Comments by "Tim Trewyn" (@timtrewyn453) on "Is the Navy’s $13 Billion Aircraft Carrier Obsolete?" video.

  1. It puts the carrier task force in the position of having to start the war, because if the task force does not take the initiative to destroy the submarines assigned to destroy it, the submarines will have that much more advantage over the task force. At some point in the escalations toward war, the decision needs to be made to take out stalking enemy submarines. The task force takes the first shots or it is in peril. That task force attack submarines would need to sacrificially intercept torpedoes points to a requirement for UUVs to be available for that role.
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  2.  @epicjourneyman2145  Sounds like UUVs would be helpful.
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  3. The 160 per day sortie rate is suspect given the last publicly available report on the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) rate of the EMALS system indicated inferior performance compared to steam catapult systems. I understand problems can be fixed, and I tend to think all of the Ford class problems can be fixed soon with the exception of EMALS. It's been rather quiet about this subject, and they did not send USS Ford to the South China Sea for its current deployment. That could be about building more experience with this first in class ship. But I have yet to see any report that USS Ford participated in a two-week exercise anywhere in which it maintained the 160 per day sortie rate. EMALS is a great concept, but on a large ship that rolls in a pitching sea, it may need to be constructed in a manner that a Ford class hull is not suited for. An electric linear motor requires that very tight physical tolerances be maintained. The forces involved in this motor application are quite severe, and on top of that, critically repetitive. It is the kind of thing that needs to be overbuilt.
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