SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

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 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. And, the cost has increased to $12.9 billion -- nearly 25 percent over budget.

For all this time and money, a 2015 Defense Department operational testing report concluded that “poor or unknown reliability” of the newly designed catapults, arresting gear, weapons elevators and radar could affect the Ford’s ability to generate sorties, make the ship more vulnerable to attack, or create limitations during routine operations.

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.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission