Shock tests: dramatic to view from the outside but ESSENTIAL to make sure you know how a ship will respond to concussion. There are a couple of large-type nuclear reactors on that ship and if a sudden jolt would cause the cooling loop to rupture it's better to know that now than in battle. Granted, the reactors are (or at least WERE) massively over-engineered so these exercises are more about all of the rest of ship's systems coping with a close-aboard concussion without electrical or communications blackouts from ruptured systems and connections.
It depends on where exactly the ship is when the reactor is damaged, but in general water is actually pretty good at containing radiation so my guess is that some wildlife will die or get cancer but it won't have long term effects like Fukushima did because the ship will sink and kill the core before it melts down, if it even melts down in the first place.
Regardless, it won't really matter, since sinking a US aircraft carrier probably means nuclear war.
Another example of why this sort of testing is important - without pressing the "because nuclear" emotional button: In WWII, Germany's new "pride of the Third Reich" battleship, Bismark, had her main radar equipment disabled during her first major battle. The cause? Concussion from firing her own guns. You'd think they'd have designed for and tested that, but...
(Your friendly, local WWII naval warfare enthusiast - or a few well-chosen YouTube contributors - can cite many, many more cases where shock/concussion damage was a painful or fatal surprise for the crew of a ship. Especially in battle, damage to important ship systems or structures tends to cascade rapidly out of control.)
Oh, they finally got that done. That was supposed to be done back in 2019, before the next carrier in the Ford class (CVN-79, the Kennedy) was launched.
They're still having problems with the electromagnetic launch system. Not, apparently, in the catapult itself, but in the system that powers it. Which is a big flywheel/generator thing. Output is about a megawatt, comparable to the highest performance Tesla cars.
The thing was designed about 15 years ago, before high-power electric car technology was widely available, so it's all custom. The next generation of this will probably be built using off the shelf electric auto parts. Probably on the PLAN's Type 003 aircraft carrier, scheduled for launch next year.
> Each three-second launch can consume as much as 100 million watts of electricity, about as much as a small town uses in the same amount of time. “A utility does that using an acre of equipment,” says lab engineer Mike Doyle, but due to shipboard space limitations, “we have to take that and fit it into a shoebox.” In shipboard generators developed for electromagnetic catapults, electrical power is stored kinetically in rotors spinning at 6,400 rpm. When a launch order is given, power is pulled from the generators in a two- to three-second pulse
You're closer than I was. A maximum-load launch consumes 121 megajoules, which is 121 megawatt-seconds. Catapult launches take about 2s, so they need 60MW or so.
I think the larger amount of damage is done to the marine mammals, sea turtles, and other animals that are sensitive to sound waves.
The real damage isn't from the actual explosion per se, but from the massive sound wave which propagates far from the site underwater[1]. That assessment is discussing explosions much smaller than the one the Navy just did (and is scheduled to do twice again).
I'd like to believe to do something to mitigate the damage, but I don't know what they could possibly do for something this violent.
Wondering how much of that is actual test and how much is posturing in context of South China Sea pass-throughs.. "this is the bomb we have to use just to test because, you know, our ships are that strong..."
For those worried about sea life, it looks like the Navy have SOPs in place for shock trials to prevent/minimize harm to marine mammals and sea turtles
They have an array of underwater beacons. They don't care about animals or anything else that does not help them take whatever they want at any given moment
A funny thing about modern military theory is that drills and tests like these have helped ensure that another major world war will happen again, and why major world conflict abruptly dropped to 0 in the 1940s. So yes, these tests probably aren't great for the environment, but these things directly prevent thousands of bombs being dropped in World War 3.
I honestly think having several thousand nuclear warheads still pointed at various targets is what's really stopping WWIII. Aircraft carriers are sitting ducks in any major conflict and they know it. They're fine if your adversary is working a level or two above the stone age, which is the type of wars we've been fighting.
Sitting ducks? You have any idea how hard it is to find a carrier if you don't already know where to look? The ocean is a pretty big place, carriers move pretty quickly, and spy satellites only have a relatively narrow cone of view with enough resolution to detect one from orbit.
Even if you found one visually, guiding a missile to accurately strike a moving carrier is extremely difficult. It's one reason China's much touted "carrier killer" missiles are less of a threat than the Chinese would like. While they could theoretically sink a carrier they rely on a complex system of satellites and radar to guide a missile in, disruption of any one piece of that system (remember the US has successfully tested anti-satellite weapons) and you won't be scoring any hits. Never mind the multi-layered missile defense systems that all carrier battle groups run with, which wouldn't be a guarantee but would have a chance. The most those missiles would is force the carriers to stay further away from the Chinese coast, which given the range of modern aircraft isn't that much of a burden if we're talking sea control.
As for naval combat, there's no combination of ships in any country's Navy that can hope to stand up to the US Navy in a protracted conflict. US carriers have undisputed rule of the seas for at least the next three decades, even against the likes of China/Russia.
Not sure about the sitting ducks part. Carriers have mini iron domes to protect themselves from incoming ballistic missiles. Not to mention that they are moving targets, often themselves loaded with nuclear armed missiles (in case of an actual war).
They are a very very effective way to project power. It takes a lot to down one and in the process, the enemy will take a tremendous amount of damage.
Indeed, but it is far more complex than that. William Spanial (prof) has a full course on Nuclear Proliferation that's on-going on YT, I highly recommend academic and rigorious take on this topic than the random hoo haa on the internet: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKI1h_nAkaQqivWh2_XEt...
80 million people died in WW2 so I dont think we can say there was reduced world conflict in the 40's
For the second half when it did reduce I'd say that is more because nations were exhausted from WW2, countries saw the horror of war more than ever before and started with increasing commitment to United Nations and nuclear weapons.
I meant that the 40s were the last major conflict. I could have just said “since WW2” but sometimes people don’t realize that it’s 2021 and 1945 was almost a century ago.
Aircraft carriers are a tool to plunder weak countries.
Carriers are offensive weapons, not defensive. That's why only USA has aircraft carriers: parasitizing on the world resources requires a huge offensive force that has to be regularly used to send a message: "Don't try to resist if we want your resources".
They have almost zero contribution to the prevention of another major world war.
US carrier groups are the main defence against the ccp’s slow-push into its neighbour’s territory. This test may signal the CCP that their current generation of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles are less of a deterrant for US presence in the international waters called the South China Sea than expected. This should be encouraging to all ASEAN members, and the rest of the Quad. Good book just out on the dynamics in the region, /Red Zone/ by Peter Hartcher.
Wow, so woke. Carriers certainly are offensive weapons, but by far their heaviest use was in the Pacific theater in WWII -- would you call imperial Japan a weak country that needed plundering?
Historically somewhat related: The underwater shot Baker test of Operation Crossroads in 1946 which tested the effects of an underwater nuclear blast on obsolete warships some of which were captured Japanese and German ones from WWII: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads
Readit News
Regardless, it won't really matter, since sinking a US aircraft carrier probably means nuclear war.
(Your friendly, local WWII naval warfare enthusiast - or a few well-chosen YouTube contributors - can cite many, many more cases where shock/concussion damage was a painful or fatal surprise for the crew of a ship. Especially in battle, damage to important ship systems or structures tends to cascade rapidly out of control.)
They're still having problems with the electromagnetic launch system. Not, apparently, in the catapult itself, but in the system that powers it. Which is a big flywheel/generator thing. Output is about a megawatt, comparable to the highest performance Tesla cars.
The thing was designed about 15 years ago, before high-power electric car technology was widely available, so it's all custom. The next generation of this will probably be built using off the shelf electric auto parts. Probably on the PLAN's Type 003 aircraft carrier, scheduled for launch next year.
> Each three-second launch can consume as much as 100 million watts of electricity, about as much as a small town uses in the same amount of time. “A utility does that using an acre of equipment,” says lab engineer Mike Doyle, but due to shipboard space limitations, “we have to take that and fit it into a shoebox.” In shipboard generators developed for electromagnetic catapults, electrical power is stored kinetically in rotors spinning at 6,400 rpm. When a launch order is given, power is pulled from the generators in a two- to three-second pulse
https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/how-things-wor...
The real damage isn't from the actual explosion per se, but from the massive sound wave which propagates far from the site underwater[1]. That assessment is discussing explosions much smaller than the one the Navy just did (and is scheduled to do twice again).
I'd like to believe to do something to mitigate the damage, but I don't know what they could possibly do for something this violent.
[1] https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/migrated/deepwaterho...
https://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/Shock20Trials_46705.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swAWpmboN64
Even if you found one visually, guiding a missile to accurately strike a moving carrier is extremely difficult. It's one reason China's much touted "carrier killer" missiles are less of a threat than the Chinese would like. While they could theoretically sink a carrier they rely on a complex system of satellites and radar to guide a missile in, disruption of any one piece of that system (remember the US has successfully tested anti-satellite weapons) and you won't be scoring any hits. Never mind the multi-layered missile defense systems that all carrier battle groups run with, which wouldn't be a guarantee but would have a chance. The most those missiles would is force the carriers to stay further away from the Chinese coast, which given the range of modern aircraft isn't that much of a burden if we're talking sea control.
As for naval combat, there's no combination of ships in any country's Navy that can hope to stand up to the US Navy in a protracted conflict. US carriers have undisputed rule of the seas for at least the next three decades, even against the likes of China/Russia.
They are a very very effective way to project power. It takes a lot to down one and in the process, the enemy will take a tremendous amount of damage.
For the second half when it did reduce I'd say that is more because nations were exhausted from WW2, countries saw the horror of war more than ever before and started with increasing commitment to United Nations and nuclear weapons.
Maybe Ive misread what your were trying to say...
Carriers are offensive weapons, not defensive. That's why only USA has aircraft carriers: parasitizing on the world resources requires a huge offensive force that has to be regularly used to send a message: "Don't try to resist if we want your resources".
They have almost zero contribution to the prevention of another major world war.