Joe Biden sure isn’t making any friends on his way out the door.
Last Monday, the soon-to-be former President Biden announced the names of the U.S. Navy’s next two, nuclear super-carriers of the Gerald R. Ford Class: The USS William J. Clinton and the USS George W. Bush.
The nation’s next two aircraft carriers will feature the names of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, President Joe Biden announced Monday in a bipartisan salute that might irritate the next occupant of the White House.
The new, nuclear-powered carriers will be officially named the USS William J. Clinton and the USS George W. Bush when they enter service in the mid-2030s, the White House said in an announcement.
Biden said in the statement that he personally delivered the news to “Bill and George.”
The first ship may annoy more than President-elect Trump, since President Clinton was, prior to his two terms as president, unfriendly towards the military – and cut military budgets while president, claiming what he called the “peace dividend.” George W. Bush at least did serve in uniform, and while he served during the Vietnam era as a reservist, he did not deploy to Southeast Asia.
These two, new carriers are part of a total production of 10 ships of this class.
The ships will be the latest to enter the fleet as part of the new class of Gerald R. Ford carriers, which are bigger and more capable than the aging Nimitz-class ships that began entering the fleet in the 1970s. The first of a planned 10 Ford carriers saw its first deployment from May 2023 to January 202, which included operations in the Mediterranean Sea.
The newer carriers are faster than the older Nimitz ships, while also requiring hundreds of fewer sailors to crew them due to new technologies and easier software updates and other automation.
The aircraft carrier has been the primary force-projection asset of the U.S. Navy since World War 2. There has been, in recent years, some discussion of carriers being rendered obsolete by advanced nuclear attack submarines and hypersonic missiles, but at present, they are still a major part of the fleet.
The question remains about the names, though – and why now? The ships won’t be completed for some years yet. And what, do you suppose, are the odds of a future carrier being named the “USS Donald J. Trump”? It depends, we suppose, whether that name is being given by a putative future President JD Vance, or President Ron DeSantis.
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Here’s the thing: The tradition of naming these huge ships after former presidents is a new one, and while we still have a good supply of former presidents to name them after, it’s questionable as to why we would name a capital ship like this after a person who had no connection to the U.S. Navy. George H.W. Bush was at least a naval aviator, while Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter both had Navy service in their resumes. Before them, the last president to serve in the Navy was Richard Nixon.
Bill Clinton never had any connection to the United States armed forces until he was elected president and became commander-in-chief.
Maybe it’s time to rethink this tradition. There are a lot of old, traditional names assigned to aircraft carriers that are well-known names out of history. Isn’t it time the U.S. Navy had another USS Enterprise?
