Aircraft Carriers III

asif iqbal said:

Wow looks so busy !

4 islands packed out

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Jura said:

Mar 26, 2019
and
New Italian aircraft carrier launched 15 months after construction start

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bd popeye said:

Theodore Roosevelt is conducting routine operations in the Eastern Pacific. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Erick A. Parsons/Released)

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bd popeye said:

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An aircraft carrier is in Alaska for Exercise Northern Edge for the first time in a decade, as the service continues to prioritize re-learning how to operate in the Arctic.

Northern Edge 2019 is a high-end joint exercise hosted by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and focused on air warfare that runs May 13 through 24. About 10,000 personnel are participating, about half of which come from the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group currently operating in the Gulf of Alaska. Strike group assets include Carrier Strike Group 9 leadership, USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), Carrier Air Wing 11, USS Russell (DDG-59), USS Kidd (DDG-100), USS John Finn (DDG-113) and USNS Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO-187).

Rear Adm. Dan Dwyer, who commands the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, told USNI News in a phone call from aboard the carrier that “this is one of the premier exercises for the INDO-PACIFIC commanders. … Northern Edge is designed to sharpen all of our skills, tactical combat operating skills; improve our ability to command and control forces, establish those command relationships; develop our communication networks; with an overall goal of increasing interoperability within the joint force, particularly in the INDO-PACOM region.”

He said the exercise covers command and control over both land and maritime domains, and so “all participants, whether it’s the air wing or the destroyers, are integral to that mission set and each all plug into the higher command and control piece” to share information and work together under a single joint force commander.

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After talking to "the catapult people" about the

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's new state-of-the-art system that launches aircraft from carriers, the president said he's ordering a return to steam systems on all new flattops.

President Donald Trump is

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, known as EMALS, that was installed on the

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. Now, he says he'll mandate that future aircraft carriers return to the legacy system for launching aircraft.

"I'm just going to put out an order -- we're going to use steam," he told sailors and

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aboard the

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on Monday during his recent trip to Japan. "We don't need that extra speed."

The Navy began launching and recovering aircraft aboard its newest

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carrier using the EMALS technology almost two years ago. The system is designed to put less stress on aircraft by using electromagnetic catapults.

It's also meant to be more reliable and accurate, while requiring less maintenance than the older steam-based system, according to a Navy news release announcing its initial launches.

But steam, Trump said, has worked "perfectly" for 65 years. No one knows how the newer technology will hold up in combat, he said.

"I can imagine, in the case of battle, it must be very delicate, OK?" Trump said.

This isn't the first time Trump has made public comments about his

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. After a visit to the Ford, Trump told Time magazine in 2017 that sailors aboard told him the new system was "not good." He promised a return to "goddamned steam" during that interview.

Now, he appears to be honoring that promise.

"We want to go with steam," he told the troops on the Wasp. "They're always coming up with new ideas. They're making planes so complex you can't fly them. ... We all want innovation, but it's too much.

"There's never been anything like the steam catapults," Trump added.

San Diego-based aeronautical systems company General Atomics was awarded a $737 million contract in 2015 to deliver an advanced arresting gear and EMALS for the second Ford-class carrier, the John F. Kennedy. In 2017, the same company got a $532 million contract for another EMALS to be used on the carrier Enterprise, the Navy's third Ford-class flattop.

"I won't tell you this because it's before my time by a little bit, but they have a $900 million cost overrun on this crazy electric catapult," Trump said. "And I said, 'What was wrong with steam?'"

The president took an impromptu vote on the two systems during his speech on the Wasp, asking the service members to cheer for the one they prefer. When he called for cheers for steam, it got a noticeably louder response than the EMALS. When that system got one cheer from someone in the crowd, Trump joked that "he works for the enemy."

Delivery of the first EMALS was

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when testers found problems launching heavy aircraft.

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Jura said:

I think you have two problems:

here the problem is still the same Managers sit in vendors' chairs, and the same Program Officers sit in Navy oversight chairs
(plus Mr. Stackley, previously responsible for the USN Research, Development and Acquisition, is still the acting SecNav!!)

those individuals will keep saying how wonderful game changing revolutionary transformational results they'll eventually achieve


here the problem is while indeed only projects which promised quantum leap and stuff had had a chance to get funded under Don, he quit in 2006 (zero-six, not sixteen), so since then the USN, the Congress and others has had enough time to realize what a BLUNDER the concurrency is, by just looking at, in last let's say five years:
F-35s (where the problem is aggravated by 'one size fits all' attempt);
LCSs;
the Zumwalts;
the Fords ... and they might've just switched back to building for example the Nimitzes again (and another working models for the other programs I mentioned) but they didn't, making those programs 'too big to fail'

I'll leave it at that (for now

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