USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) pulled away from the pier at Newport News Shipbuilding and went to sea for the first time in her life. For eight days, America's newest aircraft carrier ran builder's sea trials in the Atlantic, high-speed turns, her first-ever aircraft landing, and hundreds of systems switched on at sea for the first time, all while still legally belonging to the company that built her. In this video, we follow that first week and what it actually proved. Why the Navy chose to deliver this $11.4 billion carrier two years late on purpose. Why a 51-year-old ship, USS Nimitz, is being kept in service just to wait for her. What two A1B nuclear reactors and triple the electrical power of a Nimitz-class carrier actually buy, from EMALS electromagnetic catapults that sling a 100,000-pound aircraft to 130 knots, to arresting gear that can catch everything from heavy jets to drones. And the quiet confession built into her island: the half-billion-dollar Dual Band Radar that defined her sister ship's failures is gone, deleted from the design and replaced with a proven radar the whole fleet shares. Kennedy is the ship that decides whether the Ford-class becomes a program that recovered, or one that got lucky once. Her first week at sea is the first real receipt. Join this 'Paper Pilot Club' to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzgWZmqmKpmsr4oPWITusKA/join SUBSCRIBE: https://www.bit.ly/beyondFactsSUB #aircraftcarrier #usnavy #beyondfacts Credits: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Grj7ZRIgn3d8ilARIAx3s34owBIFWnggpaA1-73rvCE/preview