Stephen Walt on USS Harry S. Truman

That's him on the right. And from his essay, "Naval-Gazing: My Visit to the USS Harry S. Truman":

Last week I had the privilege of visiting the USS Harry S. Truman, a Nimitz class aircraft carrier that was conducting training exercises off the coast of Florida in preparation for an overseas deployment. The other guests and I were flown aboard the carrier (on a C2 transport) for a tour of the ship and aseries of briefings about the ship’s operations. We also spent a good chunk of the afternoon and evening observing a variety of air exercises, including night-time takeoffs and landings by the F-18s, EA-6s, and E-2s that make up the ship’s air wing. The following day we breakfasted with members of the ship’s crew, flew via helicopter to the USS Winston S. Churchill (an ArleighBurke class destroyer operating in the area) and then returned to the Truman before catapaulting off the ship and flying back to shore. (Yes, we used a plane to do that, too).

There's lots more at the link.

I guess being a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government has its privileges!

In 1999, as I've mentioned before, I visited the USS Abraham Lincoln. Two years before 9/11, the Navy was interested in maintaing popular support for the fleet, given that we'd been almost a decade without a traditional great power challenger. The ship made a port of call visit in Santa Barbara, and local sightseeing boats took visitors out to the ship, anchored about a mile out from the harbor. Of course, it would have been nice to fly in and out, although the brief tour included being shown around the below-deck operations platform, where the ship's planes are stored, maintained, and readied for operations. I was also permitted to run around on top, on the flight deck. I sat down at the front of the carrier and gazed out over the Pacific. The sun was going down, but not on American power. Sometime shortly thereafter, I picked up a copy of Tom Clancy's, "Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier." This is over ten years ago, but I can never forget the majesty of Clancy's discussion, including the rationale for the deployment, and the operational requirements, of the world's largest warships. He notes there, as a sample:

A nation's warships are legally sovereign territories wherever they might be floating: and other nations have no legal influence over their actions or personnel. Thus, an aircraft carrier can park an equivalent of an Air Force fighter wing offshore to conduct sustained flight and/or combat operations. In other words, if a crisis breaks out in some littoral (coastal) region, and a carrier battle group (CVBG) is in the area, then the nation controlling it can influence the outcome of the crisis.

Anyway, be sure to read Stephen Walt's "3 of the most vivid impressions and/or conclusions I took from the trip". I can't say that I'm not envious!