Aircraft Carriers III

[cockneyjock1974]

I stand happily corrected

There's space enough!View attachment 39341

 

[bd popeye]

During her lay-up in Bremerton, she was extensively used as a parts hulk for the Navy's other aircraft carriers

This is normal. ALL CVs struck from the "Navy List" are used for spare parts. All catapults, anchors and anchor chains have been removed..plus hundreds upon hundreds of usable pieces of equipment...only Kitty Hawk is held in a reserve status.

Naval Vessel Register;

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[Jura The idiot]

oops until now I thought one of the advantages of the Fords should be a reactor lasting as long as the ship heck I believe I read it somewhere but whatever:
Ford Aircraft Carriers Designed with Midlife Refuelings Planned

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The Navy’s new class of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers will need midlife refuelings and overhauls much like those performed on the older Nimitz-class carriers, a senior Navy admiral said.

“The Ford class is designed for midlife refueling as well,” Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, commander, Naval Sea Systems Command, said in an answer to a question from Seapower.

Moore said that while designing a nuclear reactor to last the entire 50-year life of the ship was “technically feasible, it didn’t make sense from a cost standpoint. When you keep a ship 50 years you’ve got to bring it in to a midlife overhaul anyway. The refueling portion is only about 10 percent [of the refueling and comprehensive overhaul].”

Gerald R. Ford, delivered to the Navy on May 31, is designed for a service life of 50 years, and can expect to receive a three-year-long midlife refueling and comprehensive overhaul (RCOH) at the midpoint of that life, in the early 2040s.

The 10-ship Nimitz class is halfway through its RCOH cycle. Five carriers have completed RCOH and the sixth, USS George Washington, commissioned in 1993, is scheduled to begin its RCOH in August. The last Nimitz-class RCOH is expected to be completed in the early 2030s.

“It will be an eight-year gap,” Moore said of the period between the end of the RCOH for the last Nimitz-class ship and the beginning of the RCOH for Gerald R. Ford.

Moore noted that inactivations of Nimitz-class carriers beginning in the mid-2020s should counter-balance the gap in RCOH work as far as the workforce of Newport News Shipbuilding is concerned.

 

[bd popeye]

I wonder how much truth there is in this article and how much anti-military hate? This is about half the article. follow the link for the full Monty which goes on to tell about the arresting gear;

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The Navy’s next-generation aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, is a monument to the Navy’s and defense industry’s ability to justify spending billions on unproven technologies that often deliver worse performance at a higher cost.

The Ford program also provides yet another example of the dangers of the Navy and industry end-running the rigorous combat testing that is essential to ensuring we go to war with equipment that works.

The Navy had expected to have the ship delivered in 2014 at a cost of $10.5 billion.

Instead, because the Navy tried to develop more than a dozen new and risky technologies at the same time it was building the ship, the schedule has slipped by more than three years.

The problems with the ship’s systems, including the catapult, are well-known.

But President Donald Trump still caught virtually every Pentagon watcher off guard when he told Time magazine in May that he had directed the Navy to abandon the new “digital” aircraft catapult on future Ford-class carriers.

Instead he wants the Navy to revert to the proven steam catapults, which have been in use for decades.

The president is correct when he says there are significant problems with the Ford’s “digital” catapult, but abandoning it in future ships will pose significant problems.
The Ford’s “digital” catapult is, in fact, the Electromagnetic Launch System, or EMALS.

In the long run, it is intended to be lighter, more reliable, and less expensive than the steam system. Unfortunately, EMALS is immature technology. So far, the program has not lived up to the promises made.

Steam-powered catapults, though said to be maintenance-intensive, are proven technology. They have been in service with continuous upgrades and satisfactory reliability for more than half a century.

The new EMALS stores an enormous electrical charge -- enough to power 12,000 homes for three seconds -- and then quickly releases the current into massive electromagnets that push the shuttle down the track.

Testing has already revealed that the Navy underestimated the workload and the number of people necessary to operate the system. As a result, the Navy has to redesign some berthing areas to accommodate more people.

It was also supposed to increase the lifespan of aircraft by putting less stress on their airframes. Unfortunately, recent tests of land-based prototypes showed that the system actually overstressed F-18 airframes during launch.

Perhaps even more serious is that the design makes it impossible for the crew to repair a catapult while the ship is launching planes with other catapults. This is done as a matter of routine on current carriers as each catapult operates independently of the other.

The Navy has found there is no way to electrically isolate each EMALS catapult from the others during flight operations.

This means that repairing the failed catapult must wait until all flight operations have been completed, or, in the event that multiple launchers fail, all flights may have to be suspended to allow repairs.

This problem is particularly acute because the EMALS has a poor reliability track record. The system thus far fails about once every 400 launches.

That’s 10 times worse than the 4,166 launches between failures the system is supposed to achieve by contract.

At least four days of rapid-fire combat flights are to be expected at the beginning of any major conflict. At the current failure rate, there is only a 7 percent chance that the USS Ford could complete a four-day flight surge without a launch failure.

The decision to pursue immature EMALS technology has been a boon to contractors, particularly San Diego-based General Atomics.

With only a nuclear fusion magnetics background and no previous experience in carrier catapults, the company won the EMALS System development and demonstration contract in 2004. At the time, the contract was valued at $145 million.

This figure has predictably ballooned over the years as risky, not-yet-realized technology programs tend to do. The most recent figures show that the Navy will have spent approximately $958.9 million simply to develop this one component -- and more may be required to correct deficiencies.

The cost to build and install is another thing entirely. In January, the Navy awarded General Atomics another $532 million contract to install the system on the third-in-class Ford-class carrier, the USS Enterprise.

And although EMALS is problem-ridden and enormously expensive, replacing it with the proven steam catapult substitute would likely be more.

It would require a complete redesign of the nuclear reactor plant’s steam generating system. Because the Navy planned the Ford to be an electric ship, the reactor was not designed to produce service steam for major ship systems.

Furthermore, installing four new steam-powered catapult tracks would require a complete redesign of the supporting deck structure. The cost of both would be staggering and the delay may be upwards of two to three years.

 

[Jura The idiot]

I wonder how much truth there is in this article and how much anti-military hate? This is about half the article. follow the link for the full Monty which goes on to tell about the arresting gear;

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I'll show you something:

GAO: Navy carrier will be incomplete, cost more at delivery

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Published: November 21, 2014

2014, see? they saw the PR STUNT (the Ford delivery) coming three years ago! another PR STUNT will soon follow (the Ford commissioning)

instead of requesting the vendor to deliver the product (and not jokes like the Zumwalt now and the Ford now), the USN accepts and commissions obviously unfinished ships, and I of course wouldn't talk about anything minor, I talk about for example the aircraft carrier unable to launch aircraft for years!

so, going back to that old article:
"The Navy plans to meet the $12.9 billion cost cap for its new aircraft carrier by accepting the ship unfinished and spending more money afterward ..."
I'll wait and see what the FINAL cost is, if they after coupla more years realized some 'transformational technologies' were actually botched etc.

 

[bd popeye]

Ahemm.. I kinda knew this article below was coming but I did not want to be a spoiler..

Follow the link for the full Monty..

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As the US Navy struggles to figure out how it can reach its new goal of a 355 ship fleet—up from 275 ships today—as quickly as possible, it has been looking towards extending the life of the ships it already has in service. Now the service is also examining the possibility of selectively pulling ships out of mothballs, refurbishing them, and sending them back to the fleet. One ship in particular may have a better shot than others at sailing the high seas once again—the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63)—America's last operational conventionally fueled supercarrier.

Some of the other ships that would seem to be likely candidates for revival will probably be passed over—specifically the first five Ticonderoga class cruisers that sit quiet on the Delaware River. These ships didn't feature Mark 41 vertical launch systems, instead being equipped with twin-arm Mark 26 missile launchers and their associated magazines. But still, many have regarded their rickety reserve status a huge waste of latent surface warfare potential. Moore thinks otherwise, and probably for good reason.

The ships are vastly outdated compared to their active counterparts, and would take serious money to get them even close to their fleet counterparts standard. Not just that, but they have been cannibalized for spare parts in recent years. Moore says: "Most of those ships, from a combat systems perspective, are pretty obsolete...We probably wouldn’t bring them back and they’ve kind of been spare-parts lockers the last couple of years."

Regenerating old ships is all about balancing the cost of bringing them back into service based on what mission sets they could provide, how degraded a capability compared to their modern counterparts is acceptable, and how long they could remain in service once the money has been invested in them.

I'm guessing of course... if Kitty Hawk was placed back in service it will cost about $2-3..BILLION US Dollars and take about 3+ years.

 

[bd popeye]

This is what catapults are made for. You will never see a load like this going off a ski-ramp...yes I said never.

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MEDITERRANEAN SEA (June 7, 2017) An F/A-18F Super Hornet attached to the "Blacklions" of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 213 is fully loaded with 10 GBU-32 1,000 pound bombs aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). George H.W. Bush, part of the George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group, is conducting naval operations in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations in support of U.S. national security interests in Europe and Africa. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Matt Matlage/Released)

 

[bd popeye]

I talk about for example the aircraft carrier unable to launch aircraft for years!

Exactly....I'm beginning to doubt when we will ever see Gerald R Ford operate as an aircraft carrier..It shall happen eventually..HOWEVER >>>. In my opinion this will be another long, long wait.

Why did the USN except a CVN without a fully operational test of the catapults and arresting gear?

 

[bd popeye]

Why did the USN except a CVN without a fully operational test of the catapults and arresting gear?

In the words of that iconic American, Hulk Hogan, in Rocky III as he was pounding away on Rocky Balboa..."It's all part of the show".

In my opinion the USN needs to make this situation with CVN-78 right and quit half steppin'. GET IT DONE!!

Great post test bd..OUTSTANDING!!

 

[bd popeye]

I apologize to anyone that was offended by my remarks about CVN-78. The whole situation falls on the lap of former Pres. Obama and his appointed cronies for all the delays and cost over runs..... & D. Rumsfeld..(yes that Republican) for insisting all this unproven techno wizardry be installed aboard CVN-78..