Monday, November 23, 2009

My Deck is Melting!

That may be the cry of a CVN, LHA or LPD captain in the next decade, as the V-22 and the F-35B go to sea. Both aircraft blast their jet exhausts downward and can warp the decks of the ships.

Springbored has been blogging about the V-22 for a long time. In his most recent post, he reminded his readers that the Navy is mulling over re-engining the V-22.

I shouldn't be overly shocked by this, but still: Did not not occur to anyone to think about what would happen when a jet engine's exhaust was pointed at at a steel deck?

Update: It's going to take the Navy five years to fix this problem.

(Speaking of bureaucratic chowderheads, the Department of Homeland Security Stupidity can't get enough radiation detectors because those detectors use helium-3, which was a by-product of nuclear weapons manufacturing. We stopped making them 18 years ago, so the stocks of helium-3 have been running out. But nobody at the DHS thought about that.)
on or about

2 comments:

  1. Cujo35911/23/2009 8:27 PM

    The heat VTOL aircraft make on takeoff has been known for a long time. Twenty years or so ago, I saw an airshow in which a Harrier took off and then do the things it typically does. They made it go over to a concrete pad to take off, because it would have melted the tarmac.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Comrade Misfit11/24/2009 9:39 AM

    Cujo, I know, and that's why the Navy's failure to anticipate this problem is more than a little disturbing.

    ReplyDelete

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