
The newest and costliest U.S. aircraft carrier has been dogged by trouble - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-15/new-u-s-carrier-hobbled-by-flaws-in-launching-landing-planes
======
nostrademons
I feel like articles like this fundamentally miss the point of a peacetime
military, which is:

1.) To sit there and look powerful, and ideally dissuade potential adversaries
from forcing you to build a wartime military.

2.) To experiment with a bunch of new technologies, so that _when you need to
go to war_ , there is some report buried on a bureaucrat's desk detailing
precisely the capabilities that the wartime military will have.

3.) To keep military industrial capacity alive, so that you don't have to
build new shipyards & tooling from scratch if war breaks up.

4.) To keep military human capital engaged & employed, so that you don't need
to train up a generation of engineers to build the tooling to build the war
machines that you actually want.

5.) As a form of Keynesian stimulus & political welfare, to redistribute money
from wealthy regions of the country to poor regions.

In basically every military conflict since the American revolution, people
have found that military doctrine is going to be out-of-date, and all the best
tactics & weapon systems you thought you had are largely useless. When Vietnam
started, we thought that the war would be conducted through missiles,
airplanes, and ICBMS; instead we had a long hard slog of infantry jungle
warfare. When Korea started, we thought the next war would be nuclear and over
in an hour; instead, jets & amphibious landings had a large place. When WW2
started, we thought we'd have a titanic clash of battleships; instead, the
whole naval war was fought by submarines in the Atlantic and aircraft carriers
in the Pacific. There's no reason to believe that the next war will be any
different; for all we know, it'll be fought with drones in the sky, or hackers
in cyberspace, or maybe we'll finally get the nuclear apocalypse that we
thought Korea would be.

The point of a peacetime military is to keep options open so that _when you
find out_ just how the next war will be fought, there is some low-level
engineer, somewhere, who has been experimenting with precisely the technology
you need, and can be rapidly promoted and tell everyone else how to do it.
Things like the Gerald Ford or F-35 fit right into that strategy. They aren't
intended to be fighting machines in their own right; they're floating/flying
R&D platforms for developing new technologies, most of which are useless but a
couple of which will probably be crucial.

~~~
lambdadmitry
Exactly this. F-35 is a _monumental_ software challenge, it's essentially AR
built to military standards on and run on (relatively) weak computers. Throw
in a need to invent UI and UX for that to allow the pilot process massive
amount of information from the sensor suite.

I think the project warrants more respect just for its audacity. It's
basically a moonshot project.

~~~
Rotten194
It only deserves respect if you believe the military deserves respect. The US
spends more on it's military than every other militarily significant country
combined -- what are we defending against? Besides a drop in stock price for
Lockheed Martin.

~~~
dctoedt
> _It only deserves respect if you believe the military deserves respect._

Yes.

> _The US spends more on it 's military than every other militarily
> significant country combined -- what are we defending against?_

If women ran the world, I might agree with you; they seem to be more
cooperative than men, and they don't seem to be as driven as men to prove
their superiority and establish their power. (I know, it's a pair of sweeping
generalizations.)

And certainly there's room for debate about specific defense expenditures, or
whether overall we should cut them back or scale them up.

But there are wolves in the world; if you've read even a little history,
you'll know that perceived weakness invites predation. A strong military can
be a _really_ handy thing to have around — as, sadly, the world keeps having
to relearn, often at terrible cost.

Like it or not, the U.S. is the ultimate guarantor of the global order on
which so much of modern life depends.

(And it's "The US spends more on _its_ military ....")

~~~
adventured
If women ran the world eh.

"For scholars such as Steven Pinker, a psychologist, and Francis Fukuyama, a
political scientist, these are grounds for thinking that a world run by women
would be more peaceful."

"But European history suggests otherwise, according to a working paper by
political scientists Oeindrila Dube, of the University of Chicago, and S. P.
Harish, of McGill University. They studied how often European rulers went to
war between 1480 and 1913. Over 193 reigns, they found that states ruled by
queens were 27% more likely to wage war than those ruled by kings."

[http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21722877-european-
histo...](http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21722877-european-history-
answer-queens-especially-married-ones-who-gets-more-wars-kings)

~~~
swsieber
Did they actually rule or were they figure heads? I was under the impression
women were respected as much back then.

------
kilroy123
I really worry about the defense of the US in coming decades. Huge issues
plaguing the F-35 program [1]. Other programs that aren't going well with navy
vessels. [2] Massive waste in general and "losing" a ton of equipment. [3]
Plus this.

It's clear it is not about actual defense of the US, but about extracting as
much wealth as possible from all of us; the tax payers.

This is simply not sustainable. Trillions of dollars spent on military
programs that don't really give us "high-tech" weaponry and defense.

[1] [http://warisboring.com/the-f-35-is-a-terrible-fighter-
bomber...](http://warisboring.com/the-f-35-is-a-terrible-fighter-bomber-and-
attacker-and-unfit-for-aircraft-carriers/)

[2] [http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-us-navys-expensive-new-
wars...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-us-navys-expensive-new-warships-are-
breaking-down-at-sea)

[3] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-
burie...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-buries-
evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-
waste/2016/12/05/e0668c76-9af6-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html)

~~~
GVIrish
> It's clear it is not about actual defense of the US, but about extracting as
> much wealth as possible from all of us; the tax payers.

I wouldn't say that's what it's about. It's just that America's prevailing
mindset about defense and weapon systems is 'performance at all costs' and 'if
it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing'.

So they don't set out to develop a weapon system that will perform well on the
battlefield at some level of risk in exchange for a reasonable cost, they set
out to build a weapon system that is absolutely dominant to the point of
negligible risk on the battlefield. So every system coming down the pipe gets
loaded up with every bell and whistle possible.

Of course the defense industry actively lobbies for bleeding edge and
expensive weapons systems. But the fact is that the military and congress are
all about dominance, not competence.

It makes sense to a degree. If you've got stealth bombers and the enemy
doesn't, they may not want to start a war at all. But at a certain point your
next-gen stealth bomber becomes so expensive and complex that it may never
work properly or you can't field enough of them to make a difference. Or
you've built something extremely expensive to perform a job that a plane
1/20th the cost can perform at little to no risk.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
This attitude makes sense to me, given the revealed preferences of the
electorate. They exert a lot of political pressure per US soldier combat
death, and very little per wasted dollar of military R&D and equipment
purchasing waste.

Flip the incentives around, where war material is politically expensive and
combat casualties are cheap, and you wind up with something much closer to
what the Soviets did.

------
bpodgursky
It's not great, but this still worries me a lot less than other troubled
programs.

\- At the end of the day, the Nimitz class carriers are still the most
advanced in the world by about 30 years. We have a lot of time to get the Ford
class working properly.

\- In the absolute worst-case scenario, the electromagnetic launch and
corkscrew arrest systems can be swapped out for steam systems in a fairly
straightforward manner. It won't be cheap, but it's not a big mystery.

There aren't major problems with the other new systems on the Ford class that
I know of. It will have plenty of power needed for future weapon platforms
(railguns, energy weapons, etc). You could argue that carriers will be
obsolete etc, but that's a different question and fairly speculative. There's
not really a scenario where the Ford class puts us behind the Nimitz class
after 2025 or so.

Other programs are fundamentally a bit shakier and deserve more worry. The F35
doesn't have a single "bad" part you can swap out to fall back to the
capabilities of a fourth-gen fighter. Unfortunately, we're basically stuck
with them, because if we cancel the F35, the British navy and the marines will
have a dozen totally useless carriers without a modern VTOL fighter to put on
them.

------
flerchin
The problems of the new weapons systems sound bad, but I recall all the V-22
and F-22 naysayers. They're both expensive, but they're also the best in the
world and flying everyday.

It's hard to tell when a weapons system under development in is trouble, and
when it's just working out its kinks. Compared to past projects, the Ford
class isn't all that far outside the projected budget.

------
wizardforhire
INAGOA (I'm not a general or admiral) but aren't aircraft carriers essentially
obselete? Van Riper destroyed nearly the entire U.S. Fleet back in 2002 in one
day with small boats and Cessnas.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002)

~~~
EliRivers
The short answer is "no". The ability to reach out and blow up things
selectively anywhere in the world is a very serious power. That's what an
aircraft carrier gives you. The number of powers in the world who can reach
back and destroy a carrier plus defensive escorts can be counted on the
fingers of one hand. Possibly less than that.

~~~
count
It is like you didn't even read the link. There isn't a country in the world
that couldn't reproduce Riper's results if they had the talent on hand.

~~~
EliRivers
"If they had.."

They don't have.

They don't have a massive salvo of cruise missiles.

They don't have an armada of small red boats.

If you're arguing "if they had" you might as well say "if they had magic".
They don't have, barring few enough to count on the fingers of one hand.

------
faramarz
Maybe the $13 Billion dollar lesson here is to stop launching war machines
across the globe?

but seriously, the gross fiscal negligence in this sector is appalling, and
it's been the case since the start of the Military Industrial Complex.

~~~
Cyph0n
Military-sponsored research is one advantage that results from these large-
scale advanced weapon design projects.

~~~
Rotten194
Directly funding research is far more efficient than letting a huge percentage
of the money we spend go to lining the pockets of MIC billionaires.

~~~
Cyph0n
If you can find these mythical entities that are willing to fund research that
has basically zero ROI (other than the NSF), you would be a hero in academia.

Otherwise, the MIC is one of the only good funding sources available.

------
passivepinetree
United States military spending is unbelievably out of control. It is seeming
more and more like a system to throw money at military contracting companies
rather than provide working equipment to the military.

------
nickhalfasleep
Imagine if there was no longer war not because we found peaceful means of
resolution; but because the weapons systems became so complex and overwrought
that they no longer functioned in war.

~~~
lisper
Unfortunately, reverting to low-tech is always an option. :-(

------
chrismealy
Why even have manned fighter planes? Self driving cars is a much harder
problem than war drones, and everybody seems convinced the former's just
around the corner.

~~~
lambdadmitry
Self-driving cars have enough of a problem to keep themselves from killing
people. You are telling that adding a requirement of killing only the right
people makes it _easier_? I doubt that.

Moreover, a lot of people are uncomfortable about making robots decide who to
kill.

~~~
favorited
An unmanned drone is easier because it's piloted remotely, where a self-
driving car is autonomous.

~~~
lambdadmitry
You just can't remotely pilot a fighter/bomber. You can't remotely pilot if
you don't have an overwhelming air superiority. You can't remotely pilot if
your adversary can deny you satellite connection (either through jamming or by
destroying the satellite). Here are a few problems:

\- the lag. Aerial fight implies split-second decisions, many of which are
matter of life and death. Sat link is way slower than that.

\- kiss your stealth goodbye. First, you need a radar-transparent dome and a
satellite dish under that; it's hardly stealthy. Second, you need a downlink
that can be detected in a large vicinity of its target - even if it's a
"tight" beam, it's still kilometers across. Third, the uplink will still bleed
some RF energy that can be detectable. Planes fly in a radio silence for a
reason.

\- very low "sensor bandwidth". Fighter pilot constantly receives tons of data
using almost all of their senses, while drone pilot only sees a grainy glitchy
videostream.

To put it in another way: F-35 is basically a multi-ton, hyper-technological
shell for about a kilo of squishy brain mass. Unless we invent some form of
undetectable, very-low-ping, multi-gigabit communication it will always be
better to have that brain "locally" in an adversary environment.

~~~
favorited
I'm confused as to how this relates to my comment. My point was simply that
military UAVs are 'easier' than autonomous cars because they are not
autonomous. They are remote-controlled.

