How do weapons get from deep inside a US Navy aircraft carrier to the jets on the flight deck? On the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), the answer is eleven Advanced Weapons Elevators that use magnets instead of cables and can lift up to 24,000 pounds.
In this video, we follow one weapon from the ship's magazines, through the elevators and the weapons handling areas, all the way to the flight deck. Then we look at how these elevators work, how they compare to the cable and hydraulic elevators on Nimitz class carriers, why they took years to get working, and where weapons are actually loaded onto aircraft.
Source: The Navy Channel
