I'm not expert, but the other takeaway I have from this is that it proves the collusion of the military and defense conglomerates. In the old days, you at least SORT OF had a competition. Nowadays, it seems you only do when things are a colossal failure (like the LCS program, etc.)
The real issue is two fold imo. 1) he defense contractors get paid for delivering a broken product, and then get paid more to fix the broken product they delivered 2) The high level military people approving the plans are near the end of their career, so not only are they institutionalized, they’re also planning their post-retirement employment, and wouldn’t you know it, Lockheed Martin has a place on their board coming open right after the guy who approved their product retires. And the Congress people approving the budget are a) overwhelmingly civilians and b) could give a shit if anything actually works as long as the thing keeps Factory ABC and Fort XYZ open another 5 years.
The movie Pentagon Wars about the development of the Bradley was fantastic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars
Don’t forget the Microsoft Military Helmets. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...lar-advanced-augmented-reality-goggle-program
In reading a little more on the latest incident, the consensus appears to be the issue may have happened due to a snapped arresting cable on the carrier. The leading school of thought is if it was simply a flight issue, six other sailors would probably not have been hurt. The most likely reason why so many were injured would be due to the cable snapping. More than likely the aircraft once landed, went to full power as it normally would in case it missed the wires, yet the cable probably slowed the plane down too much that full power wasn't enough to get it airborne again once the wire released. The pilot then ejected and was recovered. The arresting cables are pretty heavy and when they break, usually end up hurting several people.
The Navy’s $13 billion supercarrier still can’t do the one thing it’s absolutely required to do What good is an aircraft carrier that can't reliably launch and land aircraft? https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/navy-gerald-r-ford-aircraft-carrier-emals-problems/ Navy’s $13 Billion Carrier Sows Doubt That It Can Defend Itself Pentagon testing office cites uncertainty of interceptor tests Ford carrier is due to sail on its first deployment this year https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-carrier-sows-doubt-that-it-can-defend-itself
There is a pretty good thread over on Reddit about this and I saw this comment and figured I would share. Key takeways, for me, going off this: • The report itself doesn’t seem too harsh in terms of fixing things. If it had something to say, such as “this problem could take until 2030 to fix”, or perhaps something equally damning, it would likely be quoted in the article (I mean the headline is literally “Navy’s $13 Billion Carrier Sows Doubt That It Can Defend Itself”, the writer doesn’t seem like the type to have held back a juicy extract). The fact that it isn’t, suggests to me the Navy considers the issues described as generally fixable. This is further backed up by the bit about Rear Admiral James Downey saying they’re confident in it’s systems. • Even putting aside that, none of the issues stand out as long term threats to the program. The electromagnetic catapult system thing is an eyebrow raiser, as well as the arresting system, but, again as a lay person, those goals sound wild. Does anyone here have an idea roughly what a Nimitz class would be expected to accomplish on those metrics? • Missile interceptors, from what I recall, have historically been problematic, so it’s not the most surprising thing to hear of struggles here. The fact it’s sensor systems were able to handle the detection/tracking/engagement suggests a problem with the missiles themselves rather than ship systems to me. • Then of course there’s the classic thing that, well, no carrier “defends itself” unless something has gone seriously wrong. It’s great if the carrier’s systems are all completely and totally capable at defending itself, but a Ford class should not (and hopefully, would not) be dependent on only it’s own systems to keep it safe. Thought this article might be interesting for some of you, at least.
I am not too worried about recovering the F35 at the moment. We obviously have one of our SSGN Ohio class subs which we showed off when it stopped in Guam last week. My guess is we will park that sub over the wreck to keep an eye on it and deter any unwanted visitors from snooping around. Also we have a couple of ISR aircraft hanging out in the general area keeping track of surface craft in the area to ensure nothing gets too close.
No, I don’t think they’ll park a national strategic asset that they rarely tell anyone where they are in a place where it would be relentlessly collected on
The sub I mentioned was one of the ones converted to carry tomahawks instead of nukes. It’s one of the four Ohios they use for special ops. It has enhanced intelligence gathering equipment and the ability to deploy larger seal teams and supports various mini subs. The idea is no one but us knows exactly where the F35 went down as it’s still a pretty big sea. So it could hang out fairly close without too much attention until our salvage team arrives on site to start the recovery.
Yeah, I know what an SSGN is. Payload doesn't matter when the collection target is the engine and propellers.
I may be confused at what you are inferring. Are you saying we wouldn’t want to have the SSGN near the sunken F35, due to risks China could want to attack it to get a hold of the engines and propellers? I assumed there would be very little risk of detection or that China or anyone would risk trying to engage the sub. You may feel different of course.
Its not a deterrent unless you make it known that it’s there. If you make it known that it’s there, every ship in the Chinese Navy will be looking for it. The whole purpose of the class is to evade detection but it’s not undetectable. It’s also entirely outside the mission profile of the ship, and what’s the use case? Are we going to light up a Chinese trawler that drops a hook in international waters?
The use case was pretty simple. Keep a close eye on anything that gets close, while not drawing significant attention to the area. Parking the carrier group on top of it limits the ability of the carrier to stay mobile and somewhat hidden in the SCS if it wants to. Parking a SSGN close by is a really good way to keep a tab on everything that gets close to the area, including underwater. They chose the Ohios for the role bc they didn’t need as many nuke boats, but also bc those were designed to be some of the hardest ships to detect in the fleet. Obviously you disagree with the idea, no big deal. I saw a similar idea suggested when the British lost their F35 a few months ago and it seemed like a pretty obvious solution to me. Not a big deal.
I'm nowhere near as informed as you folks ITT, but how exactly would a carrier group stay somewhat hidden in the era of spy satellites?
Without going into too many details, pretty near impossible. And you don't even need satellites; you can do it with a certain level of accuracy with over-the-horizon radar
Thanks to the sailor that took this photo and posted it so China can geotag where it was taken and go find the wreckage
Probably punch out and sinking. I don't think Yoda is onboard the carrier raising it up with the Force.
Hidden was a really poor choice of words. Making it harder to continuously detect them would have been probably a better choice of words. I am curious of your feedback on how applicable these ideas would hold up against the Chinese today? History and Technology - How to Hide a Task Force - NavWeaps This is an article written 20 years ago and I would have to assume things changed, but I am curious how much could still work?
I’ll give it a read tonight but I’m not sure how much I can reply to it; a lot of what I know I know from either classified or at minimum Official Use Only stuff, and everything I post on here I make sure I can find on Wikipedia-level articles first. I’d worry that if I start opining on if a 20 year old tactical manual holds up I’d let some stuff slip through and I’d rather avoid that if possible. Not trying to be a dick about this and I’ll reply about what I can.
I mean I read 20 years worth of 80 year old issues of US Naval Proceedings for my masters, so I might not be the best judge.
Lol ship raising always seems like wizardry to me but they make it happen. So I would imagine it would be even easier on an f-35.
I mean I enjoyed it. Overall the paper is pretty accurate I think; the “minimize electronic emissions” thing has been pretty standard since the 1970s at least(look up the Wild Weasels if you want to learn about some insane anti missile tactics). That’s why we have AWACS that stay well back from the fighting; they’re the only once emitting and send that data to everyone else. I think the author forgets about geostationary orbits, since they mention dodging satellite tracks (and even that I think is more accurate to ground or air movements than naval ones, cuz even full out ships are moving in a big open space at a max of 50mph). And as I mentioned before, over the horizon radar exists and can detect things thousands of miles away and is largely weather proof.
Granted I’m much more at the working group level than procurement decision level, but from my experience it comes down a lot more to incompetence than the lure of kickbacks. Industry has been pushed to be the subject matter experts while the government is just glorified accountants and contract admins. Industry is not suited in many cases to be subject matter experts because they are beholden to leadership that just wants to drive profit. The navy brings in their experts from the NSWC’s (Carderock, Dahlgren, China Lake, etc) but they are extremely understaffed because…they can make more money being SME’s in industry. LCS never EVER made sense, and from the accounts I’ve heard there was practically no one in the fleet that wanted it. But industry was like “hey have you ever been on a catamaran? Those things are fun!”
The LCS is so close to being a halfway decent platform though; if they’d made it 20m longer and put a Vertical Launch System on it, and not spent years trying to make the do-everything modular shit work, it would have been a decent frigate they could sell on the export market.
Aren't all the systems on it basically shit, though? Always seems like Shelby and other senators just drove it because it'd keep shipbuilders busy.
My understanding is that the main issue with them is that they have extremely high operating and maintenance costs. Which is basically the opposite of what was supposed to happen- they have like half the crew of a similar sized ship. Then you combine that with them not being particularly good at any specific mission type and the stuff that they are ok at (close to shore/shallow operations) not being a priority anymore. I had thought they would just move them to coast guard to go fight pirates and drug traffickers but the operating costs are just too high.
What if we let the Chinese recover the f35 so they too can sink billions into a shitty plane, brilliant
Yeah at this point the secret tech is how to create a black hole of money to enrich private industry.