Sort of kidding but this is the most advanced ship of it's type in the world. It has electronics that a few years back were in development. Who has been on one of the aircraft carriers? I was lucky the first one for me was the USS Enterprise. I have been on the USS Hornet at Alameda NAS (now decommissioned) Base now civilian ... Hornet is the ship that picked up astronauts and Nixon flew to the ship to greet the astronauts. Then the fear was bringing bacteria to Earth. Can't end the report and not mention that Saturday, 7/22/2017, Trump participated in commissioning the ship. A rather clean looking ship to me.
But there are no urinals on the USS Ford, no Marine detachment and they don't know if the catapult even works.
How can that be? Urinals? Thousands of men are on that ship. I think AirCraft carriers can protect themselves. Why can't the Navy do guard duty? As to the catapult ?? I am under the impression it is state of the art and uses electronics.
They have toilets instead of urinals. Everything is standardized as unisex. Apacherat thinks that means the end of the Navy.
Sea Duty pretty much disappeared under the Clinton Administration. One of the biggest frustrations I have now is that 2 of the most important "classical duties" of the Marine Corps (protecting Navy ships and bases) have both been removed. And I agree, the launching system is so much junk in my opinion. It has potential, but I think they are rushing it into service much to soon. Better to have taken say the Enterprise or Nimitz and used them as testbeds for a few years first instead of placing it untested as the main system for an entire class of ships. Urinals have pretty much disappeared from the military. I am staying in a brand new barracks at the moment, finished just a few months ago. 3 buildings, 1 exclusively for women, 2 for men. And none of them have urinals. I see this as silly, to be honest as well as wasteful. In facilities for men, urinals simply make sense because they take up less room and use less water. The catapult aboard the Ford is a new type, that uses a magnetic launch system instead of steam. However, newer does not always mean better. This is the first time it is being used aboard a ship. And so far, it has a failure rate in excess of 10%. And it has an MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) rate of 240. That means that on average, 1 in every 240 launches will fail. And at this time, they have yet to work out the problems that will not allow EMALS to launch an aircraft with external drop tanks. With the retirement of the S-3, the only way we really have to refuel Naval fighters in the air is another F-18 with external tanks. Sorry, I see the decision to build this ship with a completely untested system as bordering on criminal.
The launch system was the one proposed for the new British carriers, I think, since they can't use the steam catapults, and it was rejected on the grounds of cost plus unknown performance. Hence the STOVL.
The DF-21D? That missile is a joke, nobody really takes it seriously. The general consensus is that the only way it can take out a carrier is if it is carrying a nuclear warhead. And trust me, if China was stupid enough to launch such a missile at the US, that is how the US would respond. As if China launched a nuke at their military forces. There is a damned good reason that decades ago the US and USSR decided to eliminate all short-intermediate range conventional ballistic missiles. The odds were to great that eventually one side would launch such a missile with a conventional warhead, and trigger a nuclear exchange. And first and foremost, the DF-21 IS a nuclear missile. It holds that role in their Army, as well as being a direct adaptation of the JL-1, their premier submarine launched nuclear ballistic missile.
I found this link: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...ti-ship-ballistic-missile-what-does-the-16260 It's a year old but refers to the DF-26. What do you think?
Basically an upgraded DF-21. An IRBM instead of a MRBM. But still really has nothing to do with the DF-21D. It is not the missile that most reject, but the idea that they can somehow "steer" an inbound ballistic missile with enough accuracy to target a moving ship that is over the horizon. To put it in perspective, imagine trying to fire a rifle and hitting a moving target on the backside of a hill. Yes, it can kind of be done with a machine gun, but not accurately at all. And with a single shot rifle? Forget it.
Cruise missiles can be precision- guided to targets that are out of sight, though? Why not faster missiles? And ships move quite slowly.
Then there's this: http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/russia-develops-mach-six-anti-ship-missile
A ballistic missile is not a cruise missile. The two are not even close. Remember, a ballistic missile operates in a parabolic arc. Most of it's flight is not even under power, having been set from when it was launched. It also strikes it's target in a falling motion, if the target is not under it when it strikes the surface, it misses. It needs to have 2 of the 3 cardinal coordinates correct exactly (altitude, distance, bearing), the only one that can be off in striking an ocean target is the altitude (which is always fixed, sea level). A cruise missile is powered during it's entire flight. It also moves in a lateral motion. That means that it only has to have 1 of the cardinal coordinates correct. Altitude is also a constant, so it only needs bearing. Distance does not matter, so long as the missile is aimed at it's target. 5 miles closer or further away, does not matter so long as their is fuel to reach it. But in a ballistic arc? Nope, all 3 have to be pinpoint perfect. In the real world, the AEGIS arrays would detect such a launch, and all ships would then make radical turns. And remember, this is over-the-horizon, so not only is the change after launch (when the target is already programmed in), they now have no idea exactly what the speed and course is going to be. Go back to my analogy of shooting a target behind a hill. This is a ballistic missile, it is not fired directly at, and can not be aimed after firing. You aim purely at where you expect it to be. A cruise missile, is more like a smart bullet. It also has very sophisticated identification software, based upon the radar picture of the target. Such a target is really only possible in a profile shot, not in a top-down shot. Once again, take 10 people and identify one from looking at them face to face. Not to hard. Now try to pick out that 1 person from looking down on them from the top of a 10 story building. Not to easy, unless they are very distinctive.
Right after the Tailhook witch hunt back in 1992, the liberals declared urinals to be sexist and politically incorrect. Orders came down from the Clinton White House to remove all urinals from American warships and replace them with gender friendly PC commodes. The first warships to become PC ran into a big problem. It ends up female sailors use twice as much water than male sailors when nature calls and personal hygiene. The black water and brown water holding tanks on warships weren't large enough for having women aboard ship. PC gender friendly commodes us a whole lot of water than a urinal. When American PC warships are in a foreign port they require the services of honey dew scows more often that real politically incorrect war fighting ships. Cost a lot of money to pump crap from a ship to a scow while in port. Political correctness is just not deadly but very expensive. So the word came down that all new U.S. Navy ships built from now on will be politically correct with no urinals with larger holding tanks to accommodate women aboard ships. Below are the crappers that were found on most WW ll warships. SWhen I served in the Marines there were still many Navy ships that still had the old crappers. Warning !!! you never sat at either end of the crappers in rough seas for obvious reasons. Guess what the red seat was for ? You can see an urinal in the lower left corner. Until women were allowed to serve on ships most warships had urinals on the weather deck, one on the port side and one on the starboard side around amidships. This was so deck monkeys who were on a work detail on the weather deck or on watch couldn't disappear for tweny or thirty minutes to go below deck and take a piss and gold brick.
I use a urinal daily. I do not recall in my Army days being in a toilet with no urinal. Too bad the services have caved. I have no expertise on the launch system though I have seen the old Steam system along with I am a pilot. But not a pilot who flew from or to a carrier. I would anticipate the launch system will work since the Navy has tested it in sea trials.
Here's what I don't get, I thought steam was the most powerful form of energy. What does a nuclear reactor do ? It produces heat that heats water in boilers that turn into steam to turn turbines or used to operate steam catapults on aircraft carriers.
I am not saying it does not work. However, it is proven that it does not work as well, and is more prone to failure and with significantly more limitations than steam. Most estimates list 10 years as the point that advancements in the system will finally allow it to pass that of the steam catapults it replaces. And remember, that is only if everything works right, and no further issues are discovered. I do not completely dismiss the technology, but place it as a "not ready for prime time player". Along with the rail gun and anti-missile LASERs.
I agree. During my early days in pile driving, I got used to steam as the power to the piledriver. It still awes me the raw power of steam. You make excellent points. This is one of the Steam pile drivers I once worked on a lot. just in front of the boiler, there is a drum. It is just above the axle of the rear part of the track. Marion is the builder of these steam crawlers. We mounted ahead of the boom, the Leads. Leads are where the hammer moves up and down and is the track to guide the hammer and the pile being driven. The item I pointed out, the drum ... this is called the ni99erhead. The operator sat in the middle and on the other side of the crawler. The boiler pressure as i best recall was about 250 psi. next to the operator sat the fireman. He came in early to fire up the boiler. And he had an air compressor that helped him light it up quicker. It was driven by a small gasoline engine. Attached to the bottom area of the leads was a movable platform. This we called the spotter. We also had another device that when needed was also attached to the bottom area of the leads. This was called the moonbeam. This caused the bottom of the leads to shift right to left. We drove angled piles into the ground on what we called the batter. Now you know more about piledrivers powered by steam. I had to change the g to a 9 since this is the actual professional name given to the spool so named. The spool was used to wrap a rope line around and it got used the same as any lifting line would be used, such as the cables also on the leads.
I do not wish to post over my head. So I hope it all gets solved. makes me wonder why such a system is on a new ship.
Because far to many people (especially the civilians in the DoD) always tend towards the "Newer Is Better" philosophy. Give them a new toy, and a lot of them will then throw huge amounts of money after it, even if it is a distant hope at best. Good example, the LCS. A ship without a mission, unable to perform the mission of the ships they are replacing. We have dumped billions into these "stealth ships of the future", and nobody seems to have asked what the actual mission for them is. Not unlike the huge amounts of money poured into rail guns. Yes, they have a role. I myself see them as an excellent replacement for close in weapon systems, for either point-blank defense against small surface ships, or against inbound air threats (missiles). But they are not, nor will they ever be a replacement for conventional guns, like the 5" deck gun. Even though people all over the place seem to think that is what they should replace, and they are the best thing since Betty White for the Navy. I have no problem with the EMALS itself, I just think it should have undergone much more testing and field trials to be perfected prior to being used as the sole launching system in a new class of ships. Heck, they could have even installed one in an older class of ship like the USS Iwo Jima or USS Kearsarge, and use that as a real world test bed prior to putting it in place here.
I can understand newer is better. Cost is a factor and so is reliability. As to the LCS, I lack the knowledge to fully evaluate those as well. I learned many years back from an E-9 serving on an Aircraft carrier that the Navy only gives you hints of what it has. When I was in the Army, the Army lied about the top speed of the M-60 tank to deceive the Soviets. Even the tank drivers did not know the tank is actually faster than officially stated.
But those are still changes and improvements on existing systems, not a completely new system that had never been tested prior to it's implementation. You mention the M60 Patton Tank, which was really just a major improvement on the M48 Patton Tank, with only incremental improvements. The first tank to really have any major change was the M1 Abrams, with it's turbine engine. But that was not revolutionary in the same way, since by that time we had been using turbine engines for decades in ships and aircraft (helicopters) that used the turbine not to provide forward thrust for the vehicle itself, but as a power plant to power the mechanical drive train that propelled the vehicle. I am not anti-progress by far. But I believe that such changes should be made in military equipment it should only be made after extensive testing and proving. After all, ultimately it is the lives of those who serve with such equipment that ultimately matter most. And I am also a "belt and suspenders" type of person, believing that older proven systems should be used until the newer technologies are proven to be as if not more effective. Case in point on how newer is not always better, look at the tank autoloader. Now the US did experiment with autoloaders for tanks back in the 1940's. A T20 (precursor to the M26 Pershing) was named the T22, and equipped with an autoloader for the main gun. The idea was that it could perform faster than a crewman loading manually, and not have the fatigue factor. However, 3 things were realized during testing. First, that tank battles rarely last long enough for fatigue to become a factor. Secondly, that a well trained loader can perform as fast (or faster) then a mechanical loader. And finally, an autoloader worked by having a round ready to load in the crew compartment. Now the Soviets on the other hand also developed an autoloader, and went nuts over them. But in the decades since this development, one major downfall of them was discovered. And that is the round that is ready in the crew compartment was all to likely to go off if the compartment integrity is compromised by incoming fire. That is why when you look at photos of Soviet tanks killed in battle and similar US tanks, the damage is striking. Soviet tanks tend to have cataclysmic failures, including having the turrets blown off because of this internal detonation of the round in the compartment. US tanks on the other hand do not have that issue, because they are loaded by hand. When the loader is ready to put in another round, they open the hatch to the magazine, extract a round, the hatch closes automatically, and place it immediately into the gun. So there are no "extra rounds" lingering inside the crew compartment. So even the most cataclysmic kills of US tanks generally involve only a small penetration, and the tank being destroyed by the subsequent fire from the fuel cells rupturing. Another example of newer not always being better.
Well, you present arguments I gave no thought to. Though I was around the M-60 tank for over a year, when it was still a fairly new tank, and tracked them in a jeep on war games, the stated speed is 30 mph. I followed them with the jeep speedometer at 60 mph. Amazing how the Army lied about the top speed.
The Iowa class battle ships top speed are listed at 32.5 knots but its true top speed has always been classified. Would you believe 36 knots ? New isn't always better. The best destroyer according to Tin Can sailors that ever went to war was the Fletcher class destroyer during WW ll. It could take hits from Japanese gun cruisers and stay afloat and keep on fighting. The Fletcher's top speed was listed at 38 kts. and a range of 6,500 nm's. Todays Arleigh Burke's have gas turbines which mean they can accelerate really fast but their top speed is listed at "30 + knts" with a 4,400 nm range. I suppose their real top speed is classified. New isn't always better. Todays U.S. Navy carrier Strike groups are no longer capable of launching deep strike missions after retiring the A-6 Intruder and Sec. of Def. Dick Cheney canceled its replacement, the A-12 Avenger. In 1956 a Forestall carrier air wing could conduct a 1,210 nautical mile deep strike missions. Today a Nimitz class carrier air wing can't conduct a deep strike missions and only is able launching a 908 nm air attack missions. RETREAT FROM RANGE The Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/CNASReport-CarrierAirWing-151016.pdf
