The U.S. Navy's New Ford-Class: The Worst Aircraft Carrier Ever

The National Interest ^ | 7/9/24 | Brandon Weichart

[hardspunned]

I’ve been saying most of this for years.

[ConservativeMind]

So, they are clumsy, like Ford?

[Paladin2]

“The Worst Aircraft Carrier Ever”

Was Keith Olberman involved in this evaluation?

[Reno89519]

We are lucky that our aircraft carriers have not come under direct attack since World War II. The $10 billion cost doesn’t include the fleet of ships that surround them either.

[ducttape45]

I’m not surprised, really. I don’t think good military aircraft are capable of being built in the US anymore. Look at the KC-46 boondoogle.

[hanamizu]

So, they are clumsy, like Ford?

---

One little slip on a stairway and SNL turned an All-America football player into a clumsy dork. Biden is so clumsy he needs help taking a couple off a stage...crickets.

[TexasGator]

The third extension in December kept Ford out through the holiday season. The carrier was at sea for 239 days, according to the Navy.

“The Ford crew conducted 33,444 flight deck moves, 3,124 hangar bay aircraft moves, 2,883 aircraft elevator moves, 16,351 aircraft fueling evolutions, and transferred 8,850 pallets of cargo and mail,” the Navy said in the release.

https://news.usni.org/2024/01/17/uss-gerald-r-ford-arrives-home-from-maiden-deployment-after-3-extensions

[daniel1212]

The future carrier could be a nuke-powered space-based platform, sending out numerous capacitor laser drones, which return to the carrier as needed for replenishment.

Of course, for the US, this presumes it is worthy of victory seeing that the majority are at war with God.

[central_va]

Go back to conventional CVs. Build two for the price of one and crew training is easier. Tell me damage control is not easier on a conventional ship as opposed to an exotic nuclear one. Go on, try to tell me that whopper.

[Seaplaner]

The author seems overly opinionated, and far from a flat-top aficionado.

If carriers were bad things, why would our presumptive foes be building them?

[central_va]

The hull is virtually unsinkable and designed to be repairable. They used the USS America for target practice and it took 4 weeks to sink it.

Here’s why Four Weeks were required to Scuttle USS America, the Only Supercarrier Ever Sunk

[LastDayz]

Was there something wrong with the Nimitz class where retrofitting was impractical? Inquiring minds want to know.

[PerConPat]

Look at the bright side...The crew’s quarters are surely very commodious for both sexes and their various permutations.

[hardspunned]

Who else is building one $13Billion carrier, let alone TEN?

[central_va]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_programme

[VTenigma]

In “modern warfare” they’d be on the bottom.

[hardspunned]

With the proliferation of missile technology even the Houthis are on the verge of having carrier killing missiles. ALL carriers in a near peer conflict with the U.S. are completely vulnerable. The Japanese in 1945 demonstrated the danger. Kamikazes were no more than manned cruise missiles. Had the Japanese started massively using Kamikaze methods in 1943, they would have stopped the USN cold.

[montag813]

We need hybrid subs that can launch thousands of killer drones.

[Rockingham]

No, the Ford class carriers suffer from being designed and supervised in construction by the Navy Bureau of Ships, a chronically inept element of the US Navy's bureaucracy. The problem there is rooted in the curriculum and cadet selection at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and its weaknesses in science and naval engineering.

In addition, the US shipbuilding industry is in dire condition due to foreign competition and the decline of the US Merchant Marine. This leads to a relatively thin pool of American technical and supervisory talent needed for the design and construction of capable naval vessels on time and on budget.

[uranium penguin]

The “carrier” of the future..

Is likely to be a sub that spits out tons of small single use drones or VTOL predator type missile/ bomber platforms.

Hell.. the sub itself could be a remote controlled “drone”..