Naval News: New Technologies Improve Ford-class Carrier Sortie Rate
Improved design layouts and advanced technologies onboard the US Navy’s (USN’s) new Ford-class aircraft carriers are enabling enhanced aircraft operations onboard and a higher sortie generation rate, a USN officer onboard first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford confirmed.
New design approaches including installing three aircraft elevators (rather than the four onboard the predecessor Nimitz-class carriers), moving the ship’s island further aft, and having the refuelling station built into the flight deck, alongside introducing new technology for example with the advanced weapons elevators (AWEs), means aircraft onboard can be re-fuelled, re-loaded, re-located, and re-launched more effectively, Commander Richard Rosenbusch, Ford’s Assistant Air Officer, told an onboard media briefing while the carrier visited Portsmouth, UK during its maiden operational deployment.
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WNU Editor: The USS Gerald Ford's maiden deployment has come to an end.
That wraps up Ford’s maiden deployment ⚓️ #WeAreWarship78 #IntegrityAtTheHelm pic.twitter.com/l1OMRmQRJJ
— USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) (@Warship_78) November 30, 2022
4 comments:
after about 15 years of building and trials they finally got her to work.
Can you image a full scale war where you have 3 or 4 carriers sunk. and maybe 2 or 3 damaged?
Don't think there will be replacements ready soon enough
2:19 is making the capability versus capacity argument
The Americans go with capability because they have the wonder weapon disease and because they assume the ability to complete missions. That is there will be enough platforms up at any given time to complete assigned missions. They must fudge those calculations.
A WW2 magazine had an article that the best tank as not the Sherman (easy to manufacture and maintain), the Panther or King Tiger (very good but low production rates, hard to maintain).
They argued the best tank was the T-34 from a manufacturing and quality viewpoint. Where T-34 had poor welds, it did not matter since it would not be an issue. the calculated the combat life of the tank versus the life of a bad weld and saw it was not a problem. The tanks were good enough, produced in great quantities and had great design with regards to armor protection and gun size.
Good news! They should be able to get more of the F-35s off the deck when the hypersonics are detected.
The initial post was mine. My main concern is weapon (especially sophisticated complex weapons) replacement during war time and US industrial efficiency.
Issue:
US Military ship building history in the last 30 years has not had a great reputation. Numerous problems in both repair and building.
In a new era of peer or near peer competition can the US win a war with its inefficient history of ship building.?
If it takes 10 years of more to get replacements and you need replacements within a month or two months, how is that going to work out for you.
Best case answer...not good.
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