Naval Air: CVN Ford Develops Another Problem
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March 20, 2023: At the end of 2022 the first of the new American Ford class CVN (nuclear-powered aircraft carrier) finally left for its long delayed operational stress test cruise. This means two months at sea, operating as a fully functional aircraft carrier. Unfortunately this cruise revealed more equipment flaws, the main ones being continued problems with EMALS (the catapults) and arrestor gear. That was not expected as the recent repairs to four JBD (Jet Blast Deflectors) mounted on the flight deck were monitored and found to have worked. The JDBs are relatively ancient tech, first introduced in the 1950s as more powerful jet aircraft became standard on aircraft carriers and deck crews needed protection from the dangerous blats of heat coming out of jet engines as the aircraft prepared to take off.
In August 2022 the Ford JBDs were found to have defective components that corroded and caused JBDs to fail. Substandard components have long been a problem in shipbuilding, especially when it comes to warships. These require a lot of exotic components not found on commercial vessels. Suppliers will often deliver substandard parts, either because of incompetence or attempts at fraud. This is another item on the long list of failures by the navy shipbuilding bureaucracy. The Ford-class ships are not exceptional when it comes to these problems, just the most expensive ship plagued by these problems.
There seemed to be no end of problems that delayed this operational stress test cruise, which is meant to demonstrate that the Ford, the first of a new class of carriers, is ready for decades of service. The stress test cruise showed that the Ford could operate under simulated combat conditions, but not as effectively as existing Nimitz class CVNs. Nimitz uses older tech while the Fords were equipped with updated versions of many key items, some of which didn’t perform as expected and, of those, some were predicted to fail with those predictions ignored. There were several reasons for this, starting with poorly thought out new technology that was not adequately tested before being accepted for installation on the Ford. The flawed items included new catapults, arrestors systems and elevators that brought munitions to the flight deck where they were attached to aircraft. There were some other problems with the radars and engines, but these proved easier to fix than the flight deck equipment. The JBDs were not new tech and failures were the result of substandard parts. There may be other substandard components in the Ford that will not perform reliably for as long as expected.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htnavai/articles/20230320.aspx
