Ford Carriers Stay On Schedule

(Avaitionweek) : While the rest of the aircraft carrier community breathed a collective sigh of relief in December when the U.S. Navy’s new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (Emals) launched its first Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet, shipbuilders and contractors for the next-generation CVN-78-class flattop knew the real work was just beginning.
While many in and out of the Navy worried about the risk of testing and refining a breakthrough technology like Emals concurrently with actual carrier construction, those building the ship and the aircraft-launching system say the real risk will be in maintaining the aggressive delivery schedule.
“If we were to wait for our new technology to be completely mature before deciding to include it, we’d never build a carrier,” says Navy Capt. Brian K. Antonio, Future Aircraft Carrier program manager. “There’s always concurrent development. It’s a balancing act—but we’re all on a schedule to launch in 2013.”
Keeping to schedule and making sure that technology works are key to making the CVN-78 Ford-class affordable and Navy shipbuilding plans viable. Delivering the ship on time will help cap construction costs, while Emals and other advancements promise to whittle away at lifecycle costs for a carrier class set to roam the seas into the coming century.
As the Navy’s most expensive ship to build or operate, any cost savings the service can realize on a carrier are certain to pay dividends.
“She’s coming together well,” said Rear Adm. Michael McMahon, carrier executive officer, at the Northrop Grumman shipyard in Newport News, Va., in February moments before the shipbuilder made its first steel cut on the next Ford-class carrier, CVN-79.
But there was less confidence about the future of the CVN-78—and the Ford-class program—in December. While Emals-maker General Atomics had succeeded in launching numerous heavy objects with the system, there had yet to be a successful Super Hornet takeoff.
“They took an enormous risk,” says Stuart Slade, senior naval editor for consultant Forecast International. “For a while, it didn’t look like it would pay off. It looked like we would have the world’s biggest helicopter carrier.”
An Emals failure would put the Ford’s future in doubt. It would be difficult—if not impossible—to rip the ship apart and reconfigure and rebuild it for a steam system.
Emals’ early herky-jerky progress had analysts working on briefings about how the Navy could have to develop some modified large amphibious ship derivation to fill the gap left by the Ford. The Dec. 18 Super Hornet catapult launch allayed those fears.
“It never dawned on me that we would not be able to launch that aircraft,” says Scott Forney, vice president of electromagnetic systems for General Atomics. “The real risk has always been in the production phase. My biggest concern was: How do we get ready to produce hardware in time for CVN-78?”
Northrop Grumman is keeping on pace with the schedule. Matt Mulherin, sector vice president, said in February that about a quarter of the ship’s structural units were in the dry dock.
One way the yard verified that its proposed design changes would meet Navy requirements was to put together a new simulation and modeling tool. It displayed flight-deck and other operations, as well as the impact of alterations.
“The program model emulates movement on the flight deck to verify that design features allow the ship to meet the requirements,” says Mike Shawcross, Newport News Ford-class vice president. The yard used the modeling to ensure that changes on the carrier help increase sortie generation and reduce manning, two of the Navy’s main objectives.
Some changes include: reducing the island size and moving it aft; decreasing the number of galleys, aircraft elevators and hangar bay doors; and replacing rotating radars with solid state-based systems.
“We needed to reduce the workload on the crew to allow the Navy to take sailors off the ship,” Shawcross says.
Including air wing manning cuts, Ford-class carriers will have 1,300 fewer sailors than the baseline Nimitz, even though the hull is essentially the same, Antonio says.
Slade says all the work is worth the effort. “She’s going to be an enormous improvement over the Nimitz class. With Nimitz, the primary role was alpha strike—to launch the attack wing. Now carriers need to support more land operations, they need to generate a more constant stream of aircraft.”
Doing that with significantly fewer people, he adds, is what’s going to make the Ford valuable in decades to come.
Image: Northrop Grumman