Gadgetory

the USS Gerald Ford is the most technologically advanced and most expensive ship ever built this weekend the Navy christened that ship here in Newport News Virginia while much of this weekend's fanfare will surround the christening this is a project that has been going on for four years and it won't be delivered for another two so we came to Newport News Virginia to see what the ship looks like and what it might look like in the future the USS Gerald Ford replaces what the Navy called its Nimitz class aircraft carriers a fleet of ten nuclear warships designed in the late 1960s in commissioned in May 1975 the Nimitz class is still in operation but in 1996 Navy officials knew they'd need a new ship for the 21st century the Navy wanted the house at least 75 aircraft on the new ship's deck and it wanted a better nuclear energy system as designs progressed those requests became more precise and more numerous newport news shipbuilding company work to turn those requests into reality first the company decided the Ford would use electricity for power instead of steam in the Nimitz class carrier I had a lot of service team weather went to the laundry the galley a lot of areas of the ship so here we replaced all that with with electrical powered systems so there's less maintenance to do right those steam pipes corrode you have to go do maintenance on the valves and flush them you know we cut them out replacing overhauls here you won't have to do any of that the cable this is designed to last life of the ship very low maintenance that would allow for a host of new innovations four of those new innovations stand out the first is something called flexible infrastructure architecture this is a modular design concept so if the Navy wants to convert a room from being a storage space into a boardroom for example it can do that without having to hire big crews to take care of the work another innovation is advanced weapons elevators relying on electromagnetic fields instead of cables these massive elevators can carry twice as much material than their predecessors so we have one less aircraft elevator than Nimitz class this has three as opposed to the four all that was part of the design to enhance flight deck usage so that's a key aspect right that's what the carrier does a third major change is the use of an electromagnetic aircraft Launch System known as Emil's these use an electromagnetic field that catapult aircraft into the sky previous versions of these launchers use steam and cables compared with their predecessors emails are lighter smaller more efficient and more reliable they can also launch a fighter jet every 45 seconds and then there's the multifunction radar known as a dual band radar these combined the tools used for big picture scans as well as precision targeting in the past those activities were completely separate now those two pieces are the same this means fewer radar antennas are spinning and fewer people are required to keep tabs in the ship surrounding missile this is a design that has not been battle tested that's a risk this is a boat that's supposed to remain on the water for 50 years and it's a design that's supposed to last for 80 but engineers are confident that it will having greater electrical power capacity you can bring on new technologies for the life of the ship it'll have enough air conditioning and ventilation and electrical power so that no matter how the technology changes going forward which we may not even know today we'll be able to upgrade swap out and bring on that new technology without having to change infrastructure of the ship our innovations like these worth 13 billion dollars which is the amount of money taxpayers are expected to spend on the Ford before it's complete a report from the Government Accountability Office in September said maybe not the report called the project high risk even though Newport News Shipbuilding says the warship is structurally 100% complete already only time will tell if that concern is warranted in the meantime the people overseeing the ship's progress are confident it will carry the US Navy well into the 21st century we're going to bring all the shipbuilder expertise to put this great ship together and then we work in in conjunction with with the crew with ships forced to start turning it over to them little by little and we get to know them personally and see them take ownership of the ship and take it and drive it so that that's the thing I'll remember