Russia's Only Aircraft Carrier Damaged by Sinking Dry Dock

[Drang]

EMALS Update: Strategy Page Naval Air: EMALS In The Age Of Error

In the meantime...:

On Costliest U.S. Warship Ever, Navy Can’t Get Munitions on Deck
(Bloomberg News, says I have on remaining "free" article, so read it quick...)

Only two of 11 elevators needed to lift munitions to the deck of the U.S. Navy’s new $13 billion aircraft carrier have been fully installed, according to a Navy veteran who serves on a key House committee.

“I don’t see an end in sight right now” to getting all the elevators working on the USS Gerald R. Ford, the costliest warship ever, Democratic Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia said in an interview. The ship was supposed to be delivered with the Advanced Weapons Elevators, which are moved by magnets rather than cables, working in May 2017.

It’s another setback for contractor Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. -- and for the Navy, which had said in December it planned to complete installation and testing of all 11 elevators before the Ford completed its post-delivery shakedown phase this month, with at least half certified for operation.

Instead, the shakedown phase has been extended to October and the vessel won’t have all the elevators fully installed -- much less functioning -- by then, according to Luria, a 20-year Navy surface warfare officer whose served on two aircraft carriers and as shore maintenance coordinator for a third.

[trailrunner]

Earlier this year SecNav Spencer said something like if the AWEs weren't working by this summer, he'd quit or he should be fired.

I wonder if he's going to follow through on that.

[OlongJohnson]

When threads like this that I remember from not that long ago get zombies and I see how old they are, I am alarmed at how fast time is flying.

[RevolverRob]

In the meantime...:

On Costliest U.S. Warship Ever, Navy Can’t Get Munitions on Deck
(Bloomberg News, says I have on remaining "free" article, so read it quick...)

I mean they named it the USS Gerald Ford, what did we expect?

Okay, that's a bit unfair for Ford. He wasn't a great president, but far from the worst we've ever had. He also inherited a bunch of garbage from his predecessor.

In fact now that I think about it...a mucked up carrier that has inherited a bunch of garbage kind fits being named the USS Gerald Ford. Maybe it can get mostly working and take over for the USS Richard Nixon when it flees a battle space, after it is discovered it's conducting covert espionage.

[hufnagel]

I mean they named it the USS Gerald Ford, what did we expect?

Okay, that's a bit unfair for Ford. He wasn't a great president, but far from the worst we've ever had. He also inherited a bunch of garbage from his predecessor.

In fact now that I think about it...a mucked up carrier that has inherited a bunch of garbage kind fits being named the USS Gerald Ford. Maybe it can get mostly working and take over for the USS Richard Nixon when it flees a battle space, after it is discovered it's conducting covert espionage.

USS Richard Nixon, sailors, port of call in thailand, and covert activities named "deep throat"

[Stephanie B]

In the meantime...:

On Costliest U.S. Warship Ever, Navy Can’t Get Munitions on Deck
(Bloomberg News, says I have on remaining "free" article, so read it quick...)

The Ford is a technological leap too far. A rational procurement process would have gone with installing one EMALS catapult and three steam cats.

We had an advantage with the steam cats: The Brits developed them first.

[trailrunner]

A rational procurement process would have gone with installing one EMALS catapult and three steam cats.

Actually, this is not a good way of implementing new technology. The smarter things to do are:

a) Not to believe the contractor when they tell you it's mature and low risk
b) Test before buying
c) Allow the acquisition process to buy the same, boring, but proven thing, i.e., don't force them to oversell their program in order to get it funded. Technology is fine, but DoD has to stop their obsession with the NBST (Next Big Shiny Thing)
d) Don't let them cook the books to show that EMALS will save money in the long run because it is so much more reliable and requires much less manpower
e) Stop rewarding careers on getting the NBST program funded

Of these, c) is probably the most important.

[runcible]

Actually, this is not a good way of implementing new technology. The smarter things to do are:

a) Not to believe the contractor when they tell you it's mature and low risk
b) Test before buying
c) Allow the acquisition process to buy the same, boring, but proven thing, i.e., don't force them to oversell their program in order to get it funded. Technology is fine, but DoD has to stop their obsession with the NBST (Next Big Shiny Thing)
d) Don't let them cook the books to show that EMALS will save money in the long run because it is so much more reliable and requires much less manpower
e) Stop rewarding careers on getting the NBST program funded

Of these, c) is probably the most important.

For what it's worth:

A. Healthy skepticism is good. Excessive skepticism is crippling.

B. Test before buying; but not all things can be tested fully until they are made at full scale. All theories and extrapolations must be tested in and by reality. The first aircraft carriers are excellent examples of this concern. If a carrier had been built with only one EMALS and three steam cats; then it seems less likely that they'd have recognized the issue of scale and inter-relation; which would then be more likely to be discovered another ship down the line, and potentially after the quad-EMALS has already been installed thus necessitating cost-overruns to reverse or amend that.

C. An aversion to change is understandable; but for it to be helpful, it must be rooted in a competitive baseline. The DOD bought M1 Garands, M14s, and M60s for far longer than it had to; and in the face of higher-functioning\lower-cost alternatives. That did the US Mil no favors. Iterative improvements requires a deviation from the baseline, and excessive iterative improvements allows for the procedural timecost to consume any practical use of the PIP output while simultaneously displacing the possibility of a functional or performance leap-forward replacement.

D. I don't think any of us can speculate on them cooking the books or not, this early in things. What would be a good indicator of such dishonesty?

E. Que?

[Drang]

The latest from the Strategy Page regarding the USS Gerald Ford: Naval Air: Depressing Elevators

September 15, 2019: The new Ford class CVN (nuclear powered aircraft carrier) has become a major disaster rather than a more effective new ship design. Several innovative new technologies were supposed to have made the Fords more effective and cheaper to operate than the previous, and similar looking Nimitz class. Two of those new technologies, EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) catapults and landing equipment and high-speed electromagnetic ammunition elevators (for getting explosive items to the deck more quickly). There are lesser problems with the nuclear propulsion system, the new radars and modifications needed so that the new F-35C can operate.

The navy believes it is making steady progress in fixing the reliability problems with EMALS. Given the number of times “steady progress” has been used before and turned out to be incorrect there is not a lot of optimism about EMALS matching, much less surpassing, performance of the older steam catapult system. Time will tell and given the multiple problems with the Fords, it’s unclear which problem will take the longest to fix.

The equipment failure getting the most attention now has to do with the new elevator design. The older elevator design, used successfully for decades on existing Nimitz class carriers, moves up to 2.3 tons of ammo from the magazines to the deck at a speed of 30 meters (100 feet) a minute. The new elevators each move 10.9 tons to the deck at 45 meters a minute. The new elevators were meant to increase the number of combat sorties by 30 percent over 24 hours. Currently only two of the eleven Ford elevators are working. At the end of 2018 the navy said all the elevators would be working by July 2019. That did not happen because it turned out the elevators were not built to spec and now major repairs were underway to fix that. This takes time and it was a problem that could have been avoided if the navy had built an elevator ashore to test the design before proceeding with construction of the carrier. Many of the problems with the current errors are construction that was sloppy and not caught by quality control personnel.

[Stephanie B]

The latest from the Strategy Page regarding the USS Gerald Ford: Naval Air: Depressing Elevators

USS Ford's gets a D-1 for PMS checks

(PMS = Planned Maintenance Subsystem D-1 = Fix or repair daily.)