Construction of the Royal Navy's largest warship -- the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier -- is nearing completion at the Rosyth Dockyard in Scotland.
The 65,000 tonne vessel is 280 metres long (that's longer than the stretch of buildings that make up the Houses of Parliament) has 4.5 acres of flight deck and space for 40 F-35 joint strike fighters -- that's three times larger than her predecessor, HMS Invincible.
Beyond scale, the boat has had a technological overhaul, with many of the systems becoming automated in order to reduce the number of sailors needed to run it. The missiles and bombs for the fighter jets can be ordered up from storage containers deep in the ship at the touch of a button and will move on automated sleds up to the hangar -- a dumb waiter for bombs, if you will. This means that the whole ship can be run with 679 crewmembers, where it used to require around 1,600 -- 32 sailors can do the work that used to need 200.
BAE Systems has developed an encrypted Platform Navigation app (PlatNav?) to help people navigate their way around the ship's 3,000 compartments on 12 decks. Journeys on the ship can take up to 20 minutes, so making those journeys more efficient can be incredibly valuable. PlatNav requires employees to scan one of 3,600 QR codes on compartment entrances before typing in their destination in order to display the quickest route on a Samsung phone. This system is necessary because regular GPS cannot penetrate the ship's hull.
The vessel will be officially launched by the Queen on 4 July.