Carrier-based aircraft was blown into the sea by the wind? This is not a joke, but it actually happened to the U.S. Navy. According to the information released by the U.S. Sixth Fleet, the U.S. Navy "Harry Truman" aircraft carrier was replenishing in the Mediterranean due to strong winds and heavy rain. An F/A-18 "Super Hornet" parked on the deck was blown off the deck, and some people were injured. The U.S. military is still conducting relevant assessments on the matter of salvaging a fighter jet that crashed into the sea, but has not yet implemented it. It seems incredible that a fighter plane can be blown into the sea, but if you look at what happened to the US Navy's aircraft carrier in the past six months or so, you will find that it is unexpected and reasonable for a carrier-based aircraft to fall into the sea.
1. U.S. aircraft carriers have fallen into an accident cycle
1. Carrier-based aircraft accidents have never stopped
▲ MH-60R "Sea Hawk" sonar hoisting system
At the end of last year, "Carl Vinson" spokesperson Miranda Williams The school disclosed to the media that an accident occurred during routine training on the aircraft carrier. When an F/A-18E "Super Hornet" carrier-based fighter was conducting routine training over the Philippine Sea, a fire broke out in the right engine of . , but given that the aircraft had twin engines, it reluctantly returned to the aircraft carrier, and ultimately no casualties were caused. On the day after the accident, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was involved in another accident. This time, an MH-60R "Sea Hawk" helicopter was conducting anti-submarine training in the relevant waters. The sonar system "accidentally fell off", and despite searching, no trace was found..
Regarding the two accidents that occurred one after another, the US military has classified them as Class A accidents in accordance with the accident level standards. From the accident level classification regulations, it is obvious that the actual losses caused by these two accidents are far greater than the information disclosed by the US military. It is more serious and the losses are greater, but this is only a small microcosm of the strange cycle of US aircraft carrier accidents. According to statistics previously provided by the US Navy Times website, in the last six weeks of 2021, the USS Carl Vinson alone had four consecutive A-class shipboard accidents. In addition to the two incidents mentioned above, there was also a Hornet engine accident and an engine fire accident of a CMV-22 Osprey transport aircraft. This engine fire accident was extremely strange. It was said that the aircraft was on the aircraft carrier deck. While at rest, the right engine suddenly and unexpectedly caught fire. The cause of the accident is still unknown.
▲The F-35C
that was previously salvaged. But compared to the carrier-based aircraft hitting the aircraft carrier, the above are just side dishes. At the end of January this year, the USS Carl Vinson, which entered the South China Sea to show off its power, experienced a scene that shocked the outside world. The F-35C carried by the aircraft carrier directly hit the aircraft carrier during the completion of the so-called daily flight training and landing. Flight deck , according to the later video playback, 1-2 blocking ropes were directly broken during the process, sweeping down the ground crew on the deck. Judging from the information released subsequently, the accident injured 7 people. The pilot chose to eject to escape and was rescued. However, 3 of the 6 injured people on the deck were urgently transported to a medical facility in the Philippines due to serious injuries.
As for the US military’s salvage process of the crashed F-35C, it was also extremely bumpy. It took several weeks just to find the specific location where the fighter plane sank. Later, due to the depth of the salvage, a professional salvage team from Singapore had to be hired. It was finally recovered more than a month after the accident. The salvage of was successfully completed. As for the specific cause of the accident, the United States has not announced it to the public. This has also become the most disastrous maritime accident for a US aircraft carrier this year. After all, this is a fifth-generation carrier-based aircraft that the United States is proud of, and it is still near China's offshore waters. One can imagine the mood of the US military after the accident that occurred.
▲Sparring training also had accidents
And this accident cycle has spread over time, because even fighter jets participating in US aircraft carrier sparring began to have accidents. At the end of May this year, a Hunter fighter jet that was training for the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier crashed. Regarding the spread of this kind of accident, the top brass of the U.S. military could not bear it and demanded a thorough investigation. For this reason, the U.S. Navy conducted a brief grounding of in mid-June this year to rectify .But judging from this accident, the grounding and rectification had little effect. An accident happened again when it should have happened, and the accident was still so incredible that it shocked the outside world.
2. People also have accidents.
As we mentioned earlier, when a carrier-based aircraft had an accident, it also caused certain damage to US military personnel, but this was a incidental loss. Non-accidental casualties have also occurred frequently on U.S. aircraft carriers in the past six months. CBS in the United States broke the news in early May that in just one week in April this year, multiple crew suicides occurred on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier. A total of three crew members committed suicide . In just over a year, seven crew members of the ship have died, including four who committed suicide.
▲ The "George Washington" reported that the overhaul has been delayed
Although the cause of death of the remaining three people has not been disclosed, does this mean that there are some serious accidents behind some of the accidents disclosed by the US military that have not yet been made public? Moreover, such high frequency of suicides also makes the outside world doubt the current survival status of US aircraft carriers. It is understood that after frequent suicide incidents, senior US Navy officials visited the aircraft carrier to conduct on-site investigations on the crew's psychology, living environment and other issues. Subsequently, a large number of crew members were allowed to disembark, but the effect is not yet known.
Accidents happen to people and things. It is not an exaggeration to describe today's US military aircraft carriers as troubled. The outside world is generally willing to attribute the occurrence of these accidents to coincidence, but in fact, if we look closely at the reasons behind these accidents It will be discovered that those things definitely happened for a reason, and they were caused by the US military.
2. Natural disaster or man-made disaster? There is no doubt that it is a man-made disaster!
- The aircraft carrier was in disrepair and contributed to the accident
Among the above-mentioned accidents in the past six months, the one that appeared most frequently was the "Carl Vinson", and there is only one word to describe this aircraft carrier - senile. As the third Nimitz-class ship, the "Carl Vinson" was launched in 1980 and officially entered service in March 1982. It has been in service for exactly 40 years (theoretical service period is 50 years). During the service process The ship has undergone many modifications, overhauls, and replenishment of nuclear fuel .
▲The most recent dry dock maintenance of the "Carl Vinson" that completed the overhaul was completed in April 2020. It is said that this maintenance took nearly a year and was part of the aircraft carrier's mid-term overhaul upgrade. During this upgrade process, the ship's onboard electrical system and power system were comprehensively maintained, the combat system and ship defense system were modified, and the crew living facilities were also renovated and upgraded. On the surface, it looks pretty good. Very thorough.
However, because the improvement process coincided with the impact of the new coronavirus epidemic, it still had a certain impact on the progress of this round of overhaul of the "Carl Vinson", and whether this affected the actual modification effect is questionable. In addition, it has been in the water for more than 40 years. Some of the original design flaws and equipment flaws of the ship cannot be perfectly solved by later modifications, such as whether it has complete facilities for inspection, maintenance, and repair of more advanced F ships. -35C. As long as one of these defects exists, it will definitely contribute to the occurrence of accidents.
At present, except for the "Carl Vinson" and the newly commissioned Ford-class first ship "Ford" , most of the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers currently in service in the US military also have this problem of backward design and long service life. , in short, there are common problems, and it is not difficult to understand that the accident rate is higher at this time.
2. The Ford-class aircraft carrier has always been embarrassed.
Faced with a series of problems existing in the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, especially its own design flaws, the US Navy is well aware of it and knows that even if it is improved and upgraded, it cannot completely solve the related problems. If you want to completely solve it, there is no chance of improvement. The only reliable solution for is to update it and gradually replace the Nimitz-level with Ford-level. Although this idea is good, it has to be said that it also faces unavoidable difficulties in its implementation.
▲The "Kennedy" installed the ship island
On the one hand, it is short of money.At the end of August last year, the fourth Ford-class aircraft carrier "Doris Miller" completed the cutting of its first steel plate, marking the official start of construction of the aircraft carrier. However, although it is the fourth ship, except for the "Ford" among the previous three ships, the remaining two "Kennedy" and "Enterprise" are still in the construction stage, and the progress is relatively slow, which has caused this situation One of the main reasons is the lack of money. For this reason, in the U.S. Navy's fiscal year 2021 budget, an additional US$2.715 billion was earmarked for the four Ford-class aircraft carriers. However, even so, it will still face the problem of insufficient funds, and the slow construction has also made Ford The aircraft carrier has been unable to replace the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier on a large scale.
On the other hand, the Ford-class aircraft carrier's own problems have also made it difficult to use. Judging from relevant reports in the US media, the USS Ford, the first ship of the Ford class, has serious problems in two key areas - the elevator and the electromagnetic catapult. The failure rate is much higher than expected, especially the electromagnetic catapult. The machine can only be called a semi-finished product. Its original design required a failure rate of 0.24‰, but in actual use the failure rate was as high as 5.5‰. The failure rate was so different from expected that the "Ford" was never able to exert its combat capabilities. It is precisely because of this high failure rate in key areas that the US military has been unable to use the Ford class to fully replace the aging Nimitz class.
3. Overdue high-frequency deployment is the root cause.
The two points mentioned above are actually just boosting factors. The root cause of is the tragedy caused by the high-frequency deployment of the US military. Since Biden took office, instead of correcting the foreign expansion strategy of Trump period, he has launched a new version of the "Indo-Pacific Strategy". This has accelerated the pace of overseas expansion and shifted the strategic focus to China's periphery. However, China is not a "soft persimmon", and its overall military strength is not weak. This means that if the US military wants to implement relevant strategies, it will inevitably need to dispatch more aircraft carriers.
▲The "Carl Vinson" that was previously photographed in the South China Sea
However, there are only 11 aircraft carriers in total. In addition to maintenance, rotation, and training, only about half are actually available, and only half of them have to be deployed globally, so for Today's United States is really "stretched." But the harsh words have been spoken, and failure to take action goes against the image of the "big brother". For this reason, the existing aircraft carriers can only be deployed beyond the planned deployment. Theoretically, a single deployment time of a US aircraft carrier at sea is 6 months, but "Carl... The Vincent deployed for 10 months last year alone, and this overdue and high-frequency deployment obviously aggravated the occurrence of accidents.
Let me mention one more detail. During the deployment of US military aircraft carriers in the Asia-Pacific, they frequently clashed with the People's Liberation Army. You can imagine the pressure behind the competition between the masters. It would be impossible to deploy beyond the scheduled schedule and be in a state of high tension for a long time without an accident. Although the sea area where the "Harry Truman" incident occurred is located in the Mediterranean Sea, if the United States did not dominate the world, how could such a thing happen? I would like to advise the US military to find out the cause of the accident, but also reflect on what they have done. Bar.
