CVN 78 is the lead ship in the Navy’s newest class of aircraft carriers. USS Gerald R. Ford
is scheduled to be delivered in 2017. The design incorporates several new systems
including a new nuclear power plant, weapons elevators, radar, catapult, and arresting
gear.
In the last two CVN 78 OAs, DOT&E examined the reliability of new systems onboard
CVN 78 and noted that the poor or unknown reliability of the Electromagnetic Aircraft
Launch System (EMALS), the Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), the Dual Band Radar
(DBR), and the Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE) is the program’s most significant
risk to successful use in combat. These systems affect major areas of flight operations
– launching aircraft, recovering aircraft, air traffic control, and ordnance movement.
DOT&E noted that unless these reliability problems are resolved, which would likely
require redesigning AAG and EMALS, they will significantly limit CVN 78’s ability to
conduct combat operations.
CVN 78 is intended to support high-intensity flight operations. The CVN 78 Design
Reference Mission (DRM) specifies a 35-day wartime scenario. The DRM includes a
4-day surge with round-the-clock flight operations and 270 aircraft sorties per day.
The DRM also includes 26 days of sustained operations with flight operations over a
nominal 12 hours per day and 160 aircraft sorties per day.
Based on AAG reliability to recover aircraft, CVN 78 is unlikely to support high-intensity
flight operations. AAG has a negligible probability (<0.0001 percent) of completing
the 4-day surge and less than a 0.2 percent chance of completing a day of sustained
operations without an operational mission failure.
EMALS has higher reliability than AAG, but its reliability to launch aircraft also is likely
to limit flight operations. EMALS has less than a 7 percent chance of completing
the 4-day surge and a 67 percent chance of completing a single day of sustained
operations without a critical failure.
DBR’s unknown reliability for air traffic control and ship self-defense is a risk to the
IOT&E and for combat operations. The Program Office does not have a DBR reliability
estimate based on test data. Because CVN 78 will be delivered soon and DBR hardware
is already installed in the ship, it will be difficult to address any significant reliability
issues should they arise.
[...]
As of April 2016, the program estimates that EMALS
has approximately 400 Mean Cycles Between Critical
Failure (MCBCF) in the shipboard configuration, where
a cycle represents the launch of one aircraft. While this
estimate is above the rebaselined reliability growth curve,
the rebaselined curve is well below the requirement of
4,166 MCBCF. At the current reliability, EMALS has
a 7 percent chance of completing the 4-day surge and a 67 percent chance of completing a day of sustained
operations as defined in the design reference mission.
Absent a major redesign, EMALS is unlikely to support
high-intensity operations expected in combat.