Watch the Navy's New Aircraft Launcher Fling Dummy Cars Into the Sea

The USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) has been afloat since 2019 and is one of the most high-tech combat-ready aircraft carriers in the United States Navy's fleet. It's also about to get even more high tech. Newport News Shipbuilding—the company building the Navy's Ford-class aircraft carriers—is currently testing its new electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) by running "dead-load" exercises, shooting incredibly heavy car-like sleds off the front of the ship, and it's amazing to watch.

Aircraft carriers have had aircraft-launching catapults since the 1950, however they were always powered by steam. EMALS uses an electromagnetic linear induction motor that slides its carriage along a track to launch planes into the air. In this new video, you can see just how powerful the system is, as it's capable of sending a wheeled sled off the deck of the JFK shockingly far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yuMgG25VQM

At first, I didn't think the sled flung a massive distance. Then I considered the ground covered relative to the size of the people still standing on the JFK, and realized it traveled about a football field's length in the air. It flies so hard and far than when it hits the water, the splash looks like that of an underwater bomb. That sled is hitting the surface with an immense amount of energy.