A minor directional error has caused a several month slip in the testing for a new aircraft carrier catapult design:
The so-called Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS, is now under development in a shore-based test facility at Lakehurst naval air station in New Jersey. However, according to reports, the test mass-driver installation suffered serious damage earlier this year in a mishap blamed on a “software malfunction”. Apparently the “shuttle” — which moves along the catapult track to accelerate a plane to flying speed — went the wrong way in a test shot and smashed into important equipment.
The Newport News Daily Press, reporting on an interview with EMALS programme chief Captain Randy Mahr, says that the accident has delayed the shore-based testing by several months. It had been planned to commence launching aircraft — as opposed to test loads — this summer, but that will not now happen until autumn.
The next US supercarrier, CVN 78, aka USS Gerald R Ford, is now under construction and intended to join the fleet in 2015. Navy officials confirmed last year that it is now too late to amend the ship’s design and revert to steam catapults: EMALS must be made to work or the US Navy will receive the largest and most expensive helicopter carrier ever.
The EMALS development is of great interest to the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm, as the two new carriers under construction (pending the new British government’s defence review) will not be equipped with catapults. Conventional catapults are steam operated, and the British carriers will have gas-turbine propulsion (unlike US and French carriers which use nuclear power plants, providing plenty of steam on demand). If EMALS works as designed, it could be fitted to the new carriers, allowing the Royal Navy to pass on the (ultra-expensive) new F-35B in favour of conventional carrier aircraft.
