The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier experienced a failure of its electromagnetic launch system last week in the latest sign that the $13.2 billion vessel hasn’t fully resolved hurdles tied to its cutting-edge technology as it undergoes at-sea testing.
The system on the USS Gerald R. Ford — which propels planes off the deck and into the sky — “went down” June 2 just before a scheduled aircraft launch, the Navy said in a statement published late Sunday. The failure of the system, built by General Atomics, “curtailed flight operations to some extent,” according to the statement.
No root cause for the breakdown has been found, according to an internal Navy document. After several days, the Navy said, it found a workaround to the catapult problem and jets were able to resume flight operations on Sunday.
“The crew supported by a team of experts developed an alternate method to launch the air wing off yesterday,” Captain Danny Hernandez, a Navy spokesman, said in a statement. “Any corrective actions will be key to ensuring that when Ford enters the fleet after operational testing” it’s ready to support operations, he added.
Reliability problems with the catapult system have been among previously identified, high-profile technology issues confronting the Ford, the first of three carriers in a new class.
The earlier problems attracted President Donald Trump’s attention. Comparing the catapult system to an older, steam-driven version on previous ships, Trump said in 2018 that “steam is very reliable, and the electromagnetic — I mean, unfortunately, you have to be Albert Einstein to really work it properly.”
The latest breakdown didn’t pose a “safety-of-flight risk” because of where and when in the system it took place, the Navy document said. It “occurred during a manual reset” of the “power handling” system, which is in accordance with current procedures,” it added.
“The Navy is reviewing those procedures and any impacts on the system” and “until further notice, the ship’s crew will not be using the manual reset,” according to the document.
In an annual report in January, Pentagon testers continued to report “deficiencies and limitations” with the ship’s radar, electronic warfare surveillance system and a ship-to-ship communications data network.
Those issues followed the discovery that none of the 11 elevators needed to bring weapons up to the Ford’s deck were installed when the ship was delivered in May 2017 — about 32 months later than planned. The Navy says it’s making steady progress installing them.
The ship — built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. — was performing post-delivery sea trials with an air wing when the launch system went down. Before that, the ship had conducted 324 catapult launches and arrested landings with the air wing, according to the Navy.
The Ford has completed more than 3,000 launches and recoveries using the new system along with the ship’s Advanced Arresting Gear for catching jets as they land on its deck. “While quite an achievement, it is an insufficient number of events from which to draw conclusions with respect to reliability,” the Navy document said.
The Government Accountability Office, in its latest program assessment released last week, said that “despite maturing its critical technologies,” the Navy “is still struggling to demonstrate the reliability” of the launch and arresting gear systems.
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