Where is the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford?

The Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) belongs to the Atlantic Fleet and has Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, as its home port — the largest naval base in the world, at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. There it spends maintenance and training periods between deployments, and can be seen moored at the piers alongside other East Coast carriers. When it needs major work done, it moves to the Newport News shipyard, across the bay, where it was built.

The ship completed its first operational deployment between May 2023 and January 2024, mostly in the eastern Mediterranean following the outbreak of the war in Gaza. In June 2025 it set sail again with its carrier strike group, made up of escort destroyers and an air wing of about 70 aircraft. After several months in the Mediterranean, in November 2025 the Pentagon sent it to the Caribbean to reinforce Southern Command's operations against drug trafficking and pressure on Venezuela, in waters near the Antilles. It was the largest concentration of U.S. naval power in the region in decades, alongside amphibious ships and destroyers already deployed there.

The U.S. Navy does not release the real-time position of its carriers for operational security reasons. What it does publish are notices about port calls, exercises and crew rotations, usually with a delay of several days. Drawing on those notices, the U.S. Naval Institute (USNI) compiles a weekly map of the fleet's approximate positions, which is the most reliable public reference available. Commercial satellite imagery and enthusiasts who track the air traffic of the embarked wing's aircraft fill in the rest of the picture. Any claim about its location, then, has a short shelf life.