Thread: U.S. Navy Opens New Era With Commissioning of Gerald R. Ford

By PETER BAKER
JULY 22, 2017

NORFOLK, Va. — With flag-hoisting, gun-firing, horn-blowing fanfare, the United States Navy opened a new era on Saturday as it commissioned the first of a generation of more powerful, technologically advanced aircraft carriers that will transform the fleet in decades to come.

President Trump presided over the commissioning ceremony for the nuclear-powered Gerald R. Ford, the first in a new class of aircraft carriers in 42 years. Although the carrier took longer to build and cost more than initially expected, it nonetheless represented a milestone for the Navy as it seeks to modernize in a world of ever-changing national security challenges.

“American steel and American hands have constructed a 100,000-ton message to the world: American might is second to none,” Mr. Trump said to a crowd on a sweltering below-deck hangar that will transport warplanes to the world’s danger zones. “And we’re getting bigger, better and stronger every day of my administration, that I can tell you.”

Named for the 38th president, the Ford is roughly the same size as the Nimitz-class carriers welcomed into the fleet in 1975 by Mr. Ford, but it packs more punch. The superstructure is smaller and farther back on the ship, which will allow it to launch 33 percent more flight missions a day using a new catapult and landing system. With nearly three times as much electricity, digital navigation and touch-screen technology, the ship will have a smaller crew and should save $4 billion over 50 years, according to the Navy.

President Trump at the commissioning ceremony for the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Va., on Saturday.
HILARY SWIFT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

But its path to this day was not always smooth. The ship cost $2 billion more than the initial $11 billion estimate and took two years longer than expected to finish because of problems with the new catapults. Even now, it will require an additional four years of trials before deployment, costing $780 million more, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

Mr. Trump complained about the costs to Time last spring and suggested returning to using steam catapults because the new system “costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.” But he is also entranced with the carrier, having already visited it once before, and he made no mention of its troubles on Saturday as he celebrated the “wonderful, beautiful” warship.

“When it comes to battle, we don’t want a fair fight,” he said. “We want just the opposite. We demand victory, and we will have total victory, believe me.”

He touted his proposal to increase military spending and asked sailors to call members of Congress to support it.

Joining him for the ceremony were governors, lawmakers and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Also on hand were veterans of Mr. Ford’s administration, including Dick Cheney, who served as his chief of staff, and Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was his defense secretary.

Susan Ford Bales, the president’s daughter and the ship’s official sponsor, gave the command to “bring her to life.” To the strains of “Anchors Aweigh,” the flag was hoisted, sailors in white uniforms reported to stations and radar dishes began to spin.

Her father was a Navy lieutenant commander during World War II, and she said, “There is no one, absolutely no one, who would be prouder of the commissioning of this mighty ship than the president of the United States, Gerald R. Ford.”

Correction: July 22, 2017
An earlier version of this article misstated the initial estimate of the cost of the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier. It was $11 billion, not $11 million.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/2...ws.google.com/

What a stupid waste of money by a country with a debt of close to $20 trillion ($19.65 trillion) where the total debt is $67.5 trillion, where more than half the population are on some sort of Govt assistance, where over 42 million are living in poverty, thats about 8% of the population.

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

No wonder they have to manufacture enemies, to justify the expense.

Empire dwelling and military based economy and culture.


Siwilai

Amazing President Trump Marine One Land on Future Aircraft Carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78)

Mars 02 2017, President Donald J. Trump visited Pre-Commissioning Unit Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), March 2 to meet with Sailors and shipbuilders of the Navy's first-in-class aircraft carrier during an all-hands call inside the ship's hangar bay. Footage is of Trump's arrival and departure aboard Ford.

__________
Video by Petty Officer 2nd Class Kristopher Ruiz, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78)

USA Navy 21st Century MEGA NUCLEAR Super AircraftCarrier USS Gerald Ford to join Navy fleet in September 2016. The most expensive warship ever built, the $12.9 billion aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford CVN 78 Breaking News May 2016 - USA F35 5th Generation Fighter Jet Take off & Landing on AircraftCarrier.

Originally Posted by birding

What a stupid waste of money by a country with a debt of close to $20 trillion ($19.65 trillion) where the total debt is $67.5 trillion, where more than half the population are on some sort of Govt assistance, where over 42 million are living in poverty, thats about 8% of the population.

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

No wonder they have to manufacture enemies, to justify the expense.

Don't forget that

... the ship will have a smaller crew and should save $4 billion over 50 years, according to the Navy.

(provided that it will serve 50 years... )

(and the Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions will surely comply with the Paris climate accord)

Originally Posted by Wilsonandson

$12.9 billion

at $50,000/year, that would pay ~25,000 teachers for 10 years.

a habitat for humanity house costs approx. $85,000....that's ~145,000 houses.

there are 3.8 million disabled vets....that's ~$6,500 per

Originally Posted by raycarey

at $50,000/year, that would pay ~25,000 teachers for 10 years.

Or 100,000 TEFLers for 10 years

The Navy's put down a 'significant bet' on the $13 billion USS Gerald R Ford, which some say is a risky gamble

The newest and most expensive aircraft carrier ever built entered the U.S. Navy fleet Saturday, but almost three years behind schedule and billions of dollars over its estimated budget.

With Saturday's commissioning, the carrier will go back into testing and training, and isn't expected to be fully operational until 2020 at the earliest. The ship's catapult has yet to launch an actual aircraft at sea and the vessel has only had helicopters land on its deck.

Although it has yet to be put to the test, some already say the USS Gerald R. Ford is an example of the Navy's costly and risky bet on "immature" technology.

Experts say the Navy's decision to roll out some untested technologies in its next-generation classes of ships has been a costly lesson. For example, the new Ford aircraft carrier going into the Navy fleet cost nearly $13 billion, or around $2.4 billion above plan.

The Navy "made a significant bet on the newest and latest cutting-edge technology, and it bet that all of those technologies would mature as these platforms were scheduled to come online," said Jerry Hendrix, senior fellow and director of the Defense Strategies and Assessments Program at the Center for a New American Security, a non-partisan Washington think tank.

Hendrix added, "Unfortunately some of those technologies did not mature. Hence, we're seeing some delays in some critical programs, including the new Ford-Class carrier."

Although years behind schedule, the Ford carrier was formally commissioned into the Navy's fleet Saturday in a ceremony in Virginia, which was attended by President Donald Trump. The president had previously visited the carrier in March.

In remarks Saturday, Trump called the Ford carrier "the newest, largest and most advanced aircraft carrier in the history of this world."

When building the new Ford carrier, the Navy ditched the steam-powered catapult system found on the older Nimitz-Class carriers and went instead with a electro-magnetic aircraft launch system. Similarly, the Navy went with an updated arresting gear to catch planes landing on the ship's deck.

"We want the best equipment but we want it built ahead of schedule and we want it built under budget." -President Donald Trump

The Ford is the first new design of an aircraft carrier in 40 years. Last month, acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley conceded costs of the carriers were tough to swallow, but insisted the service (and shipbuilding industry) planned to learn from past missteps. Meanwhile, the maker of the new digital catapult, General Atomics, claims on its webpage the system's benefits include a "reduced manning and life-cycle cost."

The technology replaced the battle-tested steam catapult that had been used for decades to launch planes. As it turns out, though, the commander-in-chief is not at all a fan of the supercarrier's technology. In a May interview, Trump told Time magazine in an interview that the new digital power system "costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it's no good."

Similarly, the Navy has faced cost overruns and other problems with other new classes of warships, including internal electrical issues with the Zumwalt-class destroyer, and struggles with the controversial Littoral Combat Ship program.

Trump alluded to military costs and program delays in his remarks Saturday, but didn't single out the Ford carrier.

"We do not want cost overruns," the president said. "We want the best equipment but we want it built ahead of schedule and we want it built under budget."
'Going for broke'

Mandy Smithberger, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project On Government Oversight, said some of the mistakes made by the Navy on big-ticket programs have been self-inflicted. The service's tendency to "develop really complex technology that's expensive to maintain and not reliable," has been a major drawback.

Added Smithberger, "It's not necessarily that it's new technology but it's immature — so it has to be proven technology."

Some analysts said the new ideas for the next-generation ships originated in the 1990s, when there was a "go for broke" mindset by some decision makers.

In the case of the Ford-Class carrier, the Navy decided to make all of the key changes in new technology upfront on the first ship in the class, rather than wait for successive carriers. The Navy plans to spend around $43 billion on the first three Ford-Class aircraft carriers.

At the same time, the Navy and other services have faced fiscal challenges due to the ongoing effect of the budget caps signed into law six years ago.

"The Budget Control Act, as far as it pertains to defense, was wrong-minded and that should not have been systematically reducing defense spending," said Brian Slattery, a policy analyst for national security at Washington-based Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

He also said the inability of Congress to pass regular budgets is "very disruptive" to Navy and other service programs.

For the Navy, though, the budget situation is particularly pressing because of Trump's stated goal for a larger Navy fleet.

As a GOP candidate last year, Trump pledged the Navy would build 350 surface ships and submarines. He has since accepted the Navy's new force structure goal of a fleet of 355 ships — up from the battle force of 276 ships as of Friday.

However, reaching the Navy goal could cost approximately $400 billion more over 30 years than the service's previously stated force goal of 308 ships, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Based on CBO's calculations, the Navy would need to buy around 329 new ships over 30 years to reach the 355-ship fleet. That compares with the 254 ships it estimates would be bought under the Navy's prior force goal.

"Cost is probably the biggest challenge reaching the larger fleet size," said Smithberger. "You'd have to increase Pentagon spending a lot to afford everything that they're trying to buy. It will require cutting other services or other Navy priorities, including airplanes."
Geopolitical concerns

Yet the time it will take to reach a 355-ship Navy also is a concern, given signs the Chinese are aggressively ramping up their own naval forces. Separately, Russia is undergoing a modernization plans of its own, including adding advanced nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines to its fleet.

"The Chinese are coming hard, meaning they are going for mass numbers and new advanced technology," said Hendrix, of the Center for a New American Security.

"The Russians have made decisions to invest in fairly exquisite platforms, like the new Yasen-Class submarine, which is a nuclear powered, fast-attack boat which is very advanced," he added. "And if they got two or three of those loose in the Atlantic, and we didn't know where they were, it would cause real complications for the United States as well as NATO."

In April, the nonpartisan CBO estimated the earliest the Navy could reach the 355-ship goal was by 2035, though it cautioned that 15-year buildup forecast was based on the service getting "sufficient funding." The CBO also estimates the cost to build, crew and operate the larger fleet would average $102 billion annually through 2047.

Regardless, Hendrix suggests there is perhaps a faster way to reach the 355-ship fleet size but not necessarily by adding newly constructed ships. Instead, he suggests the Navy might want to consider taking ships out of mothballs and keeping others in service longer to maintain the 355-ship fleet.

Others are not so sure it makes sense to keep ships in the fleet longer than they are scheduled.

"You can't just run the same ships well beyond their service lives to assume that you can keep up the same level of capability to deter our adversaries," said Slattery.

Hendrix said another option to increase the size of the Navy fleet is to look at some vessels in the so-called Ready Reserve Force ships, which are maintained for national defense and emergencies.

Either way, he believes there's an urgent need to reach that 355-ship target sooner rather than later. The retired Navy captain insisted the Navy should strive to reach the 355-ship fleet "within a decade in order to deter both the Chinese and Russians who are looking to challenge us at sea."

Ford carrier emblematic of Navy's struggle with technology, costs

Amazing President Trump Marine One Land on Future Aircraft Carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78)

Was this translated from the Chinese?

Was it the one who changed the Warren Commission Report (40,000 pages) to strengthen the "single bullet theory"?

Gerald Ford forced to admit the Warren Report fictionalized
AP-NY-07-02-97:
Thirty-three years ago, Gerald R. Ford took pen in
hand and changed - ever so slightly - the Warren Commission's key sentence
on the place where a bullet entered John F. Kennedy's body when he was
killed in Dallas.

The effect of Ford's change was to strengthen the commission's conclusion
that a single bullet passed through Kennedy and severely wounded Texas
Gov. John Connally - a crucial element in its finding that Lee Harvey
Oswald was the sole gunman.

A small change, said Ford on Wednesday when it came to light, one intended
to clarify meaning, not alter history.

''My changes had nothing to do with a conspiracy theory,'' he said in a
telephone interview from Beaver Creek, Colo. ''My changes were only an
attempt to be more precise.''

But still, his editing was seized upon by members of the conspiracy
community, which rejects the commission's conclusion that Oswald acted
alone.

''This is the most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission
report,'' said Robert D. Morningstar, a computer systems specialist in New
York City who said he has studied the assassination since it occurred and
written an Internet book about it.
Gerald Ford forced to admit the Warren Report fictionalized



Ford Told FBI of Skeptics on Warren Commission
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 8, 2008
Confidential FBI files released this week to The Washington Post detail the inner workings of a secret back channel that Gerald R. Ford opened in 1963 between J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and the Warren Commission's independent investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The existence of the private conduit has long been known, first disclosed in documents released 30 years ago. Now, newly obtained, previously classified records detail one visit Ford made to one of Hoover's deputies in December 1963 -- three weeks after being named to the commission.

Declassified FBI memos on Ford's interactions with the bureau are among scores of documents in the FBI's previously confidential file on the former president, , who died in December 2006. At the request of The Post, the FBI this week released 500 pages of the bureau's voluminous file.

A December 1963 memo recounts that Ford, then a Republican congressman from Michigan, told FBI Assistant Director Cartha D. "Deke" DeLoach that two members of the seven-person commission remained unconvinced that Kennedy had been shot from the sixth-floor window of the Texas Book Depository. In addition, three commission members "failed to understand" the trajectory of the slugs, Ford said.
Ford Told FBI of Skeptics on Warren Commission

Originally Posted by birding

What a stupid waste of money by a country with a debt of close to $20 trillion ($19.65 trillion) where the total debt is $67.5 trillion, where more than half the population are on some sort of Govt assistance, where over 42 million are living in poverty, thats about 8% of the population.

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

No wonder they have to manufacture enemies, to justify the expense.

Assuming you're from the U.K. - your country has 6.5 - 7% living in poverty. Not all that much of a difference to grandstand about now is it?

And I don't even need to look up statistics on government assistance in the U.K. - do you? Something like 60% of families over there receive some sort of welfare.

Originally Posted by Slick

Originally Posted by birding

What a stupid waste of money by a country with a debt of close to $20 trillion ($19.65 trillion) where the total debt is $67.5 trillion, where more than half the population are on some sort of Govt assistance, where over 42 million are living in poverty, thats about 8% of the population.

U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time

No wonder they have to manufacture enemies, to justify the expense.

Assuming you're from the U.K. - your country has 6.5 - 7% living in poverty. Not all that much of a difference to grandstand about now is it?

And I don't even need to look up statistics on government assistance in the U.K. - do you? Something like 60% of families over there receive some sort of welfare.

A poor defense for the UK is not wasting billions on war toys.

However I have to admit to an error in math the number of 42million + living in poverty is in fact one eighth of the population which is in fact 12.5%.

And 33% of your population have been in poverty at least once in their lives. One third. 60% of families are on welfare of some kind.

And you don't even have a legitimate fighting force anymore.

How much it would provide for Food Stamps (sorry SNAP)?

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),[1] formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people living in the U.S. It is a federal aid program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), though benefits are distributed by each U.S. state's Division of Social Services or Children and Family Services.

SNAP benefits cost $70.9 billion in fiscal year 2016 and supplied roughly 44.2 million Americans with an average of $125.51 for each person per month in food assistance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supple...stance_Program

$125.51? Are they allowed to live for this money in Thailand?

Wilson how come you arent posting up about the UK's new aircraft carrier? The HMS Queen Elizabeth.

How the US and UK's new aircraft carriers stack up - Business Insider

Scroll down the link for a Thai carrier...

But can they land the F-35 on it?

Originally Posted by aging one

Wilson how come you arent posting up about the UK's new aircraft carrier? The HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Maybe he's trying to stay on topic?

Some more footage of this enormous ship.