The U.S. Navy is increasingly confident in its new advanced arresting gear (AAG) for aircraft carriers and has decided against pursuing an alternative landing system, the service announced late Jan. 23.
Although the new advanced arresting gear (AAG), the landing system for the first Ford-class carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has had technical glitches, schedule delays and cost overruns, it has made enough progress recently to convince the Navy that the AAG should go on the second and third Ford–class carriers as well.
“AAG works,” said Capt. Steve Tedford, Navy program manager for aircraft launch and recovery equipment. “The progress of AAG testing this past year has been significant and has demonstrated the system’s ability to meet Navy requirements.”
The Navy studied whether the second Ford-class carrier, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), should be equipped with an alternative landing system, such as the Mk 7 arresting system from the existing Nimitz-class carriers.
Rear Adm. Mike Moran, program executive officer for tactical aircraft programs, said a redesign of the water twister, one of the AAG’s major components, allowed the program to move ahead with extensive land-based testing. In December, the AAG, whose prime contractor is General Atomics, completed its 350th trap of an F/A-18E Super Hornet.
“The government and contractor team made the necessary hardware changes and implemented a build-test-fix software methodology that has incrementally improved the performance of the system, which will be ready to trap the first F/A-18 Super Hornet on Ford later this year,” Moran said. “There is much left to be done to qualify the entire air wing for deployed operations, but this team is on the right track.”