At 9:00 a.m. this morning the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford sailed into the Bay of Palma. The warship, the most modern in the US Navy, will remain off Palma for the next six days.
Some 4,500 personnel, including sailors, aviators and support staff, are travelling on board. The stopover is part of a US deployment in the Mediterranean.
The US Embassy in Spain highlighted in a statement that this visit ‘underlines the strong bilateral relationship in defence matters and the strategic importance of the Mediterranean as an area of stability and cooperation’. The ship is named after the 38th president of the United States, Gerald Ford, whose World War II naval service included combat duty aboard the light aircraft carrier Monterey in the Pacific Theater.
Originally scheduled for delivery in 2015, Gerald R. Ford was delivered to the Navy on 31 May 2017 and formally commissioned by President Donald Trump on 22 July 2017. She departed Naval Station Norfolk on her first deployment on 2 May 2023. As of August 2025, she is the world’s largest aircraft carrier and the largest warship ever constructed. The visits comes as geopolitical tensions mount.
On 8 October 2023, the day after the Hamas attack on Israel, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, directed the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean “to bolster regional deterrence efforts.” Along with the carrier, the group includes the cruiser Normandy, and the destroyers Ramage, Carney, Roosevelt, and Thomas Hudner.
The U.S. later also sent USS Dwight D. Eisenhower-led Carrier Strike Group 2 to the Mediterranean to supplement CSG 12 in the same mission. While the carrier remained in the Mediterranean, several of the escort ships were sent into the Red Sea, where they repeatedly intercepted missiles and drones fired from Yemen.
More recently, On 12 September 2025, Gerald R. Ford arrived in Oslo, Norway, for a scheduled port visit. Prior to arrival, the carrier and its strike group conducted operations in the North and Norwegian Seas, including joint exercises in the Arctic Circle with the Royal Norwegian Navy’s HNoMS Thor Heyerdahl and HNoMS Maud, Germany’s FGS Hamburg, and France’s FS Aquitaine and FS Somme. While in port, the crew participated in city tours and local events, including a veteran’s run, and engaged in public outreach in Oslo.