Shock tests: dramatic to view from the outside but ESSENTIAL to make sure you know how a ship will respond to concussion. There are a couple of large-type nuclear reactors on that ship and if a sudden jolt would cause the cooling loop to rupture it's better to know that now than in battle. Granted, the reactors are (or at least WERE) massively over-engineered so these exercises are more about all of the rest of ship's systems coping with a close-aboard concussion without electrical or communications blackouts from ruptured systems and connections.
Oh, they finally got that done. That was supposed to be done back in 2019, before the next carrier in the Ford class (CVN-79, the Kennedy) was launched.<p>They're still having problems with the electromagnetic launch system. Not, apparently, in the catapult itself, but in the system that powers it. Which is a big flywheel/generator thing. Output is about a megawatt, comparable to the highest performance Tesla cars.<p>The thing was designed about 15 years ago, before high-power electric car technology was widely available, so it's all custom. The next generation of this will probably be built using off the shelf electric auto parts. Probably on the PLAN's Type 003 aircraft carrier, scheduled for launch next year.
Wondering how much of that is actual test and how much is posturing in context of South China Sea pass-throughs.. "this is the bomb we have to use just to test because, you know, our ships are that strong..."
For those worried about sea life, it looks like the Navy have SOPs in place for shock trials to prevent/minimize harm to marine mammals and sea turtles<p><a href="https://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/Shock20Trials_46705.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/Shock20Trials_46705.pdf</a>
Not quite a full ship shock trial but there are lots of videos for MIL 901 shock testing online. The barge test is my favorite:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swAWpmboN64" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swAWpmboN64</a>
A funny thing about modern military theory is that drills and tests like these have helped ensure that another major world war will happen again, and why major world conflict abruptly dropped to 0 in the 1940s. So yes, these tests probably aren't great for the environment, but these things directly prevent thousands of bombs being dropped in World War 3.
Historically somewhat related: The underwater shot Baker test of Operation Crossroads in 1946 which tested the effects of an underwater nuclear blast on obsolete warships some of which were captured Japanese and German ones from WWII: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads</a>
a bit related - typically the outer layer of the underwater part of the hull of large navy ships consists of a gun silencer/car muffler style structures several meters wide to dampen the direct hit explosion of a torpedo or similar scale munition.
Here’s the video: <a href="https://youtu.be/ziVUumtxNuU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ziVUumtxNuU</a><p>My biggest concern is how much marine life this affected. In Seattle marine construction projects (like piers) are required to implement various mitigation’s like bubble screens to limit shockwaves and sound from traveling, because they’ve found that even just a pile driver can kill fish half a mile away. This explosion is much, much bigger and I assume its shockwave and sound travel hundreds of miles, especially since it apparently set off seismometers and registered a 3.9 on the Richter scale.