The Navy's Brand New Aircraft Carrier Has (Yet Another) Major Problem

[jpak]

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-navys-brand-new-aircraft-carrier-has-yet-another-major-26044

Brand-new Navy aircraft carrier and floating catastrophe USS Gerald R. Ford was forced to return to Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia after encountering issues with its propulsion train, Navy Times reports — the second critical failure in the propulsion system to roil the next-generation supercarrier, after a previously undisclosed failure was initially discovered months ago.

-The engines don’t work. Well, sort of: According to Navy Times, problems “reside in the mechanical components associated in turning steam created by the nuclear plant into spinning screws that power the ship through the water,” although Naval Sea Systems Command spokesman Bill Couch asserted that the new problem was different from an earlier problem identified by the crew in January and publicly disclosed this month. NAVSEA told Bloomberg that shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls identified the issue as a “manufacturing defect” rather than an overall design flaw.

This is what testing is supposed to accomplish. Sure, the headlines sound bad, but naval warfare reporter Chris Cavas rightfully points out that these errors turn up all the time in pre-service shakedown; indeed, the Associated Press notes that the Ford was expected to steam to the Newport News in July to fix any existing technical issues, of which there are many.“Ford has been tasked with conducting critical test and evaluation operations that identify construction and design issues,” NAVSEA spokesman Colleen O’Rourke told Navy Times. “As a continuation of that testing and evaluation process, Ford got underway to conduct an independent steaming event that would allow the ship and its crew to continue testing its systems and procedures.”

-Yet another issue… News of the Ford’s propulsion issues comes months after an intensive assessment, conducted by the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation and published in January, revealed a slew of technical problems plaguing the Pentagon’s first new carrier design in nearly four decades. Those problems included “poor or unknown reliability” among critical systems and, most embarrassingly, inconsistencies with that brand-new “digital” Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System (EMALS) that President Donald Trump railed against last year.

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[gratuitous]

1. Let's build five more of them!

It's not like we have anything else to blow a few gazillion dollars on. Why not have these floating fortresses sailing around the planet defending against non-existent threats? They're really big and really sexy! Who cares if we can't feed our own citizens?

[uponit7771]

8. +1, at this point they are work programs for red States seeing

...an anti-ship missile is $1 million and a Chinese can lob 50 of them at this ship at one time.

[lpbk2713]

2. Not enough hamsters.

[Cyrano]

3. The ship is just pissed about its name

[HopeAgain]

4. It's not like they are struggling with new-fangled technology

They have been working with steam turning screws since the earliest steamships. Our defense dollar at work! I'm sure the contractors get paid regardless of the screw-ups.

[hack89]

6. This a brand new propulsion system

new reactor, new control systems, new electrical generation systems, new everything.

It is in fact new-fangled technology.

[VMA131Marine]

5. This does not sound like a catastrophic problem

a design defect would certainly be more serious.

While these are expensive ships, they don't cost that much more than the preceding Nimitz class when you look at them in 2018 dollars ($9.36B per unit for Nimitz vs $12.998B for Ford). Like the Nimitz class before it, these ships are designed for a 50-year life and the first of the Nimitz-class is approaching that threshold (commissioned in 1975). The last Nimitz built was the George HW Bush, commissioned in 2009 so the costs and construction of the new ships can be drawn out over a long period of time as the older ships reach the end of their useful lives. The cost of decommissioning a Nimitz-class carrier is estimated to be up to $900M to recycle the ship and its reactor.

[uponit7771]

7. A Chinese anti ship missile cost 1 million, 50 of them at this ship destroys 1 billion

... of machine.

The MIC is now a work program 4 red States

[politicaljunkie41910]

12. Well thank goodness our Aircraft Carriers are equiped with missile defense systems that do work.

That technology has been around about 40 years and it works very well.

[uponit7771]

15. Not for 50 missiles at one time

[jpak]

16. That's why they are screened by destroyers and cruisers (and subs)

n/t

[workinclasszero]

9. Quote from the last decent GOP president

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

[lpbk2713]

10. That was from a time when (R)s dared to speak for the people.

Instead of big business.

So long ago and far away.

[workinclasszero]

13. Yeah it's hard to believe that was a Republican

They actually gave a shit about the country and people that work for a living.

Long ago and far away indeed.

[BannonsLiver]

11. Ike?

[workinclasszero]

14. Sure was

And from the current red state hell Kansas to boot.