Aircraft Carriers III

bd popeye said:

Honestly ...

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Obi Wan Russell said:

What I posted is not wrong. You are confusing political machinations with the original Naval plan. The contract to build both ships with penalty clauses for cancellation was signed to prevent any incoming administration from crippling the Royal Navy, as Cameron and Osbourne tried to do, The project was for the delivery of CEPP, Carrier Enabled Power Projection, and it had been established long before the first steel was cut that the only way to guarantee 24/7/365 availability was with two ships. The operating plan from the RN's point of view remains unchanged, attempts at interference from the politicians were always doomed to end in failure, just look at the positive publicity the QE has generated for the RN since completion. Not completing PoW would be so embarrassing for any sitting Government. That's the one thing they hate the most, public exposure of political incompetence, and they always have so much to go around!

Through the turbulent time 2010 to 2014 when Cameron finally admitted defeat on the carrier project, the RN kept quiet and carried on with the assumption they would get both carriers, and indeed they were right.

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Jura said:

Jul 27, 2018
the most recent on a two-carrier buy is ...

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A key senator said he is concerned about lingering problems with weapons elevators on the

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, even as the Pentagon is set to decide whether to fast-track purchases of the new carrier class.

Sen. James Inhofe said he's not yet opposed to purchasing two carriers at once from Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII).

However, he has spoken to Defense Secretary James Mattis about his concerns. The 2019 defense authorization bill puts the decision on a two-carrier purchase in Mattis' hands.

Supporters say the bulk buy will create economies of scale and save at least $2.5 billion. It would also shore up smaller defense contractors that supply HII's Newport News Shipbuilding division with parts and services.

The Newport News yard is the sole manufacturer of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers for the

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.

Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, is succeeding the late John McCain as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. His assessment on a proposed two-carrier buy came after a visit to the HII shipyard at Newport News on Dec. 3.

His visit and subsequent comments were first reported by Bloomberg.

The new weapons elevators are designed to move bombs faster from lower decks up to the flight deck. That will increase the number of sorties aircraft can fly and contribute to the ship's overall punch in combat.

Inhofe said he would continue to track progress on the elevators. "Until these elevators work, we only have 10 operational aircraft carriers despite a requirement for 12," he said in the email.

Technical problems

A recent Bloomberg story highlighted problems with the 11 elevators, including four instances of "uncommanded movements" since 2015.

At a Nov. 27 Senate hearing, Sen. Tim Kaine said the elevator problems seemed similar in scope to earlier challenges on the launch and arresting systems that prompted the Navy to assemble independent review teams.

Kaine wondered if a similar team was needed to sort through the weapons elevator problems.

James F. Geurts, the Navy's chief weapons buyer, said he would likely put together a team to look at the weapons elevator program in the long term, but not specifically to examine the 11 elevators on the Ford, where he said the Navy and shipbuilder are making progress.

The Ford entered the Newport News shipyard in July for post-shakedown work that is expected to last about a year.

At that same hearing, Geurts said he expected a decision on a two-carrier purchase by year's end. Such a move would affect the future USS Enterprise, a third Ford-class ship now undergoing advance work at Newport News, and a fourth ship.

Geurts said the savings would exceed the $2.5 billion he had quoted earlier.

A worthwhile meeting

Beci Brenton, an HII spokeswoman, said in an email company officials had "a very productive meeting" with Inhofe that included a tour of the Ford.

She acknowledged that completion had been delayed "due to a number of first-in-class issues associated with the first-time installation, integration and test of this new technology."

"In retrospect, building a fully functioning shore-based prototype would have identified (and resolved) these technical issues much sooner," she said. "The challenges associated with installing first-of-a-kind advanced weapons elevators aboard the ship are being met and overcome."

She said shipbuilders and the Navy "are on track to complete construction and test of all the weapons elevators by the end of the post-shakedown availability period."

Capt. Danny Hernandez, a Navy spokesman, confirmed that installation and testing should be completed July 2019. More work will need to be done on certifying five of 11 elevators.

"A dedicated team is engaged on these efforts and will accelerate this certification work and schedule where feasible," Hernandez said.

Wittman supports bulk purchase

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland, has exercised influence over the Navy's shipbuilding budget as chairman of the House Armed Services sea power panel.

He'll relinquish that position with the Democratic takeover of Congress, but has talked extensively with Navy officials about a two-carrier deal.

"I think it's very close to happening," he said. "I think it's just a matter of finalizing the numbers and how this would be executed."

Wittman says the Navy is working through its problems on Ford, and those risks will diminish as Newport News churns out more ships.

The Navy hasn't purchased two carriers at once since the defense buildup during the Reagan administration, but Wittman said the Ford program could pave the way for bulk purchases of other ships, such as large-deck amphibious assault ships, which are built at HII's shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Miss.

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hkbc said:

Hi Popeye, I remember back in the day you had some reservations regarding the level of automation and lack of people in the loop wrt to weapons handling on the QE class vis-a-vis standard US carrier practice, having seen video of the system in operation changed your views any? A step forward or dangerous over-automation?

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On this night Chief Evock’s team was filling orders from the carrier’s F/A-18 squadrons for a dozen unguided high-explosive bombs.....

.....The first of the bombs this night were ready in perhaps 10 minutes. Petty Officer First Class Joshua J. Austring, 28, roamed the line, ensuring that the components were tightened to the correct torque.

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bd popeye said:

Too, too Slow. With this system they can only build six bombs an hour?! C'mon now. On old Fightin' Hanna we could crank out quite a few more than that. Of course we had several teams building bombs. An average launch on an Average day saw 10-20 A-4s launch with six to eight bombs each. These launches took place every hour and a half to two hours for 12-16 hours everyday..day after day. That's a whole lot more that 6 bombs an hours.

Aboard JFK we had 1968 style conveyors and weapons elevators that were hydraulic. They seldom if ever worked correctly. This is one of the reasons JFK never made a Vietnam combat deployment. Eventualy those weapons elevators were replaced with electrical ones and the conveyors are removed.

Give me a bunch of well trained ordnancemen with strong backs and arms..some forklifts plenty of skids(weapons dollies) and we'll get the job done...we don't need no stinkin' automation..

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Jura said:

inside
November 23, 2018
Amongst a series of good news stories, Royal Navy ship numbers to be increased

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:


"Latest figures show the RN is currently 4.4% below intended strength, short of 1,350 people."

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• Ship's company: 3,532

After more than a decade of study, experimentation, modelling and simulation, the UK has successfully completed a first phase of testing using a shipborne rolling vertical landing (SRVL) manoeuvre for the Lockheed Martin F-35B on board the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Fifteen SRVL recoveries were performed using integrated test force (ITF) development aircraft BF-04 and BF-05 during the two periods of development testing (DT-1/DT-2) during the ship's recent first-of-class flight trials. Pilots and test engineers from the ITF embarked for the activity confirm that initial testing validated simulations and has given confidence in the innovative manoeuvre.

An SRVL recovery exploits the ability of the short take-off and vertical landing F-35B to operate in a semi-jetborne mode. Forward speed maintains airflow over the aircraft surfaces, providing additional wingborne lift to augment thrust from the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine, allowing it to land at weights significantly above the aircraft’s maximum hover limit.

While a vertical landing is still intended to be the primary recovery mode for the F-35B on board the RN’s two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, the size and arrangement of the vessels' flightdecks enables SRVL to be employed as an alternative, offering a significant increase in "bring-back" payload.

This will be most valued when the F-35B is recovering with external stores, particularly in hot weather/low pressure conditions, where vertical recovery margins are narrowed. The UK's previous-generation BAE Systems Harrier was often required to ditch ordnance before making a vertical recovery under such conditions.

Other benefits of the SRVL manoeuvre include reduced deck wear, extended engine life and reduced fuel burn.

When executing an SRVL recovery, a pilot descends the aircraft to a 200ft plateau to line up and decelerate, before flying short finals along a 7˚ glideslope at a speed of approximately 60kt (110km/h). Assuming 25kt wind over the deck, this equates to a 35kt overtake speed. The pilot can fly a manual approach or engage "Delta Flight Path" mode to automatically fly the glideslope with minimum intervention.

However, an SRVL recovery presents some inherent risk, given that the F-35B must approach the ship from aft using a precise glideslope and speed. Once on deck, the aircraft must use its own brakes to come to a stop.

A ship-referenced velocity vector is incorporated in the pilot's helmet-mounted display, to provide a flightpath marker corrected for ship speed. HMS Queen Elizabeth is also equipped with an SRVL-specific visual landing aid, in the form of a mini fixed array of lights in the flightdeck tramlines, which provides a stabilised glideslope indication.

The SRVL manoeuvre also requires close co-operation with the ship's landing signal officer (LSO) in the flying control tower, or "FLYCO". The LSO monitors the aircraft's approach to the deck to check that glideslope, airspeed, attitude and line-up remain within parameters.

BAE Systems F-35 STOVL test pilot Peter Wilson on 13 October became the first ITF pilot to recover to Queen Elizabeth using the SRVL manoeuvre. He had previously flown over 2,000 simulated recoveries using a full-motion simulator at the company's ship/air integration facility in Warton, Lancashire.

"In my view, this is the way to land that airplane on this carrier, because it gives you so much capability," he says. "At this point, if you want me to go and land an F-35B on Queen Elizabeth, I’m going to do an SRVL."

RN Cdr Nathan Gray, another of the ITF test pilots involved in DT-1/DT-2, observes that flight testing has proved the SRVL to be a benign manoeuvre, and suitable for fleet pilots. "It represents our biggest win from this test from an experimental point of view," he says. "SRVL will give us somewhere between 2,000lb and 3,000lb [880-1,320kg] of extra bring-back, which is phenomenal for a STOVL aircraft."

The 15 SRVL recoveries flown during DT-1/DT-2 were designed to demonstrate initial manoeuvre capability and gather evidence to validate prior simulations. "Throughout that initial demonstration, we've shown very good robustness to all the clearances, all the loads, all the handling qualities," says Martin Peters, BAE's F-35 flight-test manager and STOVL test lead. "It’s all been very good, and it looks like we've got a platform that is absolutely viable. What we will look to do next year [in DT-3] is expand that envelope."

Maximum bring-back still has to be established. Real-world data captured during DT-1/DT-2 will be fed back into laboratory models and the Warton simulator. "We’ll refine the models based on the real-world use cases [and] start to extrapolate from there," Peters says.

While the UK is currently the only F-35B operator planning to utilise the SRVL recovery, the US Marine Corps has also shown interest in the manoeuvre.

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Jura said:

from what I figured, the QE level of automation was the RN idea how to save money for salaries

EDIT "reduce lifetime operating costs" in the politically correct language LOL

(plus
Nov 25, 2018
)

briefly checking wiki,

Nimitz-class
Complement:

• Ship's company: 3,532

QE-class
Complement: 679 crew, not including air element;

ratio 3532/679 = 5.2 (five point two)

for displacements it's something like 100/64 which is about 1.5 (one point two)

so? the Nimitz-class operations have been perfected as far as I know, with about 35 sailors per 1kt of displacement;

in this sense the QE-class would require 64*35 = 2240 sailors, not 679! 2240 - 679 = 1561 "missing"

would be funny if it wasn't dangerous

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bd popeye said:

How long does it take the USN to assemble multiple bombs? read this;

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Yazzinra said:

My confusion was in assuming the politicians controlled the budget in the UK. Perhaps things work differently there than they do in the US? Ill be the first to admit my knowledge of their political system is limited, at best.

Though i do agree the RN wanted both carriers all along, everything id read over the years, including on this site, had suggested it might not have happened. Political rhetoric i guess?

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