{"id":1242,"date":"2017-06-22T05:39:23","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T02:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/?p=1242"},"modified":"2017-06-24T00:40:09","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T21:40:09","slug":"uss-gerald-ford-supercarrier-might-ditch-shock-testing-before-deployment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/?p=1242","title":{"rendered":"USS Gerald Ford Supercarrier Might Ditch Shock Testing Before Deployment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"US<\/a>

US Navy USS Gerald Ford Supercarrier (Photo by \u00a9 Matt Hildreth\/HII.)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

The US Navy\u2019s Ford-class aircraft carrier will not be required to go through shock trials, if the House Armed Services Committee gets its way.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is getting marked up\u00a0by lawmakers who seem to\u00a0believe the US carrier fleet is stretched so thin that it needs the USS Gerald Ford operational as\u00a0soon as\u00a0possible, Defense News reports.<\/p>\n

The 2016 NDAA stipulated the Ford would need to\u00a0go through\u00a0full-ship shock trials before\u00a0joining the fleet. Notably, the Navy\u2019s director of\u00a0the Office for\u00a0Testing and Evaluation (OTE) had pushed for\u00a0shock trials to\u00a0be a mandatory step before\u00a0the ship is mobilized as\u00a0part of\u00a0the larger US Navy carrier force.<\/p>\n

\n
\"This<\/div>\n
Beijing Outmaneuvering US Navy in South China Sea<\/a>\u00a0(\u00a9 AFP 2017\/ STR)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s hard to\u00a0understand why US lawmakers believe the current carrier fleet to\u00a0be inadequate. First, it is already the world\u2019s largest by\u00a0several multiples. There are 10 Nimitz-class supercarriers on\u00a0the high seas right now. Wasp- and America-class helicopter carriers bring the total number of\u00a0aircraft carrying ships in\u00a0the US fleet to\u00a019, and that doesn\u2019t even touch on\u00a0the Navy\u2019s arsenal of\u00a0fast-attack and nuclear-armed submarines lurking beneath\u00a0the ocean\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

The Russian Navy has one carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, while the Chinese People\u2019s Liberation Army Navy has two, one of\u00a0which is mostly used for\u00a0training, the second of\u00a0which hasn\u2019t been deployed. The UK has two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers in\u00a0the pipeline that London hopes will be operational in\u00a0the early 2020s. Fellow NATO ally France has one carrier as\u00a0well, the Charles de Gaulle, the only nuclear-powered carrier in\u00a0the world that doesn\u2019t belong to\u00a0the US Navy.<\/p>\n

India has one carrier that\u2019s basically obsolete, having been built by\u00a0the UK in\u00a0World War II before\u00a0later being pawned off\u00a0to New Delhi. But it recently commissioned a modernized former Soviet carrier that can provide significant air support if needed. Japan, South Korea, Australia, Italy, Brazil and Spain field a handful of\u00a0helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft carriers, as\u00a0well.<\/p>\n

\n
\"USS<\/div>\n
\u00a9 US Navy\/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ridge Leoni<\/a><\/div>\n
\u2018Spectacular Debacle\u2019: New US Supercarrier USS Gerald Ford Finally Hits Open Seas<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But Washington is thinking ahead. “Once the Ford comes online you can have the East Coast carriers essentially cover the Middle East with\u00a0short gaps and have the West Coast carriers fill the gaps in\u00a0the Pacific while [the USS] Reagan is in\u00a0its spring maintenance availability,” Bryan Clark of\u00a0the Center for\u00a0Strategic and Budgetary Assessments told Defense News.<\/p>\n

Skipping the trials would expedite the Ford\u2019s deployment timeline from\u00a02022 to\u00a02019 or 2020, the news outlet added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source:<\/strong> SPUTNIK By Military & Intelligence News – sputniknews.com<\/a> – 22 June 2017<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Navy\u2019s Ford-class aircraft carrier will not be required to go through shock trials, if the House Armed Services Committee gets its way. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is getting marked...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,1,7,31,6,177,21,18],"tags":[566,334,1371,1370,1368,1373,191,307,1366,195,1369,1372,156,811,194,358,1367],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1244,"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions\/1244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xairforces.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}