The U.S. Navy's "Kennedy" aircraft carrier, the second ship of the Ford class, has once again come up short - its delivery date has been pushed from 2025 to 2027! This is not a matter of a bus being two minutes late, but rather an entire two years, enough time to shoot a Hollywood blockbuster. This supercarrier, which carries the dream of American global hegemony, has now become a "slowpoke" in the shipyard, not only embarrassing the U.S. military but also exposing the "muscle atrophy" of American shipbuilding industry. At the same time, China's Fujian aircraft carrier is speeding through the Taiwan Strait with the "black technology" of electromagnetic catapults, making the Sino-American aircraft carrier competition seem like a "overtaking on a curve".
In May 2026, the oldest U.S. "Nimitz" aircraft carrier will be retired honorably, but its successor, the "Kennedy", is still "slacking off" in the shipyard. This means that the number of U.S. aircraft carriers will fall below 11, setting a new low in over 40 years! Remember, aircraft carriers are the "mobile territory" of America's global strategy; without this one, the hotspots in the Western Pacific, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean can only rely on 10 carriers to hold out, with a very low operational rate. The U.S. military itself is getting desperate: isn't this just tearing down one wall to patch another, working like a dog without even being able to fix it?
How come it's so difficult for the United States to build an aircraft carrier? The answer lies in the budget documents, clearly written: first, the "Advanced Arresting Gear" keeps breaking down, and second, the "Advanced Weapon Elevator" often goes on strike. Listen to this arresting gear, which claims it can stop 16,500 planes without failure, but during testing, it failed after just 20 times, acting like a gym newbie boasting he can lift 500 kilograms. The weapon elevator is even more absurd, using linear motors to send ammunition to the deck, yet it often gets stuck, leaving pilots staring helplessly. These problems were already exposed on the first ship, the "Ford," and it took ten years to barely get it working. Now, at the "Kennedy," the shipyard is still arguing: "We built it too fast, we didn't follow up on the lessons from the Ford!" This sounds like a student blaming the pen for failing the exam.
The deeper root of the problem is the "deindustrialization" of the American shipbuilding industry. The average age of welders at Newport News Shipbuilding is 54, and young people have gone to Wall Street to trade cryptocurrency, who would want to swing a sledgehammer anymore? During the Cold War, the Nimitz-class had 1,200 suppliers working together; now there are less than 400, and even special steel has to be imported. Not to mention that the defense industry has become a monster of the "interest complex" - the military, contractors, and Congress are in a three-way game, and building an aircraft carrier has become a pawn in employment, profit, and politics. Optimizing processes? That's not going against money, right? So budgets keep rising, schedules keep getting longer, and quality remains questionable.
The electromagnetic catapult system on the "Kennedy" is also causing concern. This was supposed to be the "killer app" of the Ford class, but its failure rate is as high as 1/400, and pilots take a chance every time they take off. More seriously, the technical bottleneck of the medium-voltage direct current electromagnetic catapult has not been solved by the U.S. Meanwhile, China's Fujian aircraft carrier successfully debugged its electromagnetic catapult system in just 15 months, a level of efficiency that makes the U.S. military envious. The Fujian, equipped with the J-35 stealth fighter and the Airborne Early Warning-600, will soon be operating smoothly. Americans look at it and see the paint on their hegemony badge beginning to peel off.
Recalling the golden days of the U.S. Navy, the Nimitz-class carriers carried 90 aircraft and swept across the globe. In the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, two carriers stationed there were truly arrogant. But now, the "Ford" has a lower aircraft launch rate than the old Nimitz by 33%, and its electromagnetic catapults still depend on luck. As for China, from the "training wheels" of the Liaoning to the self-reliant breakthroughs of the Shandong, to the electromagnetic leap of the Fujian, within five years, from launching to sea trials, the efficiency is like a cheat code. In the supply chain, 85% of parts are completed within 300 kilometers of the Yangtze River Delta, while the U.S. has to procure globally, and when the pandemic strikes, it has to wait for parts.
The plight of the U.S. aircraft carrier is not an isolated case; the entire West is experiencing "crashes." The UK's Queen-class aircraft carrier has had its budget cut in half, becoming a "helicopter platform" with an incomplete set of aircraft. France's next-generation aircraft carrier is still in the PowerPoint stage, with no reactor drawings yet. Looking around the world, only China is accelerating on the aircraft carrier track, heading straight for nuclear-powered carriers. Aircraft carrier battles are not about single-ship performance, but the strength of the industrial system. The U.S. can build the most expensive aircraft carrier, but cannot build an efficient aircraft carrier strike group. When young people prefer stock trading instead of entering shipyards, and when electromagnetic catapults are still being fixed in laboratories, the U.S.'s "steel giant" is slowly sinking into the industrial trap it has dug itself.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7530522008879219219/
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