Navy Preps USS Ford for “Shock Trials” – How Will it Withstand Ocean Explosions?

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By Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

(Washington D.C.) Bombs will explode beneath the surface of the ocean, generating destructive waves and disturbances in the sea .. how will it impact the Navy’s emerging USS Ford?

The entire concept of the USS Ford’s upcoming Shock Trials is to find out just how much destruction, damage or explosive impact the new ship can survive. The preparation for this process, which includes detonating bombs in the ocean near the ship to tests its durability, is now underway in the Atlantic Ocean on board the Navy’s USS Ford, according to an interesting USNI report from aboard the ship.

Naturally, a key aim of the process is simply to what if a ship, such as a large carrier, had to take a hit? How might it survive and hold up? At what point or under what kind of combat impact might it be rendered inoperable? These are questions Navy weapons developers of course need to consider as they build resiliency and redundancy into their platforms.

This is where “shock trials” come in, a process which involves exploding bombs in the ocean of various sizes and at different distances from the ship, to simply assess its ability to withstand massive enemy attacks. Interestingly, a 2007 DoD-directed study on Shock Trials by the MITRE corporation explains that much of the risk to surface ships comes not only from the prospect of direct impactbut from what the study calls “non-contact explosions where a high-pressure wave is launched toward the ship.”

The shock vibrations alone from a nearby explosion can knock out key ship systems and “incapacitate the ship,” the study writes.