ATLANTIC OCEAN (March 7, 2023) Quartermaster 3rd Class Austin Audain, from St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, assigned to the first-in-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford’s (CVN 78) navigation department, holds a signal flag during a replenishment-at-sea, March 7, 2023. Ford is underway in the Atlantic Ocean executing its Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMPTUEX), an intense, multi-week exercise designed to fully integrate a carrier strike group as a cohesive, multi-mission fighting force and to test their ability to carry out sustained combat operations from the sea. As the first-in-class ship of Ford-class aircraft carriers, CVN 78 represents a generational leap in the U.S. Navy’s capacity to project power on a global scale. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Simon Pike)