Posted on 05/25/2021 8:19:16 PM PDT by logi_cal869
For the past 1½ years, on 18 trips off the Virginia and North Carolina coasts, sailors and shipyard workers from Newport News have prepped the Navy’s newest carrier for deployment — 27% over its original budget and years behind schedule.
The costliest single item on the Department of Defense’s shopping list, the USS Gerald R Ford has been on a fast track to launch a series of new technologies intended to boost the Navy’s striking power for at least the next 50 years.
It is a fast track that started two decades ago.
[snip]
Over the past 18 months of post-delivery tests and trial, “we really started stressing the ship’s 23 new technologies, especially EMALS (the electromagnetic catapult) and AAG (advanced arresting gear),” he said.
“In 18 months, we corrected 99% of the 9,000-plus work items outstanding at ship’s delivery,” Downey said..
Each of the 11 weapons elevators is unique, with its own operating demands — a large part of what is needed for the final four is to check out how well the weapons team can work with them without any problems. The first seven have run up and down more than 14,200 times.
The carrier’s self-defense missiles and 4,500-rounds-a-minute cannon, which depend on accurate readings from its radar to hit attacking planes, missiles or ships, are certified as ready for action.
The five-phase test of those systems over the past few months, finally completed in April, also proved the much-questioned dual band radar could provide accurate target identification and tracking. Concerns that electronic interference could hinder helicopter flight operations were resolved in recent tests involving over 500 helicopter flights, and a temporary restriction for the radar during helicopter operations was eliminated.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailypress.com ...
“Each of the 11 weapons elevators is unique, with its own operating demands”
Obvious question is why are they all different?
Commonality of spare parts and repair just get ignored?
EVERY engineer, designer, and suit that signed off on this kind of utter incompetence needs to be publically flogged, his testes/her ovaries removed WITHOUT ANAESTHESIA and stuffed down his/her gullet, then beheaded with his/her head put on a pike and displayed publically until it rots to bare bone.
Reliability depends on serviceability and commonality, most especially on a warship. ELEVEN DIFFERENT SYSTEMS?
Just effing WOW!
“ On Nimitz, back when we launched and recovered EA-3B aircraft, parking it on an outer port side spot called the ‘finger’ resulted in an immediate three degree port list.”
_________________________
Yeah, those were big aircraft:
The Whale: Skywarriors Were Huge and Hugely Flexible Jets
https://www.avgeekery.com/a-navy-jet-so-big/amp/
A single Whale?
moment of balance arm I guess
(I’ve forgotten most of what I ever learned)
You beat me to it. The dead opposite of “Keep it Simple Stupid”. Sounds like a nightmare in the making.
4500 per minute. How big is the magazine?
Not to mention this problem:
“Toilets on the USS Gerald R. Ford and USS George H.W. Bush carriers that have become repeatedly clogged could require treatments costing $400,000”.
Are today’s aircraft carriers the new battleships? Time and technology wait for no one.
“Are today’s aircraft carriers the new battleships? Time and technology wait for no one.”
Aviators and submariners often refer to surface ships as “targets of opportunity.”
And when it is sunk or damaged beyond repair in battle, what is the replacement plan?
I recall Admiral Rickover testifying before Congress in the 1970s that aircraft carriers would last about 90 minutes if we got into a conventional shooting war with the Soviet Union.
I do not know if that was true, but it definitely got a lot of news coverage.
So the Navy is supposed to fight a war and take no casualties. You set a pretty high bar. We don’t require that of any of the other branches...
FTA:
“Each of the 11 weapons elevators is unique, with its own operating demands — a large part of what is needed for the final four is to check out how well the weapons team can work with them without any problems. The first seven have run up and down more than 14,200 times.”
I hope they didn’t nearly wear the elevators out running them up and down 14,200 times! T’would be a shame indeed if the guarantee is only good for 15,000 or so runs.
(Just kidding??? Maybe!)
Agreed.
Defense Department contracting has for a long time been typified by a HUGE hole in the pocket of the government and a HUGER change-order windfall to the contractors.
Fortunately, I was on the correct side of that deal most of the time. But I still got into a bit of trouble with management for trying to limit the $$$ hemorrhaging (which actually was coming out of MY, the taxpayer’s, pocket)
For once the stupid enviro wacko rules are not the reason.
The current steam catapults can’t be fine tuned to the weight of the aircraft. They just launch the aircraft with a lot of power. The problem is that they are too powerful to launch drones.
The new electromagnetic catapults can be varied as to how much force it launches with. That allows it to launch any aircraft no matter how big or small.
Like all technology the bugs have to be worked out.
I know how to replace the casualties.
The ship is, literally, irreplaceable. Therefore it cannot be placed in harms way and therefore it is not useful for war fighting.
Gone:
At the shipyard’s suggestion, to hold costs down, the Navy dropped a dynamic armor protection system.
The Navy pushed back the target date for the Ford’s first deployment by two years, to 2023.
Yeah, I ran out of words for the excerpt.
I figured those who actually read it would get the punchline.
Using your logic the Navy should sent her to the bottom right now as she is useless, right? The PLAN agrees with you..
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