Watch a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier catapult cars — well, sort-of cars — off its flight deck

And now for something completely different: cars being launched off the deck of a Navy aircraft carrier into a river.

Well, not cars per se, but massive, heavy slabs of steel that roll on four wheels — what the Navy calls “vehicles” — designed to emulate the weight of actual fixed-wing aircraft being launched from the deck of the USS John F. Kennedy.

The fascinating test was videotaped and published last week by Huntington Ingalls Industries, showing the company's Newport News Shipbuilding division conducting "dead-load" testing of the carrier’s electromagnetic aircraft launch system.