The US Navy’s newest, digitally-built, aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) now has a complete flight deck after shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries lifted the final bow section into place.
The addition of the upper bow section at the company’s Newport News Shipbuilding division is one of the last steel structural units, known as a superlift, to be placed on Kennedy. It was built using digital technology, such as visual work instructions to install piping in the upper bow on the final assembly platen instead of on the ship.