Record Breaker: The U.S. Navy’s USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier Might Be at Sea for Almost a Year

The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) reached a historic milestone on Wednesday, April 15. After leaving Naval Station Norfolk on June 24, 2025, the carrier hit 295 days deployed, setting the longest post-Vietnam aircraft carrier deployment in modern U.S. Navy service, according to USNI News data. That means that by the time the Ford-class aircraft carrier comes into port in Norfolk, Virginia, it will have been on deployment for almost a year. Ford easily surpassed Abraham Lincoln’s pandemic-era benchmark and set a new record following a deployment that took the ship from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, then back across...