Hagel Told New Carrier Unlikely to Meet Aircraft Goals

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

By Tony Capaccio - Jan 10, 2014

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was warned last month that the U.S. Navy’s new aircraft carrier, the most expensive warship ever built, is “unlikely” to meet its goal for handling aircraft.

The USS Gerald R. Ford’s “sortie generation” rate -- the ability to launch and recover aircraft -- is based on “unrealistic assumptions,” and key launching systems “are currently suffering from development problems and have poor or unknown reliability,” Pentagon Director of Operational Testing Michael Gilmore told Hagel in a Dec. 9 memo.

“I am transmitting this report to you because it deals with a high-visibility program, and it is likely Congress will request copies,” Gilmore wrote. He attached a 30-page report outlining his early “operational assessment” of the CVN-78 program, which calls for spending at least $40 billion to develop and build three carriers.

Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. (HII), based in Newport News, Virginia, is the prime contractor on the carrier program, with Raytheon Co. (RTN) providing radar systems and General Atomics handling the launch and recovery gear.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-10/hagel-told-new-carrier-unlikely-to-meet-aircraft-goals.html

[MyNameGoesHere]

1. Razor blades.

That's what all these ships are good for.

[Historic NY]

2. Can't complete the mission at 13.9 billion....

lets just make it a reef.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. The catapult system is more complex than most people imagine.

New tech, always going to have teething problems.


Still, imagine all that money thrown at a different problem. Like SNAP.

[Wolf Frankula]

4. Then Let's Cut our Losses and not Build them.

It's not like we don't have carriers.

Wolf

[ernestholsen]

5. Blotted defence budgets.

No wonder they named it the Gerald Ford.

A new take on Fix Or Repair Daily.

At least we seem to be getting an honest appraisal from Hagel.

I remember watching the History Channel and Military Channel propaganda concerning our new fleet carriers several years ago.

What is the annual cost of a Carrier Battle group these days?

Hey, I like these emoticon icon thing'ies.

[WhiteTara]

7. I have no idea the cost

but welcome to DU Have fun!
That's a great anagram for ford.

[WhiteTara]

6. time to stop that FUBAR and give that money

to what ever need we have in this country to keep it running. You know, roads, bridges, infrastructure, cleaning up pollution, reforesting, you know, minor things. But we'll probably have that shoved down our tax burden.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

8. If Hagel knows what he's doing,

this is a prelude to shutting that program down.
Aircraft carriers are obsolete at this point. Any floating boat can be blown out of the water with a missile fired from half a world away and guided in by GPS. Spending 40 bil on a high tech loaded target is so counterproductive it's not even funny.
They are useful in geopolitics of course. Nothing like a carrier group to get a small nation's attention. But you don't spend 40 bil to develop a new way to do something low tech like that. Existing tech can do that job just fine.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

9. The problem is the 30-page report ...

... a $40B program needs a 3000-page report. Written by techie-lawyers.

The program will gain high praise just due to the "thud factor" of the study.

[Kelvin Mace]

10. Last I checked

there are about 30 aircraft carriers in the world and the U.S. has 20 of them.

We don't NEED any more.