U.S. Navy's Costliest Carrier Was Delivered Without Elevators to Lift Bombs

[left-of-center2012]

The $13 billion Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy’s costliest warship, was delivered last year without elevators needed to lift bombs from below deck magazines for loading on fighter jets.
... the elevator is “our Achilles heel,” Navy Secretary Richard Spencer told reporters in August without providing details.

Previously undisclosed problems with the 11 elevators for the ship built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. add to long-standing reliability and technical problems with two other core systems -- the electromagnetic system to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land. (So, the aircraft carrier can't launch or land planes, nor load them with bombs?)

The Navy in May requested permission from Congress in May to increase the Ford’s cost cap by $120 million, partly to fix elevator issues “to preclude any effect on the safety of the ship and personnel.”

William Couch, a spokesman for the Naval Sea Systems Command, said the elevators are “in varying levels of construction and testing.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-02/costliest-carrier-was-delivered-without-elevators-to-lift-bombs

[Downtown Hound]

1. And somewhere, chief design architect Homer J. Simpson says,

"D'OH!"

[Achilleaze]

2. "The buck stops with me." - Dirty Donny* (R)

"i accept full responsibility for this colossal boondoggle. If the republicans & russians had not illegitimately installed me as their untruthful and adulterous, casino-hustling, draft-dodger-in-chief, we republicans would not have screwed this pooch so pathetically." - Dirty Donny (R)

[dalton99a]

3. No worries. Eventually the technology will catch up with the advertisement

at extra cost

[jpak]

4. Huntington Ingalls needs to pay for this

Yup

[DeminPennswoods]

33. Absolutely

I'm sure the specs required these elevators.

[Turbineguy]

5. McDonalds should send their customers

do to internships at the Pentagon.

Then they could get $750 for a Big Mac without batting an eye.

For $120 million you can buy a whole containership and it would pay for itself.

For $13 billion you could buy the biggest commercial shipping company in the world and show the flag in over 100 countries at the same time.

The reason we spend so much on defense is the reason we spend so much on defense.

[RockRaven]

6. There's a sad irony that this ship is named after a guy who was often portrayed as bumbling...

fair or not.

[left-of-center2012]

7. yep

that was my first thought

[dalton99a]

9. Ford really preferred elevators

[onethatcares]

44. he pardoned nixon

no bumble.

What could we expect from anything named after him?

[Adrahil]

8. EMALS is definitely the way to go.

The EMALS (electromagnetic catapult) is definitely a superior concept to the old steam cats. I worked in carrier launch and recovery systems for over 20 years, including the early development of the EMALS, so I know a little something about this.

The MAIN problem with EMALS was the contractor chosen to the build the things.... they had no experience with launch ad recovery systems.

The concept is sound, and the system is almost at 100% design capability (and will reach it next year).

The elevators are another fuck-up, but it's not an unsolvable problem.

[Bfd]

12. Interesting info. Thanks for this

Appreciate reading this from someone who's been there.
Thank you

[dameatball]

23. How did they get the bombs down into the ship without elevators?? cranes or something?

[Kaleva]

24. Probably doesn't have bombs yet until the elevators are fixed.

[NCjack]

38. Maybe the bombs were on deck, and the crew just bull-dozed them into the elevator shaft. nt

[dameatball]

42. Maybe they sent them down a pneumatic tube like at the bank drive through!

[ecstatic]

10. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen

How will all those changes affect the structural integrity of the ship?

[Renew Deal]

11. We're there elevators for cannon balls when the British Navy was considered the best in the world?

We’re there elevators in the Greek Navy ships in Ancient Greece?

[Adrahil]

19. Not sure of your point....

weapons elevators are used to keep the weapons magazines deep in the heart of the ship to reduce the likelihood of a relatively minro hit striking the magazine and blowing the ship up.

But maybe I misread your post?

[Renew Deal]

20. I'm joking

[Adrahil]

28. Okay... my apologies...

I thought that likely, but ya never know.

[gratuitous]

21. Precisely

Can't they just carry the bombs up the stairs? Couple of guys on each end, careful of the turns, you'd have the bomb in place in no time!

[Renew Deal]

46. Exactly

[Chellee]

47. Pivot! Pivot!

[lapfog_1]

27. cannon balls were stored on the gun deck, usually on "brass monkeys"

a solid metal base with indentations to hold the first array of cannon balls, with more balls stacked on top pyramid fashion.

In certain cold weather conditions the difference in the metals used (brass for the holder, iron for the cannon balls) would cause the stack to fall as the metals contracted at different rates.

Hence the old Naval term... "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey".

True story.

[dameatball]

43. According to Johny Horton, the Battle of New Orleans....they used alligators for the cannonballs

[area51]

13. Love how we can afford this,

but not health care for us in the U.S. /sarcasm

[uponit7771]

14. 50 million worth of silk worm missles at one time sinks this Magenot device

[rzemanfl]

18. "i" n/t

[lapfog_1]

29. If we ever fight another WWII carrier war

we win!

[uponit7771]

35. +1, lol so true !!! Right now we're heavy invested in Maginot devices and Putin continues to hack...

... elections.

Which, comes to think of it after the GA story I don't think they're doing much hacking ... some of the systems are being left open on purpose

[jalan48]

15. Shouldn't This Read, "US Taxpayer's Costliest Carrier Was Delivered without Elevators.."?

[MagickMuffin]

16. Named aptly Gerald R Ford

In the future they can rename it Trump'd

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

17. Probably figured it was all WiFi or Bluetooth...nt

[petronius]

22. They should spin this as a cost-saving measure: if you can't launch planes

nor land them, it would be irresponsible to waste money on tools to load bombs onto them...

[Volaris]

37. Don't give the PR girls and boys any ideas lol...

The Pentagon is referred to around here as the five sided rathole for a very good reason...

[Kaleva]

25. Rather the norm when a new class with cutting edge technologies is introduced.

[rickford66]

26. Lowest bidder.

As an engineer, I can agree that "these things happen". Dozens of people from a few different companies were probably involved with the spec and design of the elevators. I'll bet some last minute change or deviation from the design snuck through, approved by someone "upstairs". There could have been poor communication between vendors. I used to complain when something was outsourced when we were capable of doing it ourselves. That's where most of our headaches occurred, so I couldn't just go up to the designer and say fix it. Also, these military contracts are bid low, knowing there will be cost overruns. A company with good contracts people can get away with it. Some don't. One interesting story ... We outsource the manufacture of a unique part to a US vendor. Weeks later we received a package from China. You guessed it. The vendor outsourced to China and still made money without doing a thing. This was at a time when one of our mechanical engineers had a machine shop at home and already had done work for us.

[BamaRefugee]

30. They better hurry the fuck up. There are defenseless brown people ALL OVER THIS PLANET that need to

BOMBED INTO DEMOCRACY.
And they be breeding!


(kinda)

[rurallib]

31. "We have met the enemy and he is us" -

Walt Kelly of the Pogo comic strip

[Hotler]

32. Dumb shits

And I thought the structural steel business was screwed up. It seems to me that the person or persons in our Government/Pentagon that signed off on the design giving the go ahead for fabrication should be fired. With all the project managers and project coordinators on that job you would have thought someone might have picked up on that and ran out in the shop and yelled "hey! Don't forget the bomb elevators."

[asiliveandbreathe]

34. Perhaps they can lift the bombs from below deck the same way they load food from the docks..

Up the stairs, to deck, and then to mess.....I have seen this done.in fact, son on ship, now retired Chief, at the time.."keeps them shape" - when I asked why are the guys loading the food manually....OMG..

[ThoughtCriminal]

40. Well that explains the air-to-air missiles in the freezer

Anybody check the pantry for tactical nukes?

[asiliveandbreathe]

41. I will share with most honorable son......too funny.....

[Renew Deal]

45. lol

[AllaN01Bear]

36. hem

you mean that we are still paying for $400.00 gold plated hamers . $10.000 outhouses etch. hem.

[Sneederbunk]

39. Crew tired of carrying bombs up and down stairs.

Several flights don't you know.

[hunter]

48. Doesn't matter if the elevators don't work.

Here in the 21st century an aircraft carrier is an utterly useless machine, fully functional or not. A Maginot Line as many have noted. A temporary mobile depression in the water we pour tax dollars into.

In my wild and misspent youth I briefly stumbled into a potentially lucrative and shockingly comfortable career as a minion of high tech military contractors.

Very soon I had trouble sleeping at night, bless my religiously insane pacifist ancestors.

I ran away.

I had a college professor who'd been working on radiation-hardened electronics for tanks, specifically the microprocessors I was familiar with, the sort that were used in space exploration.

His stomach went bad when he realized the tank crews he was designing his radiation-hardened electronics for would be the living dead, no hope for survival, if his electronics were ever tested. He quit his job to teach. I later did something similar.

Best avoid any of that shit by becoming political.

I want to live in a nation that doesn't pretend to need aircraft carriers.