Just saying.
New ship. Limit what you talk about just a bit.
(just a reminder to all)
“The $12.9 billion USS Gerald R. Ford Navy supercarrier - the first of three in its class with a total cost of $43 billion - could potentially struggle with planes landing and taking off, moving military weapons and being able to successfully defend itself, a memo obtained by Bloomberg News reads.”
And strangely, all the pilots and passengers trip as they exit any aircraft that comes near the carrier. Chevy Chase makes millions tripping just like they do.
Question for Naval FReepers: Are these just the normal teething troubles of a new ship and new class?
There are many new systems and technology on her. It takes time and testing to work these things out.
Over thirty years I have been involved as a contractor on several Navy development projects. Some admiral decrees that x will be done by a certain unrealistic date, no excuses. That date drives everybody to just throw stuff together and do things that will obviously cause problems when x is deployed. Being at the bottom of this sh*t pile you send memos and beg your boss to ask for extensions. But no, that boss has promised some Captain who has promised some admiral that x will be done on time. So, the project continues as if the components are debugged and working when they only work under certain circumstances or not at all.
Another problem is, for political purposes and to spread the wealth Congress or the Navy may spread what should be one integrated system among two or more competing companies and order them to work together. That work-together part seldom gives you the nicely integrated slickly functioning system the Navy needs. Every bump at the component interfaces means time lost as the companies fight over who owns the problem.
Major weapon procurement is so bunged up it is astonishing we can field anything that works as intended.
>>could potentially struggle with planes landing and taking off, moving military weapons and being able to successfully defend itself,<<
Other than that, no problem!
What frosts my ass is the hypocrisy displayed be Juan McCain and the like in that he's running off at the mouth about this ship being two years late in deploying and the F-35 is ten years behind and not a peep out of him about it. What's the matter, Juan? Newport-News not meeting LockMart's standard of putting enough campaign cash in your pocket?
We need the 21st century tech that this ship is developing. The EMALS graduated launch will save on nose gear repair. The faster elevators and dedicated ordinance elevator will reduce turnaround time. And it will generate the electricity needed for the Free Electron Laser to function. Let's all just unclench and give the ship the time and space it needs to fully develop.
Well the problem is embarrassing. With all of those LGBT extra heads, the ballasting of the ship is askew.She leans away to far to port and wants to turn in the wider-shuns accursed counter-clockwise direction?/S
She needs an engineer and an exorcist.Or they can keep her the way she is and have a mullah using a soggy koran “christen” her the USS OBAMA./S
Alahwahoo Shipbar!
Yeah, OK. But other than that, she's really looking good.
I know I guy who worked on dual band radar. It's basically two radars, an x-band and s-band radar, that are supposed to work together. X-band ( 10,000 MHz) is better at some things, S-Band (3,000 MHz) at others. There were two contractors, one working on S-Band, the other on X-Band and integration. He worked on X-Band. He thought the S-Band delivered by the other contractor was a brick. In any case, the Navy has said it will discontinue Dual Band Radar (not necessarily abandon the concept of two radars, the product DBR) after the CVN-78. It's a one-off.
The short answer: Engineering is easy. System integration and tuning, not so much. Nobody does “systemology” like we do, but it takes time.
What works in the controlled conditions of a laboratory, almost ALWAYS shows glitches in an operational environment.
A more accurate headline is “Carrier doesn’t work quite to spec. . . yet. This is normal for new technology. . .”
Looks like the ID Thief in Chief took US to the cleaners yet again.
Carriers are out of date. If we fight an enemy that was worth a shit, they would sink them in the opening hours of a war.
Just a humble engineer having worked R&D for 25 years and my opinion. If you only knew the issues, risks and flat out “broken” problems that plagued the semi-conductor industry; you would be surprised and amazed that we ever got a 32 bit machine to market, forget the 64 bit, 3.2 GHz chips we have today.
No first article EVER works as designed. It’s like winning a lottery on your first try. I have built countless prototypes, and no number of reviews or simulations has ever given me a 100% production ready unit. Some are good, but nothing works perfectly out the door.
These guys are doing something that has NEVER been done before. Something huge, something that thousands of lives will depend upon. The first one will be expensive, they ALWAYS are. The second one will be exponentially cheaper, and better, and faster.
It’s the nature of the beast
As someone admittedly unfamiliar with naval operations, I read this and couldn’t understand it. I mean, they’ve been building aircraft carriers since... forever.
Would someone with some experience and/or knowledge fill us in on what happened and why they’re saying this?
Those airline style toilets they put on that ship aren’t helping matters either.
ping...My old man built ships at Ingals in Mississippi for 35 years before it was purchased by Nothrup Grumman.
He retired shortly after. Whew you should hear what he says about the quality of what us being built now. He freakin hates it!