Navy's $12.9 BILLION USS Gerald R. Ford warship delayed again

Ooh-Rah said:
The $12.9 billion USS Gerald R. Ford Navy supercarrier could potentially struggle with planes landing and taking off, moving military weapons and being able to successfully defend itself, a memo obtained by Bloomberg News reads.
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Other than that, it sounds G2G.

"Concurrency" is one of the greatest lies told in weapons procurement. It is absolutely criminal.
 
Freefalling said:
They may have cranes. Just pull into port, offload, and problem solved. Duh!

(I can't tell if you're missing my sarcasm or not)
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Not missing your sarcasm at all. In fact just adding onto it, how the fuck can you build an aircraft carrier the can't land aircraft, and then have that point just mixed in with the other point like it's only a small detail.

I guess this is what you get when you go with the lowest bidder, not to be derail my own thread, but I really wonder if we could land a man on the moon today.
 
Ummm pretty much the same way as you have the most advanced and tactfully equipped fighter ACFT for air superiority ever built (supposedly).... and it cant even fly... or be used.... or even keep its pilots from passing out due to oxygen problems.... you know basic airplane requirements...
 
CrimsonWave said:
Ummm pretty much the same way as you have the most advanced and tactfully equipped fighter ACFT for air superiority ever built (supposedly).... and it cant even fly... or be used.... or even keep its pilots from passing out due to oxygen problems.... you know basic airplane requirements...
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I think you may confuse the F-22 and the F-35. The -22 had O2 issues, but those were resolved. The F-22A field is currently receiving incremental software upgrades and is arguably the best plane on the planet right now. Hands down. The thing is a beast and we're leveraging its electronic capabilities against ISIS. Those are mind-blowing and I only see a small slice of them.

The F-35 is...not even close.
 
@Freefalling I was speaking of a little bit of both, not only in the aspect of what I said above but with other issues, just what very close friends of mine who work on them say, the F-35 in my opinion has been a waste of money from the start.... great idea yes their idea of obviously coming out with a joint fighter that is pretty much the Sams club version of the F-22 (cheaper replacement) I was lucky (meaning when the 5th gens came out I had already been working on the old birds long enough for them not to cross shred me) and got stuck on what now the military now calls heritage fighters... (F-16, F-15, A-10 and so on) now granted I understand that when Acft come off the line they already have huge issues that have to be addressed, (when F-16s came off the line they had fuselage crack issues) and as of today we are still dealing with longeron cracks. It is very unfortunate that it took pilots losing there lives to find and troubleshoot the oxy problem up in AK. But and this is just a huge but in the defense of the 22 its power and technology is amazing, I've been a part of a F-22 motor pull before and it is incredible what GE has come up with compared to when I pull F-16 motors. it does surpass anything that I have ever seen.
 
Everybody quit bitching. It's invisible to radar. No wonder planes can't land on it, they can't find it.

This is what happens when you christen a ship with "American sparkling wine" and not Dom Perignon. Hey, we got a 20-billion dollar aircraft carrier here, will somebody run out and get a bottle of Mad Dog 20-20 so we can christen this scow on the cheap?
 
How hard can it be to make a tanker? They didn't need to design the airframe, engines, avionics, comms systems, they already have the booms for the other planes... Add tanks, figure out the structural loads. This isn't even a ground up plane. It is a fucking 767 that costs billions in development? Wtf.
 
TLDR20 said:
How hard can it be to make a tanker? They didn't need to design the airframe, engines, avionics, comms systems, they already have the booms for the other planes... Add tanks, figure out the structural loads. This isn't even a ground up plane. It is a fucking 767 that costs billions in development? Wtf.
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Something like 90% of the system I maintain is COTS yet it still took years to engineer, develop, and test. Bonus points: It used much of the same equipment and software as it predecessors. It isn't a 100% from the ground up production. We still have integration issues, software only few people understand but won't touch it without a follow-on support contract*, and our training "plan" was directed to be developed in house. Yes, we're writing our own training plan.

I am 100% on board with you and working in an environment with similar issues. Mine are much less challenging than an airplane, but it shows we can't properly manage small systems (I think ours is only $130-ish million) so how do we expect to manage aircraft or ship acquisition?

The system and people who run it are just broken.

* - I don't blame them for not touching it without a contract. I blame the contracting officers for not budgeting for follow-on support. That could be had on the cheap because it would be very part time and amount to 2-3 episodes over as many years.
 
TLDR20 said:
How hard can it be to make a tanker? They didn't need to design the airframe, engines, avionics, comms systems, they already have the booms for the other planes... Add tanks, figure out the structural loads. This isn't even a ground up plane. It is a fucking 767 that costs billions in development? Wtf.
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I'd be curious as to the disagree here.. Is it not a 767, a plane we already use in government service?
 
TLDR20 said:
How hard can it be to make a tanker? They didn't need to design the airframe, engines, avionics, comms systems, they already have the booms for the other planes... Add tanks, figure out the structural loads. This isn't even a ground up plane. It is a fucking 767 that costs billions in development? Wtf.
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No,no,and no.
The boom and pods are new designs.
You also are building a new software suite (source of most program delays) with a different set of (US) mil std avionics (all of which need software integration). Software is not cheap.
The 767/KC-46 boom had issues with bow waves from large aircraft (C-5,KC-10,C-17) that's something that isn't alway apparent in wind tunnel testing (which needs an engineering/software fix).
They also had hydraulic/boom over pressure issues, again wind tunnel does not always equate to real world ops.
One of the issues not mentioned in the story was a subcontractor screwing the refueling tanks/system up during initial testing. They had to remove the tanks/ and subsystems purge them and re-install. That adds delays (especially when you only have a single aircraft to test).

(sorry for the delayed response, I am typing in-between chores as we just finished our vacation).

It's based on the 767, but it has enough differences to be a new airframe (just like the KC-10 was based on the DC-10 (with major mods).
 
DA SWO said:
No,no,and no.
The boom and pods are new designs.
You also are building a new software suite (source of most program delays) with a different set of (US) mil std avionics (all of which need software integration). Software is not cheap.
The 767/KC-46 boom had issues with bow waves from large aircraft (C-5,KC-10,C-17) that's something that isn't alway apparent in wind tunnel testing (which needs an engineering/software fix).
They also had hydraulic/boom over pressure issues, again wind tunnel does not always equate to real world ops.
One of the issues not mentioned in the story was a subcontractor screwing the refueling tanks/system up during initial testing. They had to remove the tanks/ and subsystems purge them and re-install. That adds delays (especially when you only have a single aircraft to test).

(sorry for the delayed response, I am typing in-between chores as we just finished our vacation).

It's based on the 767, but it has enough differences to be a new airframe (just like the KC-10 was based on the DC-10 (with major mods).
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I hope you had a good vacation.
 
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