
How not to build a ship: the USS Ford - smacktoward
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/military/guest-voices/sd-me-grazier-ussford-20170606-story.html
======
Animats
The EMALS system's big problems seem to be with the motor-generator-flywheel
system used to power them. The ship doesn't generate enough power to drive the
catapults directly from ship power. They have to wind up a flywheel, and then
dump that energy using a generator when launching aircraft. The hardware for
that weighs 12 tons. Whatever problem they're having has resulted in damage to
the motor/generator windings, requiring pulling out the rotating component.
This is apparently a difficult repair.

That has to create huge stresses on the windings. You wind up the flywheel,
and then suddenly apply field current to activate the generator. They may be
trying to ramp up field current slowly to reduce the stress. Some articles
mention problems with a voltage regulator causing machine damage. Maybe the
rotating machinery can't take a full-power turn-on.

Details on the system seem rather vague. Some published articles say there are
four motor-generator-flywheel sets; others say only two. Isolating failed
units electrically for maintenance is apparently difficult. Unclear why.

This unit "passed factory acceptance testing" in 2008.[1] These problems
should have been discovered and fixed years ago. The manufacturer is Kato
Engineering, part of Emerson Electric, acting as a subcontractor to General
Atomic. They make a range of generators for various applications. So this is
coming from a company with a long history of making generators. But generators
are usually continuous-duty, not something that experiences shock loads like
this flywheel rig. Apparently nobody insisted on some serious testing like
running this thing through 50,000 cycles into a dummy load.

The linear motor of the catapult itself seems to be working OK.

The new arresting gear shouldn't have been a problem. That's mostly a paddles-
in-water brake, something that's centuries old. How did that get screwed up?

Overall, the Ford series of carriers uses electricity for functions that, on
other carriers, involve piping steam around. Most newer Naval ships are Diesel
or gas turbine powered, and don't generate steam as a by-product. Nuclear
plants do generate steam, which has been convenient for carrier catapults. The
new British carrier series (if it gets built) is to be non-nuclear, and they
want to use the EMALS launcher on some of the ships (maybe). That's part of a
big mess - without a catapult, they have to buy the VTOL/STOL version of the
F-35, which has its own problems.

There's an amusing book, "Ships, Machinery, and Mossbacks", by H.G. Bowen,
from WWII. Bowen was a U.S. Navy engineering officer and eventually was in
charge of most Naval propulsion systems during WWII. He was a real hard-ass on
contractors, and often sent back large, expensive items like final drive gears
back as rejects. Admiral Arleigh Burke ("31 knot Burke") wrote that his ships
wouldn't have been able to go 31 knots without Bowen's work. When it really
has to work, you need people like that who can say no.

[1] [http://www.ga.com/emals-motor-generator-passes-acceptance-
te...](http://www.ga.com/emals-motor-generator-passes-acceptance-testing)

~~~
dreamcompiler
I wonder why they didn't use a large capacitor bank (e.g. Marx generator)
instead of flywheels and motor-generators.

~~~
Animats
Each EMALS flywheel unit stores 121 MJ.[1] This is roughly the energy in a
gallon of gasoline.

Here's a big ultracapacitor bank, from Maxwell. This one is intended for
temporary energy storage for buses, trucks, and trains, so it can take some
banging around.[2] Capacity is 144 Watt-hours, or about half a megajoule.
Weighs 64Kg, not including fans. So it would take about 250 of those units to
equal one flywheel unit, for a weight of 16 metric tons.

The flywheel unit weighs about 11 metric tons. So using ultracapacitors
increases weight, but it's not out of the question. Might be simpler. If the
system were being designed today, it might well be capacitor-powered. No
moving parts, unit-replaceable if damaged, and low-maintenance.

The EMALS system doesn't actually need 121MJ to launch.[3] Each launch uses
maybe a quarter of that. Apparently the idea is to have enough energy stored
for several launches on several catapults.

(A Marx generator is a setup for getting a high voltage at low current, by
charging capacitors in parallel and then switching them to series. They're
useful for powering some physics experiments and for making big sparks. The
Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago used to have a big one, their old
"Million Volt Lightning Generator". Not useful in this application.)

[1]
[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/systems/...](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/systems/emals.htm)
[2]
[http://www.maxwell.com/images/documents/125vmodule_ds_101469...](http://www.maxwell.com/images/documents/125vmodule_ds_1014696-7.pdf)
[3]
[http://vtb.ee.sc.edu/vtbwebsite/downloads/publications/emals...](http://vtb.ee.sc.edu/vtbwebsite/downloads/publications/emals%20formatted%20for%20IAS.pdf)

------
myrandomcomment
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?

~~~
stevenwoo
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.

~~~
killjoywashere
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.

~~~
zaroth
Intended, yes, except it actually fails to do this currently and potentially
indefinitely.

~~~
myrandomcomment
There was a more balanced story awhile back that talked about this in detail
and it said they believe they can make software tweaks and a few other changes
to resolve that. However they where not 100% and where doing testing.

------
meric
Zumwalt

F-35

USS Ford

It reminds me of Qing China in the 1890's.

"On paper, the Beiyang Fleet had the superior ships,[2] included two pre-
dreadnought battleships, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, for which the Japanese had no
counterparts. "....."Though well drilled, the Chinese had not engaged in
sufficient gunnery practice beforehand. This lack of training was the direct
result of a serious lack of ammunition. Corruption seems to have played a
major role; many Chinese shells appear to have been filled with cement or
porcelain, or were the wrong caliber and could not be fired."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yalu_River_(1894...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yalu_River_\(1894\))

"Li wanted to delay the battle against the Japanese fleet, thus allowing the
Chinese more time to equip their ships with additional ammunition. However,
the imperial court called him a coward and his recommendation was turned
down."

"Defense spending analyst Winslow Wheeler concluded from flight evaluation
reports that the F-35A "is flawed beyond redemption";[196] in response,
program manager Bogdan suggested that pilots worried about being shot down
should fly cargo aircraft
instead."[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II#Concerns_over_performance_and_safety)

I don't think U.S. is at the terminal stage yet, as Qing China was at that
time - but it certainly rhymes.

~~~
justicezyx
The analogy seems poor.

Qing's warships are just good on paper, but the men in charge of them lack
actual real-world experiences wielding them effectively.

While F35 Zumwalt Ford are all products driven by US military's real-world
experiences, guided by their requirements, and addresses real issues. And I
have no doubt that these weapons can be used effectively in their designated
use cases.

Their failure is that the engineering work did not finish quick enough to land
their impact in appropriate time frame.

~~~
meric
Prompted by the November 22, 2016, break-down of Zumwalt in the Panama Canal
with both propellers seized, Mike Fredenburg analyzed the program for the
National Review and concluded that the ship's problems "are emblematic of a
defense procurement system that is rapidly losing its ability to meet our
national security needs."[93] After detailing problems relating to the
skyrocketing costs, lack of accountability, unrealistic goals, a flawed
concept of operations, the perils of designing a warship around stealth, as
well as the failure of the Advanced Gun System, Fredenburg concludes:

The Zumwalt is an unmitigated disaster. Clearly it is not a good fit as a
frontline warship. With its guns neutered, its role as a primary anti-
submarine-warfare asset in question, its anti-air-warfare capabilities
inferior to those of our current workhorse, the Arleigh Burke-class
destroyers, and its stealth not nearly as advantageous as advertised, the
Zumwalt seems to be a ship without a mission.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-
class_destroyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer)

~~~
Boothroid
Would make a nice super yacht though, all those fancy angles.

------
hangonhn
Wow, one of the contributors is Pierre Sprey. I would take his criticisms very
seriously. He's basically the father of the A-10, which he came up with when
he studied WWII records and interviewing soldiers the aircraft was meant to
support. The Air Force hated it and still does to this day but that plane
proved to be cheap, durable, and useful. The A-10 is pretty much the opposite
of these fancy weapons projects.

~~~
throwaway7645
I understand that ground troops love the power of the A-10, basically the
"tank of the skies". Not sure why we can't have classes of distinct planes now
like bomber, fighter, ground-support, and reconnaissance. Pick 1 area and be
the best possible plane at doing that. The jack of all trades plane seems to
perform poorly at all those things.

~~~
dingaling
The USAF could transfer the A-10s to the US Army ( as has been proposed many
times since the 1970s ) and focus on the supra-tactical missions, but that
would require them to swallow their pride and end the Johnson-McConnell
'agreement'.

That dates back to 1966 and forbids the Army to operate armed fixed-wing
aircraft. The USAF would rather keep the A-10s, no matter how
unenthusiastically, than ever permit the Army to take control of the air-
support mission. It is ridiculous that such 'pride' has any part in national
security decisions.

~~~
throwaway7645
Never heard of that before. Pretty crazy.

------
ghshephard
Referenced from a recent HN posting on "What really happened to Vista" \-
seems amazing prescient about precisely this sort of situation, master writing
and a super quick read:

[http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html](http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html)

Just a short sample (It's all worth reading - and it involves battleships!):

 _"...do you realize that there has been no basic change in armaments for over
a century? It is, I am afraid, the result of a tradition that has become
conservative. For too long, the Research Staff has devoted itself to
perfecting old weapons instead of developing new ones. It is fortunate for us
that our opponents have been no wiser: we cannot assume that this will always
be so."_

------
CaveTech
> The new EMALS stores an enormous electrical charge -- enough to power 12,000
> homes for three seconds

It's hard to not love how prevasive arbitrary metrics are in modern day sports
and reporting.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
The wiki says it's 484 megajoules, delivered in 3 seconds. That is equivalent
to 134 mega-watthours,

For a potentially more useful arbitrary metric, that's a bit less than two
Model S batteries. Except it delivers all the energy in seconds, and charges
in 45 seconds, and isn't limited to a few hundred charge cycles. It's a
kinetic flywheel storage system, but I wonder if it would be built today using
a giant lithium-ion pack (many Tesla PowerWalls, basically) or a supercap
array.

~~~
maxerickson
134 kilowatt-hours.

1 megawatt-hour is 3600 megajoules.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Thank you for the correction.

It seems like this sort of energy could be very feasible with supercaps,
lithium-ion, or lead acid, at that level.

~~~
maxerickson
Like you said in your other comment, the energy is a couple Tesla batteries.
It's the power and cycling requirements that are hard.

------
AnimalMuppet
I have a little different take on this.

We aren't fighting a major war right now. We aren't facing off against a
similarly-powerful navy. So if you see the need for carriers at all, going
forward, then now's a good time to experiment. Throw all the new systems in
one carrier. If some of them take years to make them work right, well, we
learned at a time when we could afford to learn.

~~~
maxerickson
The existing fleet is being stretched pretty hard:

[https://news.usni.org/2015/11/04/navy-half-the-carrier-
fleet...](https://news.usni.org/2015/11/04/navy-half-the-carrier-fleet-tied-
up-in-maintenance-other-5-strained-to-meet-demands)

[http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/30/no-us-carrier-at-sea-
le...](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/30/no-us-carrier-at-sea-leaves-gap-
in-middle-east.html)

They could have deployed something like 2 Nimitz class ships for the unit cost
of the Ford (more when you consider the money spent on developing the Ford
class).

Work has started on the second one:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_F._Kennedy_(CVN-79)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_F._Kennedy_\(CVN-79\))

------
rndmize
I think we're at a point where the value of a traditional aircraft carrier is
questionable (for the cost), and likely to decrease in the coming decades.

A smaller, possibly submersible craft that could launch and catch drones would
probably be able to replace carriers in a variety of missions at vastly
reduced cost. Pilots can be offloaded to military bases; launching/catching
systems can be as powerful as the drones can be engineering to support, for
shorter landing and takeoff distances; required storage space is less, crew is
less, and cost is less for drones. DARPA has already done a little work in
this direction - [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/darpa-develops-system-launch-
retrie...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/darpa-develops-system-launch-retrieve-
large-drones-travelling-speed-midair-1605298)

------
nategri
Tomorrow on HN: How not to ship a build

------
johan_larson
Robert Farley has a good explanation of how difficult it would actually be to
sink one of the fleet carriers:

[http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/what-it-would-really-
take-t...](http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/what-it-would-really-take-to-sink-
a-modern-aircraft-car-1794182843)

~~~
Analemma_
It doesn't matter how difficult it is to sink them if they can't launch any
planes because the catapult is broken.

~~~
stevenwoo
Those are just the new carriers which can't be deployed until they can prove
it works as long as the Senate (from the article) is forcing the Navy to do
according to established protocol.

------
sosuke
Unrelated to the content ...

Their ad setup is very interesting it all appears to be served through
subdomains.

------
vermontdevil
Seems these problems comes down to selecting a contractor with no experience
in building these type of systems (whether steam or electrical).

~~~
gozur88
The military is always in a bind with contractor selection. If the don't
choose the lowest bidder they get hauled up in front of a Senate committee
full of people grandstanding for the next election accusing them of taking
care of cronies.

Particularly at the rate we build ships these days, if you only chose
companies that have done it before you're not going to have many bids to
choose from.

~~~
scottLobster
No relation to the Ford, but speaking as someone who works for one of the big
defense contractors the underbidding thing is a real issue. One of our
competitors (also not related to the Ford) that stole some business from us a
while back is currently eating some serious crow on some promises they
couldn't fulfill... but they did get the contract. That's serious money in
their pocket.

Likewise I'm pretty sure the average Dog Dating App startup has better
equipment than we're given, although to be fair what we have does the job,
just not nearly as well as it could. Not to mention the mountain of legacy
equipment and code that no one ever wants to spend money to replace or upgrade
properly (once again, underbidding). For every F-35 or USS Ford there are
hundreds of smaller programs wither much tighter (also underbid) budgets that
you never hear about (either because they're classified or just too boring for
media coverage). But it has to be that way, otherwise we don't get the
business at all.

Don't get me wrong I like my work and my coworkers, I'd certainly rather be
where I am than Silicon Valley, but the red tape and budgetary constraints are
a repeating source of frustration at all levels, and it sucks that there's not
really all that much we (at least anyone remotely close to my pay grade) can
do about it. At the end of the day it's up to our customers to set the bidding
process and pick the winners. A realistic bid is likely a lost contract.

~~~
gozur88
I've been there. This is not an easy problem to solve - they do have vetting
procedures and sometimes reject bids because they think the contractor can't
do the job. But companies are pretty good at making sure the boxes are all
checked during the bidding process.

I had a relative in the Air Force, and his group was in charge of salvaging
programs that failed because the contractor couldn't deliver. They would get
half-finished satellites and boxes of parts arriving at the loading dock and
then try to figure out what to do. Is someone criminally culpable? Can we do a
contract to finish this, or do we need to start over?

According to him you could just never tell - sometimes the contractors you
were sure would fail actually delivered, and sometimes the old reliables went
belly up or just kept asking for more money.

~~~
scottLobster
Yeah I'd say the issue there is that traditional defense contractors are
highly silo-ed, quality can vary drastically from program to program. I've
worked on programs that I'd pit against Google and programs where the culture
was a bunch of math majors who learned to code in the 70s and haven't updated
since the 90s. Just last year I had to review a 500 line FUNCTION in NEW CODE.

Thankfully I'm no longer attached to that program, had to continuously bite my
tongue and pick my battles in code reviews to avoid getting a reputation. Even
nicely telling people 15-20 years my senior "go spend two days refactoring
this crap" was a non-starter. To be fair the code did work, I doubt a user
would ever notice. But I felt bad signing off on the review all the same.

I sdhould point out that not all the old-timers are a problem. I'm currently
working with some 20-year guys who are VERY up to date and open to new ideas;
and the company is trying to modernize from the top-down, but some programs
have taken to it better than others and some have outright resisted. Given
that these programs are only staffed after a bid is won, I'm not sure what
kind of vetting process could catch these kinds of inefficiencies.

------
Robotbeat
This article is a bit too one-sided for me to take seriously.

The cost overruns seem modest compared to what I see occur regularly in big
aerospace projects (not just 25% or 50% but 300 or 500%). F35 cost is
absolutely absurd, for instance.

I saw basically no mention of the extra capabilities that a fully electric
ship like this could provide, it all was just a long list of down sides.

------
dten
Seems to be a more concise version of the warisboring article from a couple of
days ago (the author is the same):

[https://warisboring.com/how-not-to-build-an-aircraft-
carrier...](https://warisboring.com/how-not-to-build-an-aircraft-carrier/)

------
redthrowaway
Sounds like General Atomics has a good lobbyist.

~~~
cottsak
they can afford it

------
andreasgonewild
Wait, I think I heard this story before:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_\(ship\))

------
Shivetya
So in other words, just as the current Administration is finding fixing one
ship will be met with great resistance, a war of buts, and gnashing of teeth
the same can be said for any attempt by anyone in fixing the government.

there are just so many excuses to throw money at it and worse they are used to
it. they purposefully create holes that are too expensive or painful to get
out of.

being ex military and a Libertarian I always get the same result, we spend too
much on the wrong stuff "just because". the sad part is neither party up there
wants to fix it, it is not that they can't, they are just to invested in not

