Commanding Officer Capt. Paul Lanzilotta wakes each day aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) with a long to-do list to balance, as the only East Coast carrier available, while wrapping up new-ship testing and preparations for shock trials in the summer. Capt. Lanzilotta is overseeing dozens of contractors from Newport News (Va.) Shipbuilding who are completing work on the Advanced Weapons Elevators and conducting other maintenance work. At the same time, he has the lone responsibility to help train sailors from other carriers in maintenance periods, and to conduct carrier qualifications for new pilots in flight school and in fleet replacement squadrons. What’s driving delays to Ford’s post-delivery test and trials is the large number of new systems. The goal of these new systems is to help the Ford class generate more sorties and more lethal with a smaller crew. The ship has yet to work with a full carrier air wing on flight operations to see how fast the new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) can clear planes from the flight deck. The CO says EMALS is proving its worth already on the maintenance side. “Any complex system requires constant attention and maintenance.” The steam catapult system on Nimitz-class carriers requires “a lot of manpower and a lot of man-and-woman hours on the flight deck.” After a day of flight ops on a Nimitz-class carrier, there’s up to three hours of preventative maintenance to do before teams can close up for the night. “On this ship, our sailors literally put (EMALS) in standby mode, and get the same bite to eat and go to bed. Those are hard-to-measure benefits, but in my mind they’re huge,” Lanzilotta said. (Source: USNI News 03/12/21) MISSISSIPPI NOTE: General Atomics’ Tupelo, Miss., high cycle test facility assembles EMALS designed to reduce technical risk, demonstrating its system performance and meet specific contract requirements. As USS Gerald R. Ford Nears Shock Trials, Carrier Remains Busy With Testing, Fleet Support - USNI News
No comments:
Post a Comment