CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
The shore installation with one catapult and one energy storage was without these problems. The ship installation with four catapults and three energy storages has the problems.
That kind of proves my point, by the time US began to face problems in their ship mounted EMALS, China's program was already close to finish, nothing major can be learnt from US since the problems have not fully manifested and cause were not clear, solution was not in place. The two (China and US) programs are just too close in progress for anyone to learn lessons (if anything) from one another.

Storage is not the only problem, AAG had even bigger troubles which shares the same tech as EMALS. We know this for two years at least, there was a congressional report on the subject. I was wondering if the post this time is telling some newly founded problems. It seems not.
 

Anlsvrthng

Captain
Registered Member
The shore installation with one catapult and one energy storage was without these problems. The ship installation with four catapults and three energy storages has the problems.
And they haven't had maintenance ,ordnance movement ,foot traffic, forklift activity on the top of the catapult. On sea , in salty environment.
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
That kind of proves my point, by the time US began to face problems in their ship mounted EMALS, China's program was already close to finish, nothing major can be learnt from US since the problems have not fully manifested and cause were not clear, solution was not in place. The two (China and US) programs are just too close in progress for anyone to learn lessons (if anything) from one another.

Storage is not the only problem, AAG had even bigger troubles which shares the same tech as EMALS. We know this for two years at least, there was a congressional report on the subject. I was wondering if the post this time is telling some newly founded problems. It seems not.

On the contrary, below we can see serious EMALs and AAG design flaws publicly mentioned back in 2017.

And these are the sort of flaws that are easy for Chinese designers to avoid, as long as the ship has not yet been built.


Like earlier carriers, The Ford has four launch catapults so that (theoretically), should one fail, the ship could continue operations using the remaining three. But the Navy found there is no way to electrically isolate each EMALS catapult from the others during flight operations, raising questions about the system’s operational suitability. The massive electrical charge needed to power the catapults is stored in three Energy Storage Groups, each using four heavy flywheel-generators. The three groups together power all four catapults and cannot be electrically disconnected from a single failed catapult to allow repairs while the other three catapults launch planes.

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. Thus there is the possibility that the ship might not be able to launch any planes at a critical moment because the EMALS designers failed to provide independent power for each of the four catapults.
...
And, in an astonishing design oversight exactly like that of the EMALS, General Atomics engineers made it impossible to repair AAG failures without shutting down flight operations: the AAG power supply can’t be disconnected from the high-voltage supply while flights continue.

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latenlazy

Brigadier
On the contrary, below we can see serious EMALs and AAG design flaws publicly mentioned back in 2017.

And these are the sort of flaws that are easy for Chinese designers to avoid, as long as the ship has not yet been built.
Shitty electrical design, basically. Sounds like a failure of interpreting requirements into implementation.
 
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