{"id":166168,"date":"2025-02-07T07:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=166168"},"modified":"2025-02-05T17:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T22:25:08","slug":"floaty-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=166168","title":{"rendered":"Floaty Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-127737 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/fa-18e-300x209.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"209\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/fa-18e-300x209.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/fa-18e-478x333.jpg 478w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/fa-18e-768x535.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/fa-18e-1536x1070.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/fa-18e.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll start with a piece of good news. Darn near lost us a perfectly good <del datetime=\"2025-02-05T21:47:26+00:00\">handcar<\/del> airplane back in November 2023. The plane in the scenario is an F\/A-18E Super Hornet on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On November 27, the pilot was coming in for a routine landing when one of the arresting wires used to rapidly slow the planes down on the flight deck &#8220;suffered a catastrophic failure&#8221; that caused it to snap after the fighter jet hooked onto it.<\/p>\n<p>Before the wire failure, the arresting gear slowed the pilot&#8217;s plane down from a landing speed of 136 knots to 80 knots, according to one of the documents. It said that the pilot &#8220;executed procedures consistent with carrier landings by advancing his throttles to military power upon touchdown.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The pilot immediately sensed something was wrong. After the aircraft reached its minimum speed, he immediately pushed the throttles to maximum afterburner to gain as much thrust as possible. The jet rolled off the end of the carrier&#8217;s angle deck at a dangerously low speed of 88 knots. A fighter jet normally clears the deck at around 150 knots. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aol.com\/news\/us-navy-pilot-narrowly-avoided-164422114.html\">AOL<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>According to Navy-type authors like Stephen Coonts, someone yells <del datetime=\"2025-02-05T21:47:26+00:00\">AH SHIT<\/del> Bolter about then. No matter what, kicking in the afterburners probably saved his butt (not to mention about $60,000,000 of Boeing&#8217;s finest) as the plane got to within 16 feet of the water before getting enough smash to pull up. FYI, on a Super Hornet that is the height of the tail. No word on whether seat reupholstery was needed &#8211; had I been there it would have.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_88562\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-88562\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-88562\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/The-USS-Gerald-R-Ford-photo-by-Breaking-Defense-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/The-USS-Gerald-R-Ford-photo-by-Breaking-Defense-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/The-USS-Gerald-R-Ford-photo-by-Breaking-Defense.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/The-USS-Gerald-R-Ford-photo-by-Breaking-Defense-500x333.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-88562\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The USS Gerald R. Ford. (Breaking Defense)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Moving on to the Gerald Ford&#8230; the Ford is the only ship equipped with a Dual Band Radar. It operates in both X and S bands simultaneously, and permits remarkably long-distance target tracking and identification &#8211; when it works.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The specific version of the SPY-6 destined to supplant the DBR on <em>Ford<\/em> is a subvariant of what is also known as the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR) and will include three separate fixed antenna arrays installed around the carrier\u2019s island instead of the DBR\u2019s six arrays. All subsequent <em>Ford<\/em> class carriers will be built with EASR, leaving just <em>Ford<\/em> as the only carrier to ever have fielded the DBR.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\"><em>TWZ<\/em> has previously unpacked the capabilities of the complete SPY-6 family, which currently includes four different variants, and the potential payoffs of fielding such an advanced and scalable active electronically scanned array radar system across the fleet. In addition to <em>Ford<\/em> class carriers, the Navy plans to install versions of the radar onto various new surface combatants, carriers and amphibious ships going forward, and plans are underway to back-fit it into existing destroyers as well.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So this is a one-off system. How many spares do you need to buy for the life-span of the system? What about technical support?\u00a0 Put it like this &#8211; simply changing to the EAQSR for the next Ford-class ship is estimated to save $120,000,000.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cDBR availability declined during the FY23 [composite training unit exercise] with the continuous demand for radar coverage and an intermittent failure observed during operations,\u201d the report states. Service officials did not respond to <em>TWZ<\/em> questions on the report\u2019s findings by deadline, and this article will be updated when those answers come in. Prior DOT&amp;E reports have blamed subpar DBR performance on \u201cthe operational expectation of continuous radar coverage.\u201d\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.twz.com\/sea\/uss-gerald-r-ford-was-still-struggling-with-its-dual-band-radar-prior-to-deployment\">The War Zone<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So the radar is as flaky as the heavy-lift elevator system, which is also not working at 100%. THAT&#8217;s encouraging.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-164872 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/ticonderoga-cruiser-005-173678714-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/ticonderoga-cruiser-005-173678714-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/ticonderoga-cruiser-005-173678714-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/ticonderoga-cruiser-005-173678714-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/ticonderoga-cruiser-005-173678714.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s close with the commander of the USS Gettysburg.\u00a0 Might recall that in December his ship shot down one of our own F\/A-18s during a Houthi missile attack last year. Tres uncool, dude.\u00a0 Well, Elvis has left the building and Captain Justin Hodges has left the ship after an unusual at-sea change of command January 30. The Navy said this was a routine CoC, but no word on any end-of-tour bling or where he is headed. One suspects the line from AW1Ed&#8217;s favorite movie, &#8220;flying rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong&#8221; may be somewhat applicable.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.military.com\/daily-news\/2025\/02\/04\/commander-of-navy-ship-involved-f-18-friendly-fire-incident-turns-over-command.html\">Military.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ll start with a piece of good news. Darn near lost us a perfectly good handcar &hellip; <a title=\"Floaty Friday\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=166168\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Floaty Friday<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,503],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navy","category-science-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}