US Navy electromagnetic mass-driver commences tests

Electric machine will toss off Topguns from 2010

British carriers need this kit more than American ones do

The new shore rig at Lakehurst will be used from nest month to shoot test loads as the tech is developed. The navy and lead contractor General Atomics expect to start hurling actual aircraft next summer.

Blighty's Royal Navy will be watching the trials with interest. The two new carriers now being built in the UK are planned to be gas-turbine propelled rather than nuclear for reasons of cost, and hence can't use steam catapults. But they have space in their designs where EMALS mass-driver ones could go, if the new kit works.

This would allow Britain to buy much cheaper and more capable aircraft to fly from the ships, as opposed to current plans for expensive stealth jumpjets and TOSS tiltrotor radar craft (or something; the British fleet-radar-bird plans are embryonic at best).

The US Navy officials in charge of the project seem confident, at any rate.

"Steam catapults built at Lakehurst have been used since the 1950s. They've been shot more than five million times," says base bigwig Kathy Donnelly. "Now we move into the era of the electromagnetic catapult, which uses linear motors instead of steam pistons."

The naval part of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst was once known as Lakehurst Naval Air Station, and was a famous airship base in the 1930s - perhaps best known as the site of the Hindenburg disaster. In a context more relevant to the EMALS, however, Lakehurst was also home base to two US Navy aircraft carriers - despite being an airfield rather than a harbour.

The aircraft carriers in question were of course the USS Akron and Macon, enormous dirigibles which carried fighter planes in internal hangar bays. They naturally didn't need catapults or arrester wires, instead using a "trapeze" arm and planes equipped with overhead "skyhooks".

Looking ahead rather than back, there's another crazytech point to note. By the time the electromagnetic catapults are in routine US fleet use, it seems likely that many of the jets they shoot into the sky will be unpiloted robotic ones.

The US Navy EMALS announcement can be read here. ®