http://gizmodo.com/5875754/why-is-this-supercarriers-deck-packed-with-cars-in-the-middle-of-the-pacific?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

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Supercarrier’s Deck Packed With Cars In the Middle of the Pacific?

This is the USS Ronald Reagan—the ninth of the Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarriers—cruising the Pacific Ocean. But instead of having combat jets all over her deck, it's packed with cars facing a single F-18. Why are they doing there?

Those are sailor's vehicles. The ship is now changing port, going to Naval Base Kitsap—a U.S. Navy base on the Kitsap Peninsula, Washington—for a Dock-Planned Incremental Availability maintenance. There, she will be dry-docked and get upgrades to combat, defense, navigation and other ship components.

Notice the single F-18 facing the cars.

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Anyone else want to accidentally pull the trigger on the F-18's 20mm vulcan?

Is this real? Awesome.

Call me biased, but the F-18 is likely there for having failed Safety Inspection. That, or some brownshoe gundecked the PMS.

That, or somebody thinks that will keep their POV from taking a ride on the cat . . .

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That, or somebody thinks that will keep their POV from taking a ride on the cat

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I would pay good money to see that.

Send me the check

Let me know if you come to Houston and I'll buy you lunch.

I'd enjoy that.

There are a few youtube of chunking POV off the birdfarm.
There's some brownshoe tradition involving divorce, or promotion/retirement of the CAG or CAW or the like, where that worthy's POV is hitched up and flung off the bow.

This was probably a lot easier when the cat shuttle included a bridle connection.

Before standardization of using a nose-wheel launch bar, a pair of steel cables were run from the shuttle up to hard points on the a/c. The "horns" on the bows of carriers were so that the bridle cables could be collected and policed so that the shuttle could recycle back.

I'm chagrined to only notice later that this is USS Ronald Reagan, and she's not fitted with bridle horns (and, if memory serves, she has electromagnetic cats, not steam--duuno how a POV would hold up to those).

The Ford class carriers are supposed to be the first with EMALS. One of the main design features is that it's supposed to more gentle with a gradual application of force instead of just firing with everything at once like a steam catapult.