EMALS failure for CVN-78

USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) returned to its homeport in Norfolk on June 7 after at-sea testing produced mixed results. While the carrier operated with Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 8 embarked, the ship’s Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) suffered a failure that prevented the carrier from launching planes for five days, the Navy announced in a June 7 statement. On June 2, the crew discovered a fault in the power handling system that connects the ship’s energy-generating turbines to the EMALS power system. The cause of the initial fault is still being reviewed. It appears a manual reset of the power handling system before flight operations may be the fault, according to Navy spokesperson Capt. Danny Hernandez. The CVN is in the middle of its 18-month post-delivery test and trial period before shock trials and eventual deployment. “After several days of troubleshooting and assessing a fault in the launch system’s power handling elements, embarked EMALS experts and Ford’s crew restored the system to enable the safe fly-off of the air wing on Sunday morning, June 7,” read the statement. At no point did the failure cause a safety-of-flight issue with the carrier. Ship personnel and General Atomics experts were able to come up with an alternate procedure to launch the aircraft, USNI News understands. (Source: USNI News 06/08/20) Central Mississippi Note: General Atomics opened its Tupelo, Miss., facility in 2005, and has built and tested components for EMALS used by Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers. https://news.usni.org/2020/06/08/uss-gerald-ford-emals-launching-system-suffers-fault-during-testing-period