Huntington Ingalls Industries' reports that its Newport News Shipbuilding division has successfully completed anchor testing on the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), bringing the ship closer to its 2016 delivery to the U.S. Navy. Ford's new anchor system features a lighter anchor and chain, weighing in at half the weight of the previous Nimitz-class carriers' anchor systems. Newport News shipbuilders recently gathered to test Ford's anchor windlass system that is used to deploy and retrieve the anchor and chain. Load tests are performed by attaching additional weight to the anchor to simulate both a 180-foot drop and a 360-foot drop. The anchor handling system must be ready to deploy at a moment's notice in the event of an emergency.