What are specifications and improvements comparing with nimitz?
The Launching of the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier.
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What are specifications and improvements comparing with nimitz?
danger007
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This Is What Makes the USS Gerald R. Ford the Best Aircraft Carrier Ever Designed
Evolution of an Aircraft Carrier
The Ford is really the next generation of the Nimitz class. The hull is the same size, but the vessel has been optimized and modernized, to make it a far more capable ship. The new design relocates the island house (the primary flight control and the bridge), reduces the number of aircraft elevators from four to three, and increases the sortie rate by 25 percent, helping to more quickly deploy aircraft, ships, or sets of troops.
The Ford also has three times the electric plant capacitya capability meant to last through technology changes over its lifespan of fifty years. A new nervous system includes millions of feet of fiber optic cable, which greatly increases data speeds and capacities, and also adds durability, as fiber optic cable can endure marine life better than metal alternatives.
The Automated Sailor
This city on the sea has a lower population than its predecessor. "Nimitz was designed when the Navy had more sailors," Newport News Shipbuilding's President Matt Mulherin told us. "At the time, I don't think they really thought about what the cost of an individual sailor was. Today they do. That drives a lot of the operating and maintenance costs of the ship. So we've taken off a lot of bunks, and taken off workload for a lot of sailors... but it retains all of the functionality of the Nimitz-class ships."
The ship is more automated than any before it, which gives it increased capability despite the reduced crew. For the sailors that are there, things will be more comfortable. The whole carrier will be air-conditioneda firstwhich adds comfort and also reduces components' and computers' corrosion from exposure to salt air.
Electromagnetic Airplane Slingshots
Nimitz-class carriers got planes moving for takeoff using steam-actuated catapults. The system required a lot of steam piping, a large condensate return, and tons of fresh water. They also have a lot of maintenence issues. Plus, with steam-actuation, the majority of the force is being transferred to the airplane at the beginning of the strokeit's one hell of a jolt. But a more linear pattern of acceleration could put less stress on an airframe, and thus get a longer lifespan out of the multi-million dollar plane. That's where EMALS comes in.
EMALS stands for Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System. It uses a linear induction motor with an electric current to generate a magnetic field. That field then propels a carriage down a track. It's basically a gigantic railgun that launches airplanes instead of shells. Pretty damn cool.
The EMALS can accomodate lightweight drones and planes heavier than those we have today. It reaches top speeds gently, reloads more quickly, and requires less maintenance. The arresting gear (the mechanism which catches the planes as they return) will use EMALS technology as well, as will the elevators for the airplanes and weapons. The Ford class essentially eliminates steam from the equation.
Why Carriers Matter
"The four and a half acres of flight deck is what you really need to get that lethality," according to Mulherin. "Having the ability to do a catapult-launch of an airplane gives you the ability to load it with weapons and load it with fuel. If you do some kind of a vertical takeoff, you can add fuel in flight, but you can't add weapons, so it really limits its capabilities."
"The second thing is that size is cheap. Once you decide to build an aircraft carrier, you get some threshold of fundamental cost, and then to go from a medium-sized nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to a large deck, it's incremental cost, and you get more value for that incremental cost."
It's amazing to see a monolith like this still under construction. Nothing has been painted, and it's been in progress for years, so everything looks rusty, despite it being brand new. Inside, the various compartments are coming together. The rooms are designed to be modular, so for future upgrades, designers can just swap a box in and lock it down.
The ship is scheduled to be water-tight in 2013. That's when it will be christened, and the dry dock will be flooded. It will then be towed to a different dock at Newport News Shipbuilding where construction will continue until 2015. When its nuclear batteries go in, the Ford will be fully operational. The Ford will only need to be refueled once in its lifetime, 25 years after it launches. By then, this lighter, cheaper, more powerful carrier will have already made the seas a safer place.
Evolution of an Aircraft Carrier
The Ford is really the next generation of the Nimitz class. The hull is the same size, but the vessel has been optimized and modernized, to make it a far more capable ship. The new design relocates the island house (the primary flight control and the bridge), reduces the number of aircraft elevators from four to three, and increases the sortie rate by 25 percent, helping to more quickly deploy aircraft, ships, or sets of troops.
The Ford also has three times the electric plant capacitya capability meant to last through technology changes over its lifespan of fifty years. A new nervous system includes millions of feet of fiber optic cable, which greatly increases data speeds and capacities, and also adds durability, as fiber optic cable can endure marine life better than metal alternatives.
The Automated Sailor
This city on the sea has a lower population than its predecessor. "Nimitz was designed when the Navy had more sailors," Newport News Shipbuilding's President Matt Mulherin told us. "At the time, I don't think they really thought about what the cost of an individual sailor was. Today they do. That drives a lot of the operating and maintenance costs of the ship. So we've taken off a lot of bunks, and taken off workload for a lot of sailors... but it retains all of the functionality of the Nimitz-class ships."
The ship is more automated than any before it, which gives it increased capability despite the reduced crew. For the sailors that are there, things will be more comfortable. The whole carrier will be air-conditioneda firstwhich adds comfort and also reduces components' and computers' corrosion from exposure to salt air.
Electromagnetic Airplane Slingshots
Nimitz-class carriers got planes moving for takeoff using steam-actuated catapults. The system required a lot of steam piping, a large condensate return, and tons of fresh water. They also have a lot of maintenence issues. Plus, with steam-actuation, the majority of the force is being transferred to the airplane at the beginning of the strokeit's one hell of a jolt. But a more linear pattern of acceleration could put less stress on an airframe, and thus get a longer lifespan out of the multi-million dollar plane. That's where EMALS comes in.
EMALS stands for Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System. It uses a linear induction motor with an electric current to generate a magnetic field. That field then propels a carriage down a track. It's basically a gigantic railgun that launches airplanes instead of shells. Pretty damn cool.
The EMALS can accomodate lightweight drones and planes heavier than those we have today. It reaches top speeds gently, reloads more quickly, and requires less maintenance. The arresting gear (the mechanism which catches the planes as they return) will use EMALS technology as well, as will the elevators for the airplanes and weapons. The Ford class essentially eliminates steam from the equation.
Why Carriers Matter
"The four and a half acres of flight deck is what you really need to get that lethality," according to Mulherin. "Having the ability to do a catapult-launch of an airplane gives you the ability to load it with weapons and load it with fuel. If you do some kind of a vertical takeoff, you can add fuel in flight, but you can't add weapons, so it really limits its capabilities."
"The second thing is that size is cheap. Once you decide to build an aircraft carrier, you get some threshold of fundamental cost, and then to go from a medium-sized nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to a large deck, it's incremental cost, and you get more value for that incremental cost."
It's amazing to see a monolith like this still under construction. Nothing has been painted, and it's been in progress for years, so everything looks rusty, despite it being brand new. Inside, the various compartments are coming together. The rooms are designed to be modular, so for future upgrades, designers can just swap a box in and lock it down.
The ship is scheduled to be water-tight in 2013. That's when it will be christened, and the dry dock will be flooded. It will then be towed to a different dock at Newport News Shipbuilding where construction will continue until 2015. When its nuclear batteries go in, the Ford will be fully operational. The Ford will only need to be refueled once in its lifetime, 25 years after it launches. By then, this lighter, cheaper, more powerful carrier will have already made the seas a safer place.
danger007
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danger007
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typical high iq trolls.... 
... if you guys can take down carrier with so called dog feng... you guys don't go for ACC...
suntzu
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dog feng ?
gambit
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And that would be a big IF.
timetravel
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gambit
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I never said it was impossible. To date, the DF-21D have yet to have an open water test, let alone a test that pit the warhead against the full array of countermeasures that a US ship can bring.how big is an impossible IF ??
Here is how the US test our long range anti-ship missile (LRASM).
We took a target ship, loaded it the old cargo containers and arrayed them to look like the outline of a warship.
You have to ask yourself what kind of testing regime is it, as in how rigorous, when the environmental factors involved real world conditions, which in this case is open air and the target is sitting in the sea? What are we trying to do with metal cargo containers arrayed that way? Why metal and not just simple wooden structures? What effects does water have on radar detection?
Does the sea stay steady all the time? No.
Douglas Sea Scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So if the sea have any sort of surface disturbance, like in a storm, how does that affect radar?
A Novel Method of Small Target Detection in Sea Clutter
Apparently...Serious enough to warrant all kinds of research to deal with, not solve, the problem.
The top speed of a US aircraft carrier is secret but it is irrelevant when it is true that if a ship could run at 30kts, in 15 minutes, there would be literally hundreds of square kilometers to search for the ship. A descending DF-21D ballistic warhead cannot stop in mid fall to search. It cannot even turn on its radar until it clears certain environmental conditions created by high speed descent. By then, it must face atmospheric factors, sea state, and man-made countermeasures.
So effectively, what the Chinese and their Pakistani friends are saying that the US and the rest of the world are stupid for going so far in testing weapons systems, that there is no need to present a potential weapon the full array of natural and man-made countermeasures it may and will face when deployed. After all, they have 'Chinese physics' on their side.
GoodoldBoy
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The truth is, with the advancement of missile technology, these carriers are becoming more and more vulnerable and probably one day obsolete. And lets be honest, these are vanity pieces for empire. They also generates a ton of money for everyone involved........Do we need it? Hell no......but its one sexy piece of machinery.....
Pretty exciting to see the Ford being completed.
gambit
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That day is more like 20 yrs from now.
awesum!!!!
Kompromat
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What do you think, will replace the carriers for naval power projection?
j20blackdragon
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See those big propellers?
What happens if they get hit by a small aerial torpedo carried by the DF-21D?
Dillinger
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NO. Somebody needs to educate the people about the sheer number of targeting sensors required in the three different bands to even cover the South China sea when it comes to ASBMs. Not for a very long time, that's the answer, on the other hand even before it becomes a real issue the Americans have gone and started designing ships for pure ABM operations such as the one designed by Huntington Ingalls (288 missiles on one ship).
Considering that most people here will not be able to state the orbit and resolution required for such sensors anyway it becomes a bit difficult to hash out the details, where the devil actually lurks. Add to that the severe ignorance of operational usage of BARCAP and missile screens. Furthermore lowering the non-conventional threshold is always the resort of desperation, wherein the party resorting to said lowering finds itself woefully over-matched and browbeaten. China is NOT known for such ad hoc and desperate moves.
Add to that that a cursory look at the force deployment along the various PLAAF MraFs will demonstrate most tellingly how seriously ACs are taken even by the big nations.
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