. The defeat of the Islamic State won’t end transnational Islamic fundamentalism, but it will certainly take the wind out of their sails.
Not included in this roundup: Groups outside Islamic State territory that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. I hope to have a separate roundup on them Real Soon Now.
Note: Post updated to remove embedded video on improvised weapons of the Battle for Mosul, as it’s been taken down for “violating YouTube’s Terms of Service,” possibly because it included Islamic State propaganda videos of weapon-making among the footage.
Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi has visited Mosul to congratulate Iraqi forces for their victory over IS in the city.
Mr Abadi was there to announce the city’s full “liberation”, his office said in a statement.
Iraqi forces, backed by US-led air strikes, have been battling to retake Mosul since 17 October last year.
Islamic State militants seized it in June 2014 before taking much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland and proclaiming a “caliphate” straddling Iraq and Syria.
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Sunni Arab tribesmen and Shia militiamen have also been involved in the gruelling battle.
This map from ISIS Livemap shows a slightly larger area of Islamic State control in Mosul, including a remaining section of the old city.
Such a tiny little skirmish victory in the war against fake news, but since it fits into CNN Self-Immolation week, here’s James O’Keefe rubbing Paul Farhi’s nose in the fact that, yes, Farhi screwed up in his coverage of one of Project Veritas’ CNN videos, and the mistake was so obvious that yes, indeed, the Washington Post had to issue a retraction, just as O’Keefe said it would.
The question, of course, is why Farhi’s research was slipshod as to make an obviously erroneous assertion about such a short video, and why he was so stubborn and stiff-necked that he refused to offer a retraction when he was obviously in error…
Yep. Another Project Veritas video dropped, this one featuring a different video with CNN producer Jimmy Carr.
The headline is about how CNN employees think Chris Cuomo is a dick who owes his position to the fact his brother is governor. This should not be shocking news to anyone.
More interesting I think is the arrogance and poor situational awareness of a CNN employee being caught on hidden camera talking about how CNN employees were recently caught on hidden camera. At this point, every CNN employee talking to someone outside the company should assume they’re on hidden camera. And yes, that means attractive women too, dummies.
In other news, CNN is claiming that the author of the “Trump bodyslams CNN” meme that they threatened to dox is actually a middle-aged man, not a teenager as first reported. Which makes their actions less reprehensible only in that they may have broken one less law than previously reported. Also, there’s evidence that the random guy CNN tried to blackmail is actually the wrong random guy. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Speaking of breaking laws, Ted Cruz cites Georgia criminal statutes CNN may have violated with their actions.
More lazy holiday weekend video blogging, with Reason extending liberals go-to argument on changing a single thing about ObamaCare to its logical conclusion:
Today’s a good day to talk about structural reform of the Export-Import Bank.*
Ha, just kidding! Here’s Shoe-On-Head on sexbots, or specifically feminism’s reaction to them. (NSFW, just in case you were unclear.)
“Why are you so upset, Mam?”
The long-term objection to sexbots is that if they get too good, they lead to the extinction of the human race. But that’s not among the feminist objections to sexbots…
*The EXIM Bank shouldn’t be reformed, it should be eliminated…
During the dawn of cable TV, CNN had real impact. No longer did you have to wait until 6 PM for updates on national stories. Crossfire, featuring Tom Braden on the left and Patrick Buchanan on the right, was hugely influential, though nobody realized it would degenerate into the “talking heads screaming at each other” format that infects so much of cable news today.
But as time went on, CNN drifted leftward, partially due to founder Ted Turner’s own leftward drift, partially due to the overall media trends. Bill Clinton’s personal friend Rick Kaplan ran the network from 1997-2000, during which time CNN attacked Clinton’s critics and defended Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In 2003, CNN news chief Eason Jordan admitted he had downplayed Iraqi atrocities in order to maintain access.
CNN’s increasing leftwing tilt was one of the reasons the upstart Fox News Network surpassed CNN’s ratings in 2002 and never looked back. But the 2016 Presidential Election was when CNN finally gave up even the pretense of objectivity, earning their Clinton News Network nickname and developing a full-blown case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It didn’t help that CNN freely exchanged DNA with the Democratic Party: Chris Cuomo, Laura Jarrett, and Virginia Moseley (CNN Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief married to Obama Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides) to name but three.
Given all that, it’s no great surprise that CNN has spent inordinate amounts of time pushing the Trump Russia conspiracy theory. CNN has probably mentioned Russia more in the last eight months than they did in eight years during the Obama Administration.
Three CNN employees “resigned” over another Trump Russia conspiracy theory story (this one about a Russian investment fund run by Anthony Scaramucci being under federal investigation) that was so bad CNN had to retract and delete it. Those “resigning” include Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Frank (not the What’s the Matter With Kansas guy), Eric Lichtblau, who CNN recently hired away from the New York Times, and Lex Haris, executive editor of CNN Investigates. (That, in turn, lead to one of the most CNN things ever: CNN refusing to comment to CNN reporter about CNN story retraction. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.))
Then CNN producer John Bonifield was caught on camera by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas admitting that there’s no smoking gun to the “Russia hacked the election” fantasy, and that CNN CEO Jeff Zucker is only pushing the Russia narrative for ratings.
At the end of the video, O’Keefe promises more videos to come on CNN.
Now the question becomes whether CNN wants to continue destroying what’s left of its reputation in pursuing its fantasy of a Russia Trump conspiracy, or whether it would like to return to actually reporting the news rather than trying to manufacture it.
(Note: I almost wrote “its white whale of a Russia Trump conspiracy,” but then I realized that was the wrong metaphor. After all, in Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick actually exists… )
Update: Just after I posted this, the second Project Veritas CNN video dropped, in which CNN on-air personality admitted that the Russia story was a “big nothingburger”:
