Watch The U.S. Navy Catapult Giant Trucks Into The Ocean

The U.S. Navy is testing the capabilities of its new so-called 'supercarrier' ship, the nearly $13 billion U.S.S. Gerald Ford. Construction began a few years ago, and the ship is now what is known as a pre-commissioning unit; if all goes according to plan, the U.S. Navy will commission the ship in April 2017. Ahead of that, however, the Navy is testing the ship's jet catapult system, doing so using really big trucks.

Fighter jets, of course, are very expensive, so it makes sense the Navy wouldn't want to test the aircraft carrier's catapult system using actual multi-million dollar machines...especially in light of the carrier's rumored launch system issues. The Navy needs something heavy that rolls in substitution, and so the choice seems fairly obvious: trucks. Really big trucks.

The video above shows the U.S.S. Gerald Ford launching what appears to be a semi-truck into the ocean, followed by a second 'smaller' truck. It appears others are already floundering in the water. We can't say whether the tests were considered a success from a technical point of view, but they're entertaining regardless.

The U.S.S. Gerald Ford has been a source of controversy during its time, and last summer we saw a report surface from Bloomberg claiming the $12.9 billion aircraft carrier had issues with launching and recovering aircraft, among other things. That information is said to have come from a Pentagon memo issued on June 28, 2016.

However, the Navy issued a statement last month stating the aircraft carrier is "99 percent overall complete" with, at the time, 93-percent of the testing finished. Though the Navy didn't go into details, spokeswoman Capt. Thurraya Kent had said at the time that 'significant progress' had been made in ironing out some of the supercarrier's onboard troubles.