The Navy’s Urinal-Free Brand New Supercarrier Is A Big Fat Mess

[rangerrebew]

The Navy’s Urinal-Free Brand New Supercarrier Is A Big Fat Mess
By Jared Keller
on February 13, 2018


The Department of Defense’s fiscal year 2019 budget includes a hefty chunk of cash for a fourth Ford-class aircraft carrier, but the Navy may have to wait a little bit longer to see its dreams of an 11-carrier fleet truly realized.

Among the slew of vessels included in the Navy portion of President Donald Trump’s planned boost to the U.S. armed forces budget are three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, two Virginia-class submarines, and the “first year of full funding” for the now-unnamed CVN 81 aircraft carrier, a younger sibling to the brand-new $13 billion USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), which the Navy (and Trump) commissioned last July.

https://taskandpurpose.com/uss-gerald-ford-navy-problems/

[thackney]

Test pilots working on shaking the bugs out describe it differently.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/2017/08/03/the-carrier-fords-first-flight-ops/

...Getting the nod to fly into the history books was Lt. Cmdr. Jamie Struck, whose callsign is “Coach,” as he’s a bit older than his peers after doing a couple of hitches as an enlisted helicopter mechanic before getting a commission and naval aviator’s wings.

Now as a test pilot with Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23, his job is to ensure new equipment is compatible with the Navy’s aircraft to safely conduct flight operations.

No stranger to the new technology, Struck made land-based catapult shots and arrested landings. Monday’s operations, though, were the first time the testing moved shipboard.

“With all the nerves going, I probably didn’t sleep the best last night,” Struck told reporters on Ford’s flight deck, just a few feet from where his aircraft hit.

“The ship is beautiful, it definitely looks different from overhead and from during the approach, it looked a bit different,” he said. “It’s wider and the island is a little different and there’s a lot more real estate and that helps the deck crew and helps us.”

His aircraft was assisted in its glide slope through another new technology known as the “magic carpet,” but he said that both the arrested landing and his catapult shots felt different from the legacy systems on Nimitz-class carriers.

“The arresting gear, yes it felt different,” he said. “It’s electrically controlled and it’s designed to alleviate the landing load on the aircraft, so that wire is always going to run out to a certain distance.”

“It’s got a catch phase and trap phase — the catchphrase it grabs you, it feels just like the legacy gear.  But it kinds of lets go a bit and then, toward the end of the run out, it grabs you again.”

Shot off the deck felt different, too.

“With the old steam catapults, there’s all that steam, that energy built up and as soon as that hold-back lets go, it can be kind of violent, a lot of bouncing before you get off the deck,” Struck said.

“EMALS was different, it’s electromagnetic. And the hold-back release was less abrupt than what I’m used to, which is good. And the acceleration all the way to the end of the strip, the stroke was smoother but the performance was awesome.”...

[Suppressed]

Test pilots working on shaking the bugs out describe it differently.

That didn't address the main issues in the OP -- namely, reliability.  Performance might be great from a pilot-experience perspective, but still damaging of aurframes, impossible to maintain, and unreliable.

[rangerrebew]

And there are maybe 6,000 other personnel that disagree with the pilots---like the ones who get them safely on and off the ship.