The US Navy is building CVN-79 around a fighter that carries less ordnance internally than the Super Hornet parked beside it. That sounds like a step backwards. It is not.
Built around the F-35C
The future USS John F. Kennedy completed acceptance trials on 15 August 2026 at 98 percent complete, and the Navy took preliminary acceptance on 29 September with the ship about 99 percent complete. Congress wrote F-35C capability into law in Section 124 of the FY2020 defense bill, and the Navy folded that integration into construction instead of waiting for a refit.
One stealth jet changes the air wing
A single F-35C can see and share targets that the rest of the air wing would otherwise have to find by flying closer. Its value is less about how many bombs it carries and more about what it lets every other aircraft do.
The missile built to fit inside
One week after the trials, at Tailhook, the Navy revealed the AIM-424 Malice, with a published range of more than 250 nautical miles. A long-range missile that fits inside a stealth fighter is what lets the carrier push back against the reach of China's anti-ship missiles. The video ends with what it would cost China to answer that.
Written by the WarTechX team from the research behind the video. Figures are rounded public numbers; full sources are listed in the video description on YouTube.
