The US has had this technology in use for over a decade and has notched tens of thousands of successful launches. But sure, “revolutionary.”
From the article:
The Ford-Class aircraft carrier is the most advanced in the US fleet, and have deployed EM catapults for over a decade. It’s also been a decade since the F35 was introduced. But the US Navy still cannot use the two together—the F35 is launched with the steam system. We’ve had lots of problems with the electromagnetic launch systems.
The Navy had hoped to replace steam with the EMALS, but they have suffered from major technical problems, and have high failure rates. Engineers have trouble locating the source of the problems during flight operations, and so cannot make repairs quickly. During combat operations, when margin for error goes to zero, the system cannot be used at all.
The design was fatally flawed from the beginning, based on the design itself. The catapults are not independently powered, so if our crews have a problem in one catapult it cannot be switched off so repairs can be made. Add to that a failure rate of 1 in 400, which is ten times worse than what the contract called for.
By comparison, the catapult system on the Fujian is powered differently, and so the failure rate is just a small fraction of what is on the Ford-class carriers. The US Navy EM catapults are overly complex, and a single point of failure shuts down the whole system. This means that our carriers have an unfixable problem. The US Navy is stuck with steam, in other words.
So this is not about the EM Catapult concept, but in its refined execution of the concept.
It should be noted the only source for how effective the Fujian system is is the Chinese government, which has a demonstrated track record of not publicly announcing flaws or deficiencies in their programs the way the US does
I don’t speak Chinese so it would be hard for me to know if they release that information or not. I imagine they would release that information in Chinese.
