It will join other American forces in the region:

The USS Ford, America’s flagship 1,100-foot nuclear-powered carrier, is expected to be sent to Europe as soon as next week, making it the third US aircraft carrier group in the region, CNN’s senior national reporter Zachary Cohen reported on Wednesday.

The Ford will join the USS Carl Vinson, which is already in the Persian Gulf, and the USS Nimitz — which the US announced it was sending from Southeast Asia earlier this week.

It’s quite the ship:

It cost $12.9 billion to build the USS Gerald R. Ford, but it’s a huge improvement for the US Navy pic.twitter.com/dTrnMY3mXI

— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) April 7, 2019

Although its construction encountered difficulties and delays, it was finally finished in 2017 and is now a high-tech, huge warship:

The USS Gerald R. Ford is the US Navy’s newest and largest aircraft carrier — in fact, it’s the world’s largest.

Commissioned in July 2017, it is the first of the Ford-class carriers, which are more technologically advanced than Nimitz-class carriers.

It has an improved hull design and weapons stowage, a new weapons elevator, more space on the flight deck, a new electromagnetic-powered aircraft-launch system, three times the electrical-generation capacity of any previous carrier, and a lot more.