The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is in the fleet restoring the number of carriers to the mandated number of 11. The aircraft carrier force has been below the minimum of 11 required by law since December 2012 when the Enterprise (CVN-65) was decommissioned. But there is a long test program required by the Department of Defense that prevents the Gerald R. Ford from deploying until 2022.| Have they gotten the electromagnetic catapult to work reliably enough for operations tempo? |
A shock test is a series of underwater detonations of a specified charge that are put closer and closer to the ship.
In 1987, the Congress passed the Live Fire Test Law that requires all weapons systems to be subjected to a live-fire test. The Navy proposed to substitute shock tests for live-fire tests because people have to man a ship for proper operation while aircraft, tanks, trucks and armored personnel vehicles can be unmanned when live- fire tested. Further, to obtain realistic shock performance data, Navy developed the means to test critical ship components at "heavy shock levels" on unmanned barges that can damage the components without harming people. Congress accepted this logic and allowed shock tests to replace live-fire testing of ships.
For surface ships that operated since the Live Fire Act became law, the table below shows the classes built, what ship of the class was shocked, and when.