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This story lacks perspective. They are 25% over budget. For a government defense program that just is not that bad. The reason they are over budget is because t

This story lacks perspective. They are 25% over budget. For a government defense program that just is not that bad. The reason they are over budget is because they are using a ton of new systems and new technology and guess what it is buggy. NASA blew up a ton of rockets before they got one to work, and blew up even more getting them to work reliably. Given the new technology 25% is pretty damn good. They will work out the issues. There are numerous military technologies that where less then stellar in the 1st run. It is like anything else, it gets better over time and effort. If you say hey, this worked for the last 50 years we should not change then I guess we should be flying bi-planes?

maxerickson 9y ago
They choose to push the capabilities envelope pretty far. The maintenance hours per flight hour of military aircraft are huge.
ozgune 9y ago
+1. Many large scale projects (for example the Boeing 787) end up over-budget and with delays. Does anyone have statistics on how projects of similar complexity performed in terms of their budgets and timelines?
taneq 9y ago
Yeah, it all sounds like tuning / refinement issues rather than fundamentally flawed systems. "Rip it all out and replace it with steam" is a non-technical kneejerk, not a reasoned response.
- mturmon 9y ago
  Bingo: https://www.navytimes.com/articles/trump-says-navy-should-ditch-carrier-emals https://www.navytimes.com/articles/trump-says-navy-should-di...
jessriedel 9y ago
Obviously we'd need expertise to tell if (say) the budget was already hugely cushioned in expectation of bugs so that the overrun really is outrageous. But agreed, this is not obviously bad at all, and the author hasn't given us detailed info to think otherwise. More importantly: the Ford is the first in the new generation of as many as ten aircraft carriers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_... Basically, all carriers currently in service are of the Nimitz class, and will be replaced one-by-one over the next 40 years with ships based on the Ford. Lessons learned and tech developed will be amortized over those future ships.
stevenwoo 9y ago
I think there is a huge difference between NASA trying to find a viable rocket design for manned flight and building an aircraft carrier - they already have designs for catapult and arresting systems that are much more reliable and cheaper than the new ones they decided to try out on the new class of carrier ( and using the same metaphor with NASA, they chose a company that had never designed a rocket engine to design rockets for manned space travel to put on top of a Saturn V stage 1), and if they continue to stick with the new unproven designs, they won't be able to deliver for many, many more years, if ever. If they had stuck with the proven design with just improvements, they might have been able to deliver the ship three years ago on time. The new electric only system means they committed to not routing steam from the nuclear power plant to the catapults so that would be a major retrofit for that one completed new style carrier. The new electric systems when they do fail, they disable the entire catapult launch capability of the aircraft carrier, the contractor made a really poor design decision here that they apparently cannot fix. The steam catapults can be taken offline individually and worked on, leaving the others in service.
- myrandomcomment 9y ago
  They did not just say, hey this steam thing sucks, let's do something different. While a mature technology it has its issues. The routing of the steam pipes and battle damage issues, the fact that it cannot be tuned exactly based on weight load, etc. They had a reason beyond steam sucks. It will get worked out.
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  The big issue is that the EMALS system is easier on the airframes. In a conventional steam catapult, the steam head hits the piston face at max pressure and expands as it accelerates the aircraft, but max acceleration occurs at the beginning. This means there's much more load on the aluminium components of the airframes. As aluminium has no elastic limit, all deformation is bad. The Navy goes through a lot of airframes compared to the air force. The EMALS system is intended to spread the load out continuously during take-off so the max load is much lower, thereby dramatically increasing the lifespan of the airframes.
mturmon 9y ago
Yes, it really is an op-ed that is being read by many here as objective reportage.
mysterydip 9y ago
"This is the way we've always done it" is the reason why this ship is so over budget in time and money. Anyone who has been in IT should have seen the story play out at least once in their career: some legacy system that's been hobbled together to keep running for so long because it worked... but now that a decade or more has passed there's finally some catalyst that says you _must_ upgrade. The problem being that now the upgrade is rip-and-replace rather than micro updates over time. That's what's happening here, on many systems at once.
- cottsak 9y ago
  #lean, #agile and the fundamental principals of Small Batches seem to be at odds with programs like carrier development and defence contracts in general. It's very unlikely that the lessons from IT fields will ever make their way into projects like this.
  - mysterydip 9y ago
    I can understand the perspective, too, though. Stuff has to work. You're not emailing a new build to them mid-cruise. This means there should be a large paper trail and signoff on any project, which makes any team hesitant to anything but incremental changes. I'm not sure what the ultimate solution would be that keeps the reliability aspect but allows for more risky/rapid development.
Boothroid 9y ago
Why not design the thing such that new systems can be swapped in over time?

maxerickson 9y ago

They choose to push the capabilities envelope pretty far. The maintenance hours per flight hour of military aircraft are huge.

ozgune 9y ago

+1. Many large scale projects (for example the Boeing 787) end up over-budget and with delays. Does anyone have statistics on how projects of similar complexity performed in terms of their budgets and timelines?

taneq 9y ago

Yeah, it all sounds like tuning / refinement issues rather than fundamentally flawed systems. "Rip it all out and replace it with steam" is a non-technical kneejerk, not a reasoned response.

mturmon 9y ago
Bingo: https://www.navytimes.com/articles/trump-says-navy-should-ditch-carrier-emals https://www.navytimes.com/articles/trump-says-navy-should-di...

jessriedel 9y ago

Obviously we'd need expertise to tell if (say) the budget was already hugely cushioned in expectation of bugs so that the overrun really is outrageous. But agreed, this is not obviously bad at all, and the author hasn't given us detailed info to think otherwise. More importantly: the Ford is the first in the new generation of as many as ten aircraft carriers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford-class_aircraft_... Basically, all carriers currently in service are of the Nimitz class, and will be replaced one-by-one over the next 40 years with ships based on the Ford. Lessons learned and tech developed will be amortized over those future ships.

stevenwoo 9y ago

I think there is a huge difference between NASA trying to find a viable rocket design for manned flight and building an aircraft carrier - they already have designs for catapult and arresting systems that are much more reliable and cheaper than the new ones they decided to try out on the new class of carrier ( and using the same metaphor with NASA, they chose a company that had never designed a rocket engine to design rockets for manned space travel to put on top of a Saturn V stage 1), and if they continue to stick with the new unproven designs, they won't be able to deliver for many, many more years, if ever. If they had stuck with the proven design with just improvements, they might have been able to deliver the ship three years ago on time. The new electric only system means they committed to not routing steam from the nuclear power plant to the catapults so that would be a major retrofit for that one completed new style carrier. The new electric systems when they do fail, they disable the entire catapult launch capability of the aircraft carrier, the contractor made a really poor design decision here that they apparently cannot fix. The steam catapults can be taken offline individually and worked on, leaving the others in service.

myrandomcomment 9y ago
They did not just say, hey this steam thing sucks, let's do something different. While a mature technology it has its issues. The routing of the steam pipes and battle damage issues, the fact that it cannot be tuned exactly based on weight load, etc. They had a reason beyond steam sucks. It will get worked out.
killjoywashere 9y ago
The big issue is that the EMALS system is easier on the airframes. In a conventional steam catapult, the steam head hits the piston face at max pressure and expands as it accelerates the aircraft, but max acceleration occurs at the beginning. This means there's much more load on the aluminium components of the airframes. As aluminium has no elastic limit, all deformation is bad. The Navy goes through a lot of airframes compared to the air force. The EMALS system is intended to spread the load out continuously during take-off so the max load is much lower, thereby dramatically increasing the lifespan of the airframes.

mturmon 9y ago

Yes, it really is an op-ed that is being read by many here as objective reportage.

mysterydip 9y ago

"This is the way we've always done it" is the reason why this ship is so over budget in time and money. Anyone who has been in IT should have seen the story play out at least once in their career: some legacy system that's been hobbled together to keep running for so long because it worked... but now that a decade or more has passed there's finally some catalyst that says you _must_ upgrade. The problem being that now the upgrade is rip-and-replace rather than micro updates over time. That's what's happening here, on many systems at once.

cottsak 9y ago
#lean, #agile and the fundamental principals of Small Batches seem to be at odds with programs like carrier development and defence contracts in general. It's very unlikely that the lessons from IT fields will ever make their way into projects like this.
- mysterydip 9y ago
  I can understand the perspective, too, though. Stuff has to work. You're not emailing a new build to them mid-cruise. This means there should be a large paper trail and signoff on any project, which makes any team hesitant to anything but incremental changes. I'm not sure what the ultimate solution would be that keeps the reliability aspect but allows for more risky/rapid development.

Boothroid 9y ago

Why not design the thing such that new systems can be swapped in over time?