>The Navy’s costliest warship, the $13 billion Gerald R. Ford, had 20 failures of its aircraft launch-and-landing systems during operations at sea, according to the Pentagon’s testing office.
>The new reliability issues add to doubts the carrier, designated as CVN-78, will meet its planned rate of combat sorties per 24 hours -- the prime metric for any aircraft carrier -- according to the annual report on major weapons from the Defense Department’s operational test office.
>The Ford “will probably not achieve” its sortie rate requirement because of “unrealistic assumptions” that “ignore the effects of weather, aircraft emergencies, ship maneuvers and current air-wing composition on flight operations,” Robert Behler, the Pentagon’s director of operational testing, said in his assessment of the carrier, obtained by Bloomberg News.
>“None of the interruptions experienced during CVN-78 flight operations caused injury to personnel, or damage to the aircraft or ship,” Michael Land, a Navy spokesman, said in an email.
>There were, he added, two “mission aborts” associated with the catapult launch system. In both cases, flight operations were briefly suspended and “a correction was implemented.”
>The launch-and-landing issue is separate from the ship’s lack of 11 functioning elevators to lift munitions from below deck, an issue that’s drawn scrutiny from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican.
Luis Nelson
New ship, issues will be found during testing and exercises. It's the usual cycle of new product and production.
Samuel Davis
They have accepted that the ship will not meet design requirements.
Ian Anderson
>omg why is a ship that's currently being tested to find problems displaying problems better drag them to the senate you so can waste their time to make sure the 5 retards who watch cspan know that you know about military stuff.
Jack White
From the way the source seems to have been abused in this article I'm doubtful that's the truth considering the quote used for this is like 4 words long and has no context.
Wyatt Ward
>new Constructed started in 2005. Emals been in design for decades, final testing was supposedly completed in 2015. It's reaching India levels at this point.
Juan Murphy
>Ten “critical failures” occurred during 747 at-sea catapults of jets; another 10 “operational mission failures” occurred during 763 shipboard landing attempts, according to the testing office’s report. So a failure rate of 1.33%. What exactly is the issue here? What is the sorite rate supposed to be? Is the current rate higher, equal to, or lower than the Nimitz class. This article says fucking nothing and is just fear mongering. Both the Nimitz and the Enterprise had major issues when first launched. Its not like the US Navy is slapping a new coat of paint on a 40 year Soviet aircraft carrier. This is a completely new design with new technology.
Oliver Davis
What the heck is EMAL? Pardon my language,I get worked up sometimes.
Jaxson Butler
I've got bad news for you, son. It was commissioned in 2017. Delivered in the same year, supposed to have been two years earlier. Now they're finding other problems under the hood.
Isaiah Edwards
Military expenditure and accepting new products are always an on going affair and with that there's always going to be development creep, it sucks but that's always been the case in my experience.
Anthony Parker
Why does is it say that software updates post shakedown will solve the problem then
William Sanders
>So a failure rate of 1.33%. What exactly is the issue here?
Critical failures could result in the system being down for hours, maybe days.
It uses magnets instead of steam to launch aircaft. because it's expensive and new it's seen as instantly better.
all 11 weapons elevators use magnets instead of cables and none of them work yet.
It does not say that it will make the sortie rate better due to the reason outlined by the chief of operational testing.
Mason Allen
Worse, by a considerable margin, but a lot depends on the exact details of the failures which are not in the public domain.
Michael Brown
So its significantly worse, but you don't have the info to actually know it is?
Austin Lewis
>because it's expensive and new it's seen as instantly better. So its not the space savings, ability to launch heavier aircraft, no more reliance on steam it's just better because it costs more?
James Cooper
launching of the aircraft with the new system causes and Emp effect crippling other systems. Also the catapult itself is grossly underpowered.
Grayson Miller
HMS QE went to sea and only needed some welding done to reinforce a propeller shaft, all systems functioned as expected.
Other than that it was just minor tasks like making sure sub systems like incinerators and lighting was working. It's now completed manufacturer sea trials, rotary wing + combat system trials and fixed wing trials.
HMS QE has a far higher level of automation - room for something to go wrong - than ford. part of the reason why there is a huge gap in crew requirement. The rest is down to the slightly larger size and nuclear propulsion.
It's considerably worse by nature of having 0 critical failures. It's hard to give a figure of how much worse as we don't know how many hours it took to resolve the issues and therefore can't work out system down time vs nimitz
Charles Johnson
>The Ford “will probably not achieve” its sortie rate requirement because of “unrealistic assumptions” that “ignore the effects of weather, aircraft emergencies, ship maneuvers and current air-wing composition on flight operations,” Robert Behler, the Pentagon’s director of operational testing, said in his assessment of the carrier, obtained by Bloomberg News.
This makes it sound like it was some secret they uncovered. This got published in a public report years ago. The initial sortie requirement was a 25% increase in sortie generation over Nimitz. Not hitting that goal doesn’t mean sortie generation will be below actual operational requirements.
Aaron Smith
its not launching heavier aircraft and no extra aircraft are being carried
Andrew Wright
>Nimitz had a 0% failure rate
What the fuck are you talking about?
Kevin Foster
1- no steam lines to worry about, just plug into the reactor (ideally) and go 2- can adjust the impulse and acceleration to make takeoffs smoother = less stress on frame and pilot. Can tailor the launch to the air frame.
Those are the big differences
Joseph Young
Nimitz does not have a single critical failure in less than 1000 launches. IIRC it's about one every 1200.
Ford has 10 in 700
Jordan Lewis
>First of class ship pathfinding new tech has teething issues In other news, water is wet.
Robert Hernandez
Take off forces are not the damaging ones, it's the landings that ruin airframes. Take off fatigue can be (mostly) reset with new undercarriage.
Sounds like the bongs made the right choice with going ramps instead of trying to get emals working in time.
Kayden Rodriguez
>Massive sea vehicle made of up thousands of systems takes time to get working mostly alright I'll remind you that the Enterprise, Kitty Hawk, and Nimitz had similar problems.
Blake Hall
>not launching heavier aircraft Is there some plane not being launched by emal that was being launched by steam? >no extra aircraft Literally no source says that
Christian Miller
this
Evan Parker
A ship 2/3rds the size and no assisted launch system had less problems?
Nathaniel Kelly
>Trump was actually right with his weird fucking "just use steam lmao" comment
We were always going to go with ramps from the outset, there was a brief reconsideration around 2010 about changing to CATOBAR, but since the ships were in construction, idle shipyards during redesign then implementing the changes would have cost as much as one carrier - so we opted to bring both carriers into service rather than one CATOBAR carrier.
There is still a long time before the out of service date around 2070, so they may still be altered. But for the moment F35B is such a big leap ahead for STOVL operations there's not much point.
Not to mention the Ford is trying to slash personnel and automate as much stuff as possible while increasing sortie rates
Mason Hughes
catapults are also a system the US has had for longer than most people here have been alive, whereas the EMAL system is less than 10 years old and never put into practice until now. Fucking shocker, I know, that things that have never been done before outside of small labs can struggle to go full scale in the initial production.
It's obviously not the big damaging one but one could argue that anything that would reduce the need for maintenance on planes is handy, even if it all it does is delay the inevitable new undercarriage rather than completely replace it.
Christian Adams
No, he was not. Steam cats are expensive, complex, take up massive amounts of space, and are extremely dangerous to work with. EMALs is the future, and they've have to completely gut and rebuild the class to bring steam back.
Benjamin Price
You could argue for Steam over EMALS, but certainly not ramps. QE has it’s own problems anyways. It can only get new F135 engines through UNREP since they haven’t bought the V-22 (also means no tanking), it carries a shockingly low amount of aviation fuel for it’s size, it has anemic air defenses and CEC upgrades for RN ships got cut, and the F-35B’s smaller weapons bay limits weapons integration somewhat.
Andrew Robinson
Not him but displacement is not the same as size.
Ford has a flight deck of around 4.5 acres, QE 4 acres.
The large discrepancy in displacement is mainly down to the nuclear reactors and the extra crew.
Ramps are actually a great pairing with the F-35B. It helps them take off, so a few of our ramp-carrier allies get a stealth multirole they can deploy by sea. That's something no other naval air force can say they have. Memes aside the marine variant may have been one of the smarter ideas in the design since it means a lot of our allies get gen5 planes they can deploy from much cheaper carriers.
Eli Myers
>always Who's paying for the wall again? How many did actually show up at his inauguration? What happened last night in Sweden?
Etc. etc.
Thomas Collins
wait what happened in Sweden?
Evan Gray
>EMALS is the future >EMALS can't reach target sortie rate
Justin Miller
Nothing.
Henry Moore
With regards to what Trump said? Nothing In a more general sense? Niggers and a horrible integration system
Owen Wilson
>EMALS can't reach target sortie rate for now FTFY
Kayden Butler
>steam is the future >steam can't reach target sortie rate
>hydraulic is the future >hydraulic can't reach target sortie rate
>gunpowder is the future >gunpowder can't reach target sortie rate
Michael Brooks
There's also huge benefits for the USN. it means carriers don't need to be on permanent deterrence patrols, LHA's can now do that task, freeing up carriers for multi carrier operations in the Pacific.
F35B is hugely underrated, comfortably my favorite variant.
I'll admit I fell prey to the memes first, then I realized that it's not really a big thing just for us, but more generally to the NATO n' Friends crew. It's like a massive upgrade at a surprisingly low price compared to everyone just making their own stuff and having languishing carriers/not thinking about building a carrier because they don't have planes for it.
Carson Carter
Maybe it should be refitted with a ramp?
Kayden Diaz
Don’t know the figures for the Ford, but imagine similar to Nimitz. Nimitz carries 3.5 million gallons of jp-5 in comparison to 800,000 gallons for the QE. Nimitz hanger is also larger by about 10,000 square feet. The Nimitz has 4 aircraft elevators and the Ford has 3 in comparison to the QE’s two. These aren’t necessarily strikes against the QE, since it’s designed to support far less aircraft, but to say the Nimitz and Ford’s larger size is due to it being nuclear is simply entirely incorrect.
Liam Campbell
>first carrier in the world to be fitted with a cutting-edge new electronic capatapult system >It's having some trouble with it
oh gee, how could such a thing happen. It's almost like this is some brand new technology that nobody's done before, and they'll need to work out some issues before it becomes as reliable, and eventually more reliable, than previous technology.
Jackson Clark
did he just hit the ground too hard? as soon as he landed the whole fucking plane fell apart.
Parker Gomez
>but to say the Nimitz and Ford’s larger size is due to it being nuclear is simply entirely incorrect.
I didn't say size (neither did the first person), I said displacement, and I also said nuclear reactors were the main reason for the extra displacement, not the only reason. The two reactors and their lead shielding add a lot of weight and crew requirement - which in turn increases displacement.
Alexander Collins
Far too much vertical velocity and possibly some structural fatigue. Weather probably the main culprit.
Cameron Murphy
He was just Russian to land
Nathan Jackson
>problems are being found in the ships post shakedown availability, the literal objective of PSA/SRA after the post delivery and test trials
He didn't want to end up Stalin the rest of the wing
Colton Stewart
Actually almost everything they stated in this article is from last year's DOT&E releases. It's a pretty useless article.
Samuel Cox
>all 11 weapons elevators use magnets instead of cables and none of them work yet.
If 9 of those elavators worked right now, id be very concerned. Since only 2 are currently installed.
Charles Lee
This is true to some extent, but the A1B is lighter and requires fewer crew than the A4W, yet the Ford still weighs more than the Nimitz, so i'm suspicious as to how much it's actually a factor.
Mason Bailey
EMALS and AAG are also supposed to have a lighter touch on aircraft which can help reduce airframe fatigue over time.
Asher Clark
I Know Nothing About The Realities of New Generation Technology Development and Shakedown: The Thread
Josiah Martinez
I'd guess and say the reactors add at least 10,000 tonnes of displacement.
Comparing Ford to Nimitz is only so useful, as both have nuclear reactors. Even comparing old conventional US carriers to nuclear is hard as conventional carriers back then used steam boilers.
I don't think anyone would argue that gas turbines and diesel generators would add much weight in comparison to nuclear power.
Colton Johnson
>oh look, a penny!
Wyatt Miller
You're not wrong throughout, other than one minor thing just to note. The QEs elevators may be only 2, but they are each double size, permitting 4 aircraft lifted per cycle, the same as the Ford.
Little less flexible in terms of which ones are moving, yes, but it's not as simple as 4 vs 2 on that point. Their maximum aircraft lift is exactly the same.
Dunno why people are getting in a bustle though. If the follow up carriers also have these issues, THAT is when you start worrying.
Carter Richardson
So i can get 100 results for email? Fuck you,asshole.
Jaxson James
oh. Thanks.
Owen Nguyen
>The QEs elevators may be only 2, but they are each double size, permitting 4 aircraft lifted per cycle
Nope, they just carry two F35's. Although they can also lift a chinook with unfolded blades, that's pretty sweet.
Why wasn’t he Lenin the ground crew check his airframe more often?
Wyatt Morales
This article seems to be based on out of date information considering the Ford has ammunition elevators now.
Xavier Perez
fucking monekys, cables are easy to manage and store and replace. Magnets are going to require 5 physics PHD's to fix. the navy is too retarded to get upgrades like this.
Kevin Ortiz
As opposed to the massive jungle of piping needed to operate steam cats?
How are pre-built electromagnet modules more complicated?
Cooper Richardson
He’s talking about the elevators. He’s still wrong though, the new elevators are much better than the cable ones.
Really, the only long-time problem I foresee for the Ford is the radar. Since all future carriers will have EASR, it’ll be the only ship in the fleet with SPY-4 and one of only four (with the Zumwalts) with SPY-3. Spare parts and training are gonna be a bitch.
Joshua Hernandez
FFG(X) will also use EASR.
Blake Watson
America Flight I and San Antonio Flight II will have a rotating version as well. It's a good thing overall to have a common radar system going forwards even if it is a downgrade in comparison to the DBR the Ford has.
