Liberal Forum

Huey » Today, 9:29 am » wrote: ↑

Today, 9:29 am

That's the problem with new military technology.  I will stick with Army Helicopters to explain.  In the 60s the Army was various versions of the UH-1 in Vietnam.  Any where for 3500 to 5000 were reported as lost.  Not all were shot down or downed from enemy fire. It was a new design.  In the 80s the Army start to move to the UH-60 Blackhawk.  That thing was new and was nicknamed the crashawk and the lawn dart.  The latter because it was a the Army's first fly by wire system and if it flew at a certain elevation at a certain speed above high voltage wires it would **** with the elevators and cause the acft to nose over. Some say it was a myth but I recall being in a unit that had both Hueys and 60s.  The 60s were restriced to a certain airspeed and elevation for a short time.

Point being ow technology is not perfect.

Yet, the STEAM CATAPULT had been used for DECADES and the failure rate is far below the electtro-magnetic crap and it's been around for a few decades as well. The bottom line is, USE SOMETHING THAT WORKS on an aircraft carrier, not the crap that doesn't and has such a poor reliability factor it's not funny. I can tell you that FAMILY onboard one with the new crap will tell you, it works ABOUT 1/2 the time and is being worked on the OTHER half. In the heat of battle, you need to be able to launch aircraft at a rate these new systems can't keep up with if they are broken down and under repair.

AMD the part you seem to forget- there is NO FIXING THIS EM SYSTEM since it has WAY too many parts susceptible to failure. The Steam catapults don't and any thing needing fixed can be done without OUTSIDE CONTRACTORS. Seeing how Steam has only a handful of moving parts, fixing it is simple in most cases and can be done in FAR less time that the EM systems require.

It was wrought with FAILURE from the start and ALMOST got scrapped totally in the beginning!!! It's still not much better, especially when it dumps a billion-dollar plane overboard because it failed to hit proper speed!! Steam RARELY IF EVER did that.