{"id":436195,"date":"2026-02-20T13:55:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/436195\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T13:55:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T13:55:15","slug":"bbc-verify-uss-gerald-r-ford-seen-entering-mediterranean-as-us-military-build-up-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/436195\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Verify: USS Gerald R Ford seen entering Mediterranean as US military build-up continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is the USS Gerald R Ford?published at 13:39 GMT<\/p>\n

13:39 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been reporting this week<\/a> that a second US aircraft carrier appears to be heading towards the Middle East, as Washington continues to put pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme. <\/p>\n

The nuclear-powered carrier USS Gerald R Ford is the world’s largest warship and the most advanced in the US Navy. <\/p>\n

This morning we\u2019ve tracked the US warship USS Mahan, one of the destroyers escorting the Gerald R Ford as part of its carrier strike group, through the Strait of Gibraltar at the western end of the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

We previously reported that the carrier briefly broadcast its location off Morocco’s Atlantic coast on Wednesday. In the 48 minutes when its location data was available the vessel appeared to be heading east towards the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

As we just reported in the post below, we have now verified pictures showing the aircraft carrier heading through the Strait of Gibraltar today. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also used ship-tracking data to confirm that one of the destroyers in the Ford\u2019s carrier strike group, USS Mahan, also passed through.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Graphic by Tom Shiel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What is the USS Gerald R Ford?published at 13:39 GMT 13:39 GMT Thomas CopelandBBC Verify Live journalist We\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-436195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}