Posted on 06/05/2017 8:28:16 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
Pres. Donald Trump used the Navy’s next-generation aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, as a backdrop to unveil his vision for the next defense budget in March 2017.
The moment was meant to symbolize his commitment to rebuilding the military, but it also positioned the president in front of a monument to the Navy’s and defense industry’s ability to justify spending billions in taxypayer dollars 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’s and industry’s end-running the rigorous combat testing that is essential to ensuring our fighting men and women 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. But the inevitable problems resulting from the concurrency the Navy built into developing Ford’s new and risky technologies, more than a dozen in all, caused the schedule to slip by more than three years and the cost to increase to $12.9 billion—nearly 25 percent over budget.
For all this time and money, “poor or unknown reliability of the newly designed catapults, arresting gear, weapons elevators, and radar, which are all critical for flight operations, could affect CVN-78’s ability to generate sorties, make the ship more vulnerable to attack or create limitations during routine operations.
The poor or unknown reliability of these critical subsystems is the most significant risk to CVN-78.”
(Excerpt) Read more at warisboring.com ...
So it was built on Obama's watch, but he blames Trump.
No, it's not Trump bashing...
Lot’s of Global Warming overpayments.
But is it carbon neutral?.................
The budget overrun is to be expected as this was new technology being designed for the ship. I think EMALS is great but seems like they should have backup. Or multiple EMALS. Guess need to let them work the bugs out.
I visited a fabricator in Texas that was building the EML fab and it sat for several years in the corner of their shop with an engineering hold.
This kind of thing happens when gumints decide how to do something and dictate to engineers to make it happen.
Is this why the Chevy fans of old used to say
FORD means Fix Or Repair Daily?
At least the oil lamps in munitions storage give off enough light.
Can’t speak for all the systems, but cats and arresting gear will, in the future have to operate with a wider range of launch and landing weights.
Cat will need to throw everything from drones to supply aircraftinto the air.
Steam is not as controllable. Electric systems are.
Weapon system acquisition is very broken. Everything takes too long, ends up being too expensive, and often ends up failing to deliver desired capability.
I sometimes think that the goal is just to spend money and keep people employed. If a weapon system actually ends up being produced ... well ... I guess that’s nice.
War Is Boring, War On the Rocks, and several other defense industry blogs are consistently showing their biases. Don’t think for one second that Trump has any allies in the DC “think tank” and Defense Industry cesspools. Trump will disrupt their feed troughs (income tax “revenue”). Nothing but a lot of pseudo intellectual masterbation. Not coincidentally, there wasn’t similar complaining during the last precedent’s term.
Didn’t the Russians just demo a super high speed “carrier killer” cruise missile?
I always thought it was Found On Road Dead.
Change orders and diversity compliance add the most to the cost. Buy what you want, want only what you need. Put development in a separate category.
In fairness to FORD fans....First On Race Day.
IMHO no navy ship should be named after anyone alive.
Who the he11's making these decisions?
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