"... In its latest testing report, the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation saw a failure in about one out of every 614 EMALS cycles – far higher than the target level of once every 4,166 cycles. For its part, the Navy has said it measures the reliability of the EMALS by operational availability, which the service says is about 98 percent for its last 5,400 launches.
The operational availability depends in part on how quickly sailors can troubleshoot the most common faults in the launching system, Navy officials have told USNI News.
“We’ve gotten very good at coming through minor issues. We do not have hardly any catastrophic issues that take us down for extended periods of time,” Ens. Justin Knighton, the aircraft launch and recovery equipment maintenance officer, told USNI News in October.
For example, while Ford launched aircraft last week, USNI News observed about a 45-second pause before the launch of a Super Hornet. One sailor attributed the pause to “overheating.” The fault was cleared and the Super Hornet then launched.
Refining procedures will improve efficiency, the crew emphasized to USNI News."
