Advanced Weapons Elevator - The Navy's USS Ford has taken another major step toward combat readiness, with a state-of-the-art weapons elevator completed and handed over to the ship's crew, a Navy statement said.
"The first aircraft carrier of its class, AWE operates using several advanced technologies, such as electromagnetic motors and a more labor-intensive hydraulic system. Fewer sailors are able to safely move weapons from the storeroom to the flight deck," the Navy report said.
Advanced Weapons Elevator
Air ordnance officers assigned to the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) Ordnance Section carry inert training bombs onto the flight deck during a flight mission, May 30, 2020. (Chief Mass Communications Specialist RJ Strachko/U.S. Navy)
Sailors Assigned To Uss Gerald R. Ford's (cvn 78) Weapons Department Move An Ammunition Pallet To An Advanced Weapons Elevator Staging Area During An Ammunition On Load With Usns William Mclean (t Ake 12),
The elevator has undergone considerable repair and fine-tuning in recent years, and its completion is an important step towards the completion of a long and important development period for the first-class ship. The new elevator is the basis for a series of new technologies and has been specially developed for Ford class vessels.
Elevator's fundamental advantage has to do with attack speed and velocity and sorting rate. Returning aircraft such as the F-35C and F/A-18 can refuel and reload on a shorter schedule, increasing the speed, range and intensity of any airstrike mission.
Ordnance can be quickly lifted and loaded onto the aircraft for takeoff. It supports Ford's overall mission and, among other things, is intended to significantly increase the carrier's sortie rate when a great power conflict calls for increased attack speed.
For example, the Ford has a larger deck than the Nimitz class to improve sortie rate. In fact, Navy developers have long claimed that the Ford-class has a 33% improvement in sortie rate.
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The weapon elevators are intended to work in conjunction with a new electromagnetic catapult called EMALS.
EMALS represents a breakthrough in carrier launch technology. That's because the ship can no longer be launched with a steam catapult, which developers say resembles a "shotgun" style sudden takeoff.
EMALS uses electromagnetic fields to propel the ship off the deck for smoother, more sustained takeoffs. An advantage of this is that the aircraft wears less and maintains its expected service life.
Elevators and electromagnetic catapults allow USS Ford more attack aircraft to spend time over target areas, react to emerging targets, and sustain aggressive, fast-paced attacks.
Gerald R. Ford Class Aircraft Carrier
Osborne previously served as a highly qualified specialist in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology at the Department of Defense. Osborne has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist for national television networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, the Military Channel, and the History Channel. He also holds a master's degree in comparative literature from Columbia University.
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Peter Hussey - Warrior Senior Nuclear Weapons Analyst, Senior Fellow - Warrior Maven, Atlantic Council, Hudson Institute January 2, 2023 Sailors inspect Stage 1 Advanced Weapons on USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) safety procedures. US Navy photo
The Navy is revising the way it builds weapons elevators on Ford-class carriers after discovering that each of its 11 unique elevators creates a unique set of lessons learned.
Advanced Weapons Elevators Completed Aboard Uss Gerald R. Ford (cvn 78) > United States Navy > News Stories
Because the elevators for each of the 11 weapons on the Ford-class carriers are slightly different in design and function, the Navy found lessons learned from building one elevator on the USS.
Rear Admiral Jim Downey, the Navy's carrier program executive, said at a media briefing Wednesday: Instead, it became clear that the lessons learned for each elevator should be tracked separately and used to train crews working on these advanced weapon elevators in the future.
"What we're going to get out of this is really shipwide learning. There's some learning there, but most of the learning happens shipwide," Downey said. We instituted a vocational school system to ensure that we recruit people who work at [CVN]79, train them the same, and put into practice the lessons they learn.
A fifth advanced weapons elevator will be crew-operated during the next advancement period scheduled for May. The USNI previously reported that this was the first lower elevator to run from the flight deck to a magazine deep inside the ship.
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The forward magazine is expected to be certified and handed over to staff by the end of summer, Downey said. The remaining five weapon elevators are slated for pre-certification.
A weapons elevator in involves tackling the most complex problems first. As problems are addressed and each elevator is tested and certified, lessons learned are incorporated into the shipyard's training process, Downey said.
, those same people go to work on 79 and train other people who work on 79 and follow the ship,” Downey said, trying to retain as much organizational knowledge as possible.
An EA-18G Growler assigned to Aviation Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 prepares to take off from the flight deck of USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) on January 25, 2020.
Us Navy Completes Final Weapons Elevator On Aircraft Carrier Gerald R. Ford
Downey said Ford's experience building elevators has caused the Navy to rethink how other complex systems are built across classes. As an example, the Navy is currently preparing to field F-35C Lighting II Joint Strike Fighters in CVN-79, but has put pending plans to put the same capabilities in CVN 80 and 81, he said.
The Navy originally did not plan to put F-35C modifications on board at Kennedy, but wording in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020 required the Navy to accelerate those plans. However, figuring out how to integrate these features into the ship during the construction phase can be a learning process, so work on 80 and 81 can be deferred until 79 is completed to collect lessons learned. i can do
"So we're working to accelerate the JSF to 79, comply with that requirement, complete the design and be the first 80 in new build capacity," Downey said.
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