Aircraft Carriers III

Jura said:

Oct 9, 2018
kinda related is

"For the first time in nearly 30 years, a U.S. aircraft carrier entered the Arctic Circle Oct. 19 to conduct operations in the Norwegian Sea."

etc.:
Harry S. Truman Strike Group Enters Arctic Circle, Prepares for NATO Exercise

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Story Number: NNS181019-03Release Date: 10/19/2018 8:43:00 AM

Click to expand...

Operating in the Arctic didn’t stop the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group from conducting flight operations or surface and undersea warfare missions, but it did force leadership to focus on the logistics that kept those ships running.

Though the aircraft carrier was well suited to handle the heavy seas of the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea, the cruiser and destroyers escorting USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) were limited in their ability to operate in extreme conditions, and the logistics ships that bring fuel and dry cargo were even more limited, according to strike group commander Rear Adm. Gene Black, who spoke to USNI News today from aboard Truman.

“Essentially it was a question of which weather windows could support us getting alongside the logistics ships. Because of the distances, they were covering, sometimes the two to three days of decent weather wouldn’t allow them to come up. But we had planned for that,” he said, and the carrier brought extra supplies with it in case there were longer-than-usual gaps between resupplies at sea. Black said the strike group had a few good underway replenishments and saw no operational impact from the challenges of getting the supply ships up to such high latitudes.

As a lesson learned he would pass along to the next strike group commander operating in that region – which hasn’t been done since the early 1990s – Black said, “you’ve got to be agile, and when you see a weather window, an opportunity to rendezvous to take fuel, you need to grab it.”

“You’ve got to know when it’s time to head for shelter or to get out of the way of a storm. We ended up leaving Trident Juncture a little bit earlier than we would have wanted to, but we had a storm with 30-foot-plus seas coming and that’s not a good day at sea for anybody,” he continued when asked about lessons learned.
“Start talking about secure-for-sea, and start talking about being prepared for the cold well in advance. The more you talk about it, the more folks go and check and double check, the less likely you are to have anything get thrown around by the heavy seas and something gets damaged or hurt, which is something we were quite well prepared for and I was very pleased with that.”

Black noted that he had to give careful consideration to the weather and “be very mindful of the size of the seas, because while the carrier can easily operate in bigger seas, we need to be careful of the cruiser and destroyers, that we don’t unintentionally beat them up – because the motion on them is obviously, being a fraction of the tonnage of the carrier, significantly greater.”

As far as personnel goes, though, he noted the operations in the Arctic Circle were more grueling on the carrier, whose flight deck personnel might be launching and recovering planes for 12 to 15 hours a day in icy conditions.

“Operating a carrier in more northern latitudes presents some obvious challenges. There were extremes of environmental conditions – higher sea states, higher wind conditions and significantly colder temperatures than we had nominally operated in and trained on over the last really three decades or so,” Truman commanding officer Capt. Nick Dienna told USNI News in the same interview.
“We spent a lot of time planning for it, we spent a significant amount of time procuring specific gear, and also specific capacity and things like lubricants for much of our equipment (to optimize them for the cold weather). But at the end of the day, carrier operations are carrier operations, flight operations are flight operations, and while certainly in those environmental extremes we need to be cognizant of potential impacts and we need to be a little bit more methodical, quite frankly this ship was built to operate in those environments, and we operated here regularly in the mid- to late-80s and into the 90s. In many ways it was simply regaining our proficiency in those environments and then learning as we go, and I’m incredibly proud of the efforts of our sailors operating on a day-to-day basis in what I would argue is perhaps the most unforgiving environment that we operate in as an aircraft carrier.”

The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group sailed into the Arctic Circle on Oct. 19 and spent about two weeks operating there – conducting flight operations on its own before joining with Norwegian military forces in the Vestfjorden region and then participating in Trident Juncture 2018, the largest NATO exercise in years.

“Our support to Trident Juncture reflects NATO’s foundation of partnerships, cooperation and preserving lasting peace, and provided our strike group an invaluable opportunity to work closely with our NATO allies and partners – to learn from them on their home turf, or home waters, enhance our capabilities and become stronger together as we work toward mutual goals,” Black said.
“Over the past several months, in every area we’ve operated, I have relied on the skills, the capabilities and the dedication of a team of teams within the strike group. Our presence here in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, and previously in the North Atlantic around Iceland, the North Sea, in the Norwegian Sea, and then north of the Arctic Circle, demonstrates to our allies and partners that we will uphold our commitments, regardless of the vastness or the unforgiving nature of the sea. The practices we refine and the lessons we learn from this historic deployment will benefit those who follow Truman for years to come.”

Both Dienna and Black said participating in Trident Juncture and operating in the Arctic Circle were rewarding experiences for them and their crew.

“I think the biggest thing for me was one day when we operated in the fjords in company with multiple Norwegian ships, conducted flight operations in that environment fully integrated with our Norwegian partners after only a couple of days of being up there. The seamless way that we were able to, primarily through the efforts of the Norwegians, to be able to conduct full-spectrum operations in probably the most challenging area I’ve ever operated in was simply extraordinary, and I know everybody onboard is taking a lot of pride in that effort,” Dienna said.

Black agreed, adding, “the Norwegians went out of their way to partner with us: we got access to their ranges, our helicopters operated with their SEALs, our small ships operated with theirs, one of their frigates joined my carrier strike group and operated with every bit of the intensity and professionalism of one of our ships. And it was an absolute highlight that we could show up, never having operated together, and come together and operate at the highest level and in one of the most demanding environments that we could face.”

Click to expand...

Huntington Ingalls Industries executives expect the future aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) to launch by the end of 2019, which is ahead of schedule and will occur roughly six years since the christening of first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78).

Kennedy – about 84 percent structurally complete and 53 percent complete overall – is ahead of schedule and fewer manhours are being used to build the ship, Mike Petters, chief executive of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), said Thursday during a conference call discussing the company’s third quarter financial results with Wall Street analysts.

“I think [Government Accountability Office] did a report and pointed out that the best manhour reduction from one ship to the next in the carrier program was like 9 percent,” Petters said. “Our performance today is 15 percent.”

For the quarter, HII reported revenues of $2.1 billion, compared to revenues of $1.9 billion a year ago. Earnings for the quarter were $229 million, compared with earnings of $149 million a year ago, according to the company’s

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

filings.

The use of digital shipbuilding imagery is a major reason for the reduction in manhours, Petters said. The images are more accurate and provide workers a more precise guide of what jobs need to be accomplished, reducing the time to perform tasks and cutting the number of jobs requiring rework. Long-term, HII’s goal is for all ship designs to be 3-D and digital, Petters

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

For HII, securing a long-sought-after two-carrier contract for CVN-80 and CVN-81 relies heavily on proving the follow-on Ford-class carriers can be built on time and within budget, Petters said. The Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act authorizes a “two-carrier buy if anticipated savings can be confirmed,” Petters said.

Currently, Congress has set a cap for Kennedy at $11.4 billion, which if maintained, would represent nearly 15 percent drop in price from Ford’s $13 billion price tag. Interestingly, a 15 percent price drop is what HII officials have previously stated was the goal for the third Ford-class ship.

Whether the Navy and HII can achieve such savings has been a near constant source of debate on Capitol Hill. Critics of Ford’s construction, which ran billions of dollars over budget and two years behind schedule, often cite this history when voicing skepticism of Kennedy’s schedule.

“CVN-78 costs over $2 billion more than estimated and the Navy accepted delivery of the carrier over two years late, yet still before it was complete,” the GAO said in a

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

Production manhours are the top reason costs can balloon, according to the report. However, the Navy’s plan for building CVN-79 was considered by GAO analysts as overly optimistic regarding scheduling and accounting for various risk factors that could delay construction and drive up costs.

“For example, the Navy is unlikely to achieve planned construction efficiencies and is still developing technology necessary to meet requirements. Therefore, costs for CVN-79 are likely to exceed the $11.4 billion estimate,” the GAO report states.

When discussing Kennedy’s progress on Thursday, Petters said by beating past expectations for reducing manhours and staying within budget, HII will be in a strong position at a time defense spending is expected to get tougher.

“I’m pretty happy with where we are because I think we are in a much more competitive position and I think our products are going to be more affordable,” Petters said. “In an environment where every dollar in the budget is a knife fight, that’s not a bad place for us to be.”

Click to expand...

Jura said:

Oct 8, 2017
... and on Friday she sailed off from Toulon, I now noticed in the Russian blog post

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

where you can see pictures like this one:

Click to expand...

Russia Admits That It Can’t Retrofit Aircraft Carrier After Accident

Russian officials admitted that they no longer can service Russia’s lone aircraft carrier following a recent sinking of a large floating dry dock.

Following the sinking of one of the world’s largest dry docks on October 29 in a shipyard in the far northwest part of Russia, officials have finally admitted that they are unable to continue work on Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, for the time being. While Russia’s shipbuilding industry is reportedly looking into alternatives, no timely and viable solution to continue retrofitting work on the Russian Navy’s flagship has emerged to date.

“We have alternatives actually for all the ships except for [the aircraft carrier] Admiral Kuznetsov. Our enterprises are in operation, [including] the Nerpa [Ship Repair Factory],” the head of Russia’s United Ship-Building Corporation (USC), Alexei Rakhmanov, is quoted as saying on November 7 by TASS news agency. “After all, we can perform certain docking works in Severodvinsk, not far from Murmansk. We don’t feel any special problems in this regard.”

However, the Russian shipbuilding industry does not possess a large enough facility to accommodate the carrier and it will take at least six to 12 months to recover the sunken floating dry dock. According to open source information, Russia would require international support for any such complex recovery operation as it does not possess the equipment to lift the massive drydock from the seabed on its own.

While work in the ship’s interior can continue, absent a large floating dry dock, it is unlikely that Russia will be able to keep up with the current overhaul schedule, as all work on the ship’s bilge had to cease. Initially, the carrier was to return to active duty within the next two years. Shorty after the incident, there were reports that Severodvinsk shipyard possesses another floating dock, PD-1, that could be used to continue work on the carrier. However, following an evaluation, it was determined that the facility would not be able to accommodate a warship the size of the Admiral Kuznetsov.

The Swedish-made PD-50 drydock reportedly sank when the Admiral Kuznetsov was being pulled out after the failure of a pump system on the night of October 29. As a result of the sinking, a crane fell on the carrier’s deck leaving a hole above the waterline that measures 4 by 5 meters. The accident also injured four workers. The Russian government has set up a commission to investigate the sinking. After the conclusion of the investigation, the commission is set to offer its recommendation whether to recover the PD-50 or look for alternative ways to complete work on the carrier.

The Admiral Kuznetsov was commissioned in 1990 and last underwent a two-year refit between 1996 and 1998. The Russian Navy’s 55,000-ton flagship has never been deployed for longer than six months and famously had to be followed by an oceangoing tug boat during all of its sea voyages due to the carrier’s poor reliability and questionable performance during a recent deployment to Syria in 2016.

Click to expand...

According to local media reports in Russia, when the only Russian Kuznetsov aircraft carrier completed(??) the maintenance work, the floating dock suddenly sank. The accident caused two tower cranes to collapse, one of which fell into the bay and the second fell on the hull of the aircraft carrier, causing injuries to the hull and personnel. Recently, some netizens uploaded a high-definition map of the Russian aircraft carrier after the accident. (Source: Caiyun Xiangjiang)

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...