USS Ford

[Abdullah71601]

Required reading to understand the issues with USS Ford (CVN-78).

The issues identified with catapult and arresting systems in 2015 have yet to be resolved. The failure rate of the catapult is 10 times higher than required, and the arresting gear failure rate is 100 times higher than required. The ship can't meet it's required sortie generation rate (how fast it launches jets), which means it can't meet the launch rate required in the initial surge of combat operations.. And neither the catapults nor the arresting gear can be repaired without shutting down all flight operations. All 11 weapons elevators have been installed, but they have only tested two, and those two don't meet contract spec's yet. BTW, no land based testing of this brand new tech was ever done. It's all onboard/installed and hoping for the best, which drives up costs dramatically.

The blew up part of the propulsion system in 2016. They couldn't fix it right and maintain schedule, so they patched together a temporary fix, which now has to be permanently repaired. The Navy accepted the ship in a broken condition hoping a permanent repair can be made with cutting up a bunch of decks to do it (you can't make this stuff up). No one is certain they won't blow it up again.

The ship is still not considered reliable for combat operations, but Fitzgerald's First Law is in full effect ("There are only two phases of a program. The first is 'It's too early to tell.' The second: 'It's too late to stop.').

https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2...ship-uss-ford/

https://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports.../2018cvn78.pdf

http://www.pogoarchives.org/straus/d..._july_2017.pdf

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2017/0...ost-estimates/

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...4shrg20725.pdf

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RS20643.pdf

https://www.gao.gov/assets/680/672877.pdf

https://www.everycrsreport.com/repor...l#_Toc14935457

https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/685241.pdf