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Originally posted by Blademaster
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What navy are you talking about? I made one deployment of nearly ten months duration and had two port calls, other than Hawaii for a BSF and Subic for "voyage repairs." There were five months between one of those. They don't stop unless someone decides they need to show the flag.
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No, they couldn't. But they could do a lot. And not just for submarines. When in port in a place like San Diego, work on ships got farmed out to any repair facility, including tenders of all types, that could do the job. SIMA San Diego, Holland, Samuel Gompers, whatever. They all got our work.Originally posted by tbm3fan View PostComment
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My mistake. I meant port calls. However there are bases all over the world that should a need suddenly arise, the carrier can make a quick pit stop and get the necessary supplies. Back in WWII, it was harder to secure such supplies while flung away so there was a great need to carry everything with you in case you needed to make repairs.Originally posted by desertswo View PostComment
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But then you have a steel beach party and everything is "sunsine and puppies"Originally posted by desertswo View PostComment
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Just a figure of speech. As you could say those AS ships were pretty capable starting with Canopus.Originally posted by desertswo View Post
Now do you recognize the ones below from 1973?Comment
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No. I do recognize Ballast Point. I spent many hours as a boy fishing right near those ships. I personally avoided tenders of all types. You know, we didn't even inspect the ASs as part of the CINCPACFLT PEB inspection cycle. They were deemed to be too old and screwed up to ever be made right, so we didn't even bother. We flew to Guam once to look at USS Proteus (AS 19) to see if she could be brought into the program. The answer was, "No only no, but hell no!!" A lot of air miles and a trip from hell to prove what we already knew. She burned more lube oil while operating than the law allows. I mean it was a real mess. The nuke types who followed us around kept trying to explain this and that. I finally turned to this one Commander (I was a Lieutenant Commander at the time) and said, "You know, if you looked at this plant with the same rigor as you look at one of your boats, I wouldn't be writing all this shit down . . . Sir." It was nice wearing a four-star's rank symbolically. No one screwed with you.Originally posted by tbm3fan View PostComment
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Dateline: NEWPORT NEWS, VA.
Hollywood would have been hard pressed to come up with a script for a better scene.
There was Rear Adm. Michael Manazir, U.S. Navy director of air warfare, looking very Tom Skerritt-ish – circa “Top Gun” – in the baddest-looking leather flight jacket climbing all over the next-generation aircraft carrier CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford like a kid in a playground as the ship was being groomed for the fleet in Pier 3 next to CVN-65 Enterprise, which was undergoing the Navy’s version of Last Rites.
As reverent as Manazir could be toward the Enterprise and its half-century service to the country, he was equally excited about the prospects of the Ford making its debut later this decade for what the Navy will be start of its 50 years in the fleet.
“It’s the centerpiece of naval aviation,” he says. “As we look to the future, we’re not just revitalizing a program. Yes, we’re paying a 50% premium over Nimitz – but that gives us enhanced capability. We’re not just upgrading a weapon system, we’re upgrading the integrated capability. It’s all about relevancy – what it brings to the nation.”
He eyed the iconic carrier island atop the Ford flight deck. Lacking the rotating radars of previous ships, the CVN-78 instead sported the flat panels of the more powerful and efficient dual-band radar (DBR) suite, giving it a leaner, sleeker look.
And the island was farther astern – providing more “acreage” for flight operations – and the effect was striking. The Ford looked like a different ship.
It will take some getting used to for Navy fliers, too, doing carrier operations.
“You have what they call the ‘parking-lot effect,’” pilot Manazir muses. “It’s like the whole ship is flying by. It’s going to be more intense on this ship for those used to flying off the Nimitz.”
Those flights won’t be for a couple of years. For right now, the bigger concern is preparing the ship for aircraft operations and that means making sure the electromagnetic aircraft launch system (Emals) is aligned and then works properly.
“All main machinery installed -- 90 percent electrically hooked up,” says Lucas Hicks, deck machinery construction superintendent, for the Newport News Shipbuilding unit of Huntington Ingalls Industries, which is builds Navy carriers.
To help save hardware and costs –- and to make catapult operations more efficient with increased redundancy, the yard and the Navy decided on a different design for the Ford for the equipment “groups” that store energy and power the cats.
“Instead of having four different groups, one dedicated for each catapult, we went to three groups and put a pretty significant switching system in, so that any of three groups can serve any of the four cats,” Lucas explains.
The Navy testing facility in Lakehurst, N.J., has helped prove out the Emals equipment and design.
“We had a lot of collaboration at Lakehurst, which has a full scale cat system,” Lucas says. “But they have only one cat and one energy storage group. We weren’t able to simulate that [the three-group-four-catapult design]. It has been done in the lab in California. That is the only risk we have to retire.”
Manazir acknowledges the risk – but remains optimistic.
“Up in Lakehurst, we’ve been shooting airplanes and sleds for years. But it is a single(-group) system.”
The new redundant switching system must work just right.
“When you’re re on an airplane going off a cat, you don’t want that ‘burb,’” Manazir says. “The only installation in the world for this Emals system is -– with three different storage units supplying any one of the cats -- on this ship itself. The redundancy is going to be tested during the test program on this ship. So far it’s only been tested in the lab.”
He says, “We know all phenomena of single-storage unit with only single storage group with a single cat. Now we have to put it all together. That test program will be very, very, very strict -- to make sure no matter what happens, that the aircraft makes it to safe flying speed and makes it into the air before we have to do something to that cat. It’s one of the biggest hurdles of our testing program. So far, it’s been predictable, it’s been working the way it’s meant to work.”
The Navy and Newport News are doing everything they can to ensure Emals and the other technology improvements work as scripted. As Manazir points out, the nation is paying quite a premium for its new class of carriers with all of its upgrades. The program has enough dissenters with that price tag, even if everything works as advertised.
For the Ford, there can be no more sudden plot shifts.
NavWeek: Ford Tour | AresComment
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Nice shot here of one of them but I'm sure the other is probably CVN-77.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ne...4c4ef8a13ef010Comment
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The other one? The one in the dry dock?Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post
The one pier side is ex-Enterprise.Comment
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That is a very old image. That is Enterprise during her last refit!
I believe that is CVN 70 in drydock and CVN 77 is still in block form in and about the construction dock to the West.Last edited by surfgun; 29 Apr 14,, 14:08.Comment
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If that was the Enterprise's last refit, that would date the picture between April 2008-April 2010, most likely March/April 2010 as it appears the Enterprise was back together and getting ready to depart. In that case, those should be Gerald Ford (CVN-78) and Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) in the drydocks.
Ford's keel was laid on November 14, 2009, the construction is fairly early on, nostly bottom structures and at most, 2/3 the length of the ship, making March/April 2010 possible.
Roosevelt's RCOH was started August 26, 2009, the RCOH is fairly early on, look at the top of the island. Tear out has been done, but nothing has been rebuilt yet, making March/April 2010 possible.Comment
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Chris, I believe you are right.Comment
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A version of this article appears in the May 26 edition of Aviation Week & Space Technology.
When the next-generation aircraft carrier CVN 78 Gerald R. Ford takes to the seas later this decade, it will face one of the most dangerous threats to the U.S. maritime military behemoth—the Chinese DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM).
But U.S. Navy officials remain confident that the technological improvements to the Ford as well as the other ships shielding the carrier from attack should be able to protect the vessel.
The Chinese missile is based on the DF-21 (CSS-5) medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) and gives China the capability to attack large ships—including aircraft carriers—in the western Pacific Ocean, with a range exceeding 1,500 km, or 810 nm.
“The DF-21D is a theater-range ballistic missile equipped with a maneuverable reentry vehicle (Marv) designed to hit moving ships at sea,” the Congressional Research Service (CRS) notes in a recent report.
“Observers have expressed strong concern about the DF‑21D, because such missiles, in combination with broad-area maritime surveillance and targeting systems, would permit China to attack aircraft carriers, other U.S. Navy ships, or ships of allied or partner navies operating in the Western Pacific,” CRS reports.
“The U.S. Navy has not previously faced a threat from highly accurate ballistic missiles capable of hitting moving ships at sea. For this reason, some observers have referred to the DF-21 as a game-changing weapon.”
But zeroing in on a carrier with such a missile is more difficult than it seems, says Rear Adm. Michael Manazir, director of air warfare.
Eyeing the Ford from the ship’s flight deck, he notes: “People think this is a big target. But they have to get to the carrier and then discern that it is a carrier.”
In addition, the U.S. Navy has a layered network of defensive systems.
“It’s a series of systems,” Manazir explains during a recent exclusive tour of the Ford at the Newport News Shipbuilding yard in the Tidewater part of Virginia. “We want to attack it on the left side of the kill chain.”
Getting to the Ford and its escort ships means also penetrating the carrier strike group, he says. “We use the air defense systems of the cruisers and destroyers to protect the carrier.”
The Ford also has some of its own protection, he points out, including the Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM), a close-in weapons system, as well as the Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (Sewip) and MK 57 NATO Sea Sparrow missile.
The ship also will be sporting the Navy’s new dual-band radar (DBR), another major technology improvement for the Ford-class carrier that should help provide missile defense.
The admiral, though, acknowledges the Navy is reviewing whether it will continue using DBR for carriers after the Ford or use technological advances to develop a radar more appropriate for the ships.
“The DBR was initially designed for the [DDG-1000] Zumwalt [destroyer],” he notes. “The Zumwalt is a combatant.”
The question, he says, is whether the Navy and industry can use some of the scalable technology employed in the DBR to develop another dual-band suite of S- and X-band coverage that will be more suitable for operations aboard a carrier or amphibious ship.
The Navy has to consider all of the radar and defense capability available in a carrier strike group, he says. “What does a carrier strike group bring? What does a carrier bring? We’re really sharpening our pencils over this. We have to look at all of the technology out there.”
Other technological advancements for the Ford-class ships provide the potential for more shields and weaponry.
For example, Manazir notes, the ship will have the kind of electrical power margins to make it possible to incorporate lasers or other energy weapons aboard the vessels.
The Ford’s electric power distribution grid kicks up about 13,800 volts, compared to about 4,160 for Nimitz-class carriers. Of course the ship needs more juice to power its DBR, Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (Emals) and other systems, but the design allows for even greater capacity.
“If you go to a more electric-centric ship, you have to have big electrical potential,” Manazir says. “The Ford was designed with a 60 percent increase in capacity.”
For Nimitz-class ships, he says, any new technological improvements that require more electricity would mean power-supply redesigns to accommodate the upgrades.
“With Ford,” he says, “it’s already designed into the ship.”Comment
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I don’t see how a ballistic missile moving at hypersonic speeds could track an evading carrier. Surely an RV from a ballistic missile couldn't “see” through the heat and plasma of its own reentry? Even manned spacecraft suffer from a communications blackout during reentry as they are engulfed in plasma. The only exception I am aware of is the Space Shuttle, since it was so large a small gap in the plasma above it allowed it to bounce telemetry data up to a satellite and back down to earth. I suppose you could try to slow the decent of the RV to the extent that it can “see” once it reaches the mid-lower atmosphere, yet that would throw away most of the advantages of a ballistic missile, and make it just as vulnerable to interception as a standard anti-ship missile.
A satellite could potentially provide targeting data against a stationary target, but satellites that are in low enough orbit to differentiate and track a carrier in real time would also zip overhead and down over the horizon in short order as well. That doesn’t seem very conducive to providing guidance for ballistic missiles.
That leaves platforms with a direct line of sight to the carrier as the only other guidance platforms I can think of. Yet ships, submarines, or aircraft that are both within line of sight of a U.S. carrier and her escorts while radiating radar and sending targeting data to the RV seem like they would have extremely short lifespans.
What am I missing here? Is there another way to guide a reentry vehicle moving at hypersonic speeds to hit an evading target?Comment
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