A discussion in a Facebook group tonight got me to thinking about this: When will the USS Ford be ready for service? From what I can gather, it’s been undergoing trials for nearly 3 years, and I know it’s had numerous issues with the new catapults and weapons elevators, and possibly more systems. What is going on, and was this expected?

The concern should be about current Naval leadership & its vision and project procurement. The next generation Cruiser with the Zumwalt class, it’s engineering & weapons development testing failures? The Littoral Combat Ships which amount to an answer in search of a question? To answer your question, It’s not uncommon to have new technology projects to lapse. But the amount of time to shake these out are ridiculous & place an operations burden on the existing carrier fleet. The question that Needs to be asked: Why did the Navy accept delivery of CVN-78 from the shipbuilder and commission the ship into service if most or all of its weapon elevators were not completed, tested, and certified?

I’m personally not a big stick guy & would prefer the Money for big water projects such as carriers be spent on the procurement of additional Virginia class attack submarines as well as expeditiously developing the Columbia SSBX program into service. The U.S. is not the only nation advancing its military technologies & Future carriers will have to operate in highly contentious battle spaces against new weapons, tactics & strategies devised specifically against there success.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: CQB60, April 26, 2020 09:35 AM

quote:

The question that Needs to be asked: Why did the Navy accept delivery of CVN-78 from the shipbuilder and commission the ship into service if most or all of its weapon elevators were not completed, tested, and certified?

It's the NAVY!!!! Seems like they seem to be lacking judgement in every department.

Well, it is the Ford after all...

I agree with the above on more subs...but Im a bit partial.

The biggest concern I have with the Ford is the catapult system being electromagnetically driven. I personally think this is a big mistake, and should have stuck with steam. What happens in the event that an SSTG (ship service turbine generator) goes down due to some sort of failure? I would have to think that this would be planned for and redundancy would be in place as far as electrical generation total capacity....but I can’t help thinking that this was a bad idea.


Scroll down to the sections “Criticisms” and “Reliability”....I’m not the only one with concerns:

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

Money. The builder got paid for the ship and now will get paid to fix it.

CVN-78 is expected to deploy sometime around 2022....or, 2025, depending how cynical the person you speak with is. Congressional insistence to conduct a shock-trail continues to push 1st deployment date outward. For perspective, the Nimitz-class didn't conduct a shock trail until CVN-71 was built, 4th ship in the class.

The Nimitz-class ships were evolved from the Enterprise (CVN-65) and JFK (CV-67) designs, which was a sub-class from the Kitty Hawk-class...a demonstration of system evolution, instead of a revolution in design. Its been hashed over enough but, I think all can agree, there was wAAay too many immature technology changes to principal systems for a single-platform: new reactor, new multi-band radar, new launch and arresting system, new weapons & stores elevators, new waste disposal design, new flight-deck arrangement..all contributing to out of control costing. The next ship, Enterprise (CVN-79) and the remaining ships, will not have the dual-band radar, as it'll be limited to having on relying on a separate fire-control radar.

The Navy often accepts things that are sub-par, still in development, and all that.

The catapult is what’s giving them problems. I feel bad for al the Flight deck personnel. In my time, The Navy’s favorite saying was make it work.

The catapult and arresting gear system engineering/technology has not progressed as fast as exepected by both the DoD and multiple contractors involved. My last company is one of the electromagnetic developers along with the rail-gun system.

Oh and for the question of why did the DoD accept the ship? Well it's called a contract. The DoD purchased the ship then adds its desired equipment from other contractors at certain phases of the ship's build (and the shipbuilder receives progress payments along the way.

The catapult and arresting gear systems are also know as CFE - Customer Furnished Equipment

Once the ship passes sea trials (which the Ford did), ship build and delivery are complete.

They have to make the electromagnetic catapult work. Steam can't be controlled enough to launch light drones. Long list of reasons they've got to make it work.

I’d think electromagnetic cats are probably not an inherently bad idea. However, it sure doesn’t seem like a mature technology.

If the Navy signed up to be the general and own responsibility for making it all work, okay, hopefully it works out to have enough benefits to be worth the teething pains. If the Navy contracted for a ready to go product and accepted what they have now, then it would seem that someone (or multiple someones) responsible for that acceptance needs to be keelhauled.