"USS Ford Carrier Design in Trouble" Topic

Man, I thought the F-35 is/was a boondoggle, along with the LCS', but looks like we could have a new "winner", the Ford class carriers:

link

Depressing……

New tech needs work… say it ain't so?

Not like an electromagnetic catapult is super-complex, we have linear-motor trains and coilguns using the same tech, and we've had linear-motor trains since the 1970s.

Bring back the Essex class.

Naval boondoggles are the worst because of the huge amount of money involved. Ships are extremely expensive, complicated critters.

These issues will be worked out. The people who designed it along with the crew that uses it will figure it out. The sky is not falling on the USS Ford.

Apparently it is, Lion, since they can't get it to work, and can't work on one if it breaks down. They have to shut them ALL down, including the working ones, meaning the carrier would be a sitting duck.

The real problem is that the Navy won't do shock testing on the Ford to find weak points in the design until the second ship in the class is built. That means that any design (or construction) flaws have to be fixed by rebuilding the second ship, instead of correcting the design and building it right the first time. This sort of rebuild is enormously expensive.

The Navy has never done this before …

LCS Shock Trials Were Less Severe Than Navy Standard link

…and these ships are supposed to replace FREAKING MINESWEEPERS!!!!!!

No, they are supposed to act as minehunters using offboard systems and so shouldn't be operating close to minefields. At least in theory

I thought we were mainly clearing at least surface mines with helos.

The bottom mines are no doubt a bit trickier to clear, but back in the 1980s, drones were supposed to do that.

Yes, both of which LCS carries when configured for mine countermeasures

@Thresher: Yeah, I read that, and I have a hard time believing that the Navy would build something that couldn't be tagged out for maintenance.

I think General Atomics needs to foot the bill for repairing that screwup. And BuShips needs to sack whoever approved it.

This is another example of why I believe the American military is in decline and if things don't turn around soon the United States will fall behind both the Russians and the Chinese military hardware. The F–35, LCS, and the new Ford carriers are only the tip of the iceberg.

The US military complex seems to be obsessively focused on ultra high tech solutions to military systems design and procurement. Instead of concentrating on incremental improvements over existing systems, as a result, they are producing extremely sophisticated and immature technologies like the electric rail launch system on this new carrier. The result is that you end up with very expensive weapons systems, that is lacked reliability and robustness needed for combat situations.

Another example is the DD–1000 Zumwalt class destroyers, mounting the electromagnetic rail guns. It's been an outrageous amount of money to construct the ship, only to find out that they cannot afford to purchase the ammunition required because of the exorbitantly high cost per round. As a result, they have a new destroyer, with a high-tech gun but no ammunition that they can afford. Now they're scrambling to design and build a low-cost alternative (i.e. less capable) ammo that they can afford.

At the same time funds are unavailable for basic maintenance of existing equipment and proper training for the military personnel. For example the rash of naval collisions over the last five years between U.S. Navy ships and civilian vessels due to poor training in basic seamanship.

I know our brave sailors and officers of the military will do their best if we do find ourselves in a military conflict somewhere. I fear that we are going to lose a lot of good people because none of their hardware works worth a darn.