Comments on: More Fun

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 03:40:47 +0000

The Navy has a PR video out on the Zumwalt. They are putting out a big PR effort so they must suspect problems. This is one of the reasons all-new ships are rare - there are too many problems, and Congress 'becomes concerned over the cost'. Basing new ships on older models is an easier sell to Congress than a brand new design, unless you can arrange to have bits manufactured in a majority of House districts, in a majority of states. With the Congress, MIC, and services all involved, it's rather amazing that we have anything that works in the military.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 11:56:02 +0000

Drat! Meant to add this. I’m annoyed.

This has some good pic’s and info.

The Navy’s newest warship is powered by Linux

I did have to laugh at the irony of this though! The CO of the first Zumwalt will be… Captain James Kirk! LOL

Given the Star Trek Enterprise was plagued with problems… It’s appropriate! LOL

The article also suggests that given the nature of the ship, they should appoint Vint Cerf as Chief Engineer! LOL

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 11:48:15 +0000

BTW, Calling the Zumwalt a *Destroyer* is, I think, somewhat misleading (intentionally m sure). it’s actually a Battlecruiser class ship, weighing some 15,000t. There were originally supposed to be 32 ships, with massive cost overruns (what a surprise!) the number was cut to 10, and now to 3. In fact, the cost increase caused the U.S. Navy to identify the program as being in breach of the Nunn–McCurdy Amendment on 1 February 2010. In 2009, the Gov gave the contract back to GD who are actually one of the most experienced and successful ship builders and who had originally offered a fixed-price contract. For some stupid (no doubt financial) reason, the contract had been awarded to Northrop Grumman, who know sweat FA about building big Navy ships on a lower cost-plus-fee contract. I guess they discovered that saving money is not always a good idea, especially when it actually costs lot more than it originally would have! However, short of starting from scratch, I don’t see how even GD can fix this.

DDG-1000 and SM-2

Still wondering how the hell the DDG-1000 can’t support SM-2s? Me too, which is why I find this little tidbit interesting.

To suggest in a Congressional hearing “it cannot successfully employ the Standard Missile-2 (SM-2), SM-3 or SM-6, and is incapable of conducting Ballistic Missile Defense” doesn’t appear to match the acquisition strategy of the DDG-1000 as stated in the Navy’s own budget.

I think the only reason GD accepted the contract now, is because they know there will be no consequences, and they could do with the money.

Here’s a fun tidbit! Raytheon & GD selected Fanuc for the controllers. In the 80’s & 90’s, my job was designing *award winning* control systems (still in use today) to replace Fanuc systems, because they were overpriced crap!! And that’s a fact! Morons.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 11:28:16 +0000

That’s part of what I was referring to Badtux. Also, remember that my Engineering degree was specializing in automation. I’ve seen first hand what happens when a system 1/10th as complex as the Zumwalt goes wrong. There is no such thing as a perfect system. And as you increase the complexity, and the size of the system, you increase the chances of things going wrong significantly. Personally, I believe the Zumwalt is a major accident waiting to happen.

When I was recuperating in Italy with an Uncles family in the early 90’s, I was invited to go out on a Tuna boat (a big longliner) another uncle owned for a month tuna fishing. That boat had a crew of 34, and we all had to do maintenance on the boat, even the Captain. It was very hard work, but the crew were like a huge family. We had some great down time usually after supper, lot’s of music (many played an instrument), games, stories… lot of laughter! I helped with engine maintenance, though working on two big 12 cylinder diesels with a generator set (the ship needed a lot of power, especially for the big freezers below deck) was a bit different from the car’s I used to fix! I even went overboard to clear crap off the underside and check the screws & rudders (scuba was part of my Mil training, demolitions etc.) I became one of the two cooks once they discovered I was a good cook, as well as their traditional meals, I added a few they hadn’t had, and the liked them. 🙂 I learned a lot about maintaining a ship at sea. it was a wonderful experience, and I loved it. 🙂 PS. There are few things better than fresh caught tuna for supper! 😉 I was offered a job (actually, everyone on the ship is an equal partner, it’s why they all work equally hard). In hindsight… I should have taken it. One of my few regrets. *shrug*

Quite frankly, the USA is incapable of doing anything right in the current environment. In part because no decisions are made for the *right* reasons! If something does go right, it’s usually by accident. Not planning.

And the rest of the World is heading the same way. I know we are.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 06:12:09 +0000

The first tests of the Zumwalt's electronics weren't very promising -- the USS Yorktown, which was being used to prototype an early version of the "smart ship" system, had to be towed back to port multiple times when the computers controlling its propulsion system crashed. Yay. Just what we need -- a ship that's dead in the water when its computer crashes.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 04:45:04 +0000

There is no way in hell 90 people can keep that ship at sea.

I don’t deal with ships, but I live surrounded by 20 to 40-foot boats owned by friends and neighbors. They can take them out with only one person on board, but I would guess that every 24 hours of run time, they require some type of skilled maintenance. It doesn’t make any difference if they are wood, metal, or plastic, whether they sit in the water, or are hauled out and rinsed after use – you have to spend an amazing amount of time and money to keep them running.

The charter fishing boats have larger crews and better maintenance programs, but they still show up in the drydock with problems.

Salt air is not a good environment for copper. While they are scrapping and painting the ship, you are going to have intermittent problems with equipment because of the corrosive effect of sea air on boards and connectors. When we were flying off Shemya, there was a regular process of pulling gear when we were in a stand-down and cleaning the connectors.

There have been a lot of improvements in coatings, but the sea is a tough environment that requires constant attention to maintenance, which is why I consider boats to be a hole in the water into which you pour money.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 22:46:17 +0000

Kryten, the Navy actually has a very well thought of educational system. An officer graduating from the Nuclear Power School, for example, will automatically be granted graduate credit towards an advanced degree in nuclear physics at many U.S. universities. I have no doubt that the Navy would be capable of training 90 highly-trained technical types to man a Zumwalt. The big problem would be that a lot of the jobs needed to keep a ship going are scuttwork type jobs, like the continual job of going around with grease and oil to keep the various valves, hinges, etc. from freezing shut, or of keeping ahead of the rust that’s trying to demolish the ship via application of rust inhibitors and paint before the ship can turn into crumbles, a job where they start at the stern and work their way forward until they hit the bow, then turn around and go back to the stern and start again. Unless they’ve somehow developed robots to do all this, they’re going to need people. People *without* an advanced engineering degree, but with the ability to chip paint and sling a paintbrush.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 16:46:33 +0000

Just noticed an error above:

JCC (Joint Command Ship) –> JCC (Joint Command-Control Ship). 😉 LOL

From the scuttlebutt I’ve heard the past decade… most of the 90 crew will be *highly educated* engineer types (which, given what passes for *higher education* in the USA these days, I suspect they plan to fix any problems with rosary beads, a gold cross, a photo of Jesus they can kiss, and a prayer)! LMAO

Forget spare parts! Given the highly modularized systems, they will need a quarter of the ship just for spare modules once testing shows a high failure rate! I suspect that the missile count will be quite overrated! Be lucky to get 80 in the tubes IMHO, let alone reloads! LOL

I doubt there will be many *swabbies*, if any! Heck, wouldn’t surprise me if the kitchen was a big automated vending machine! LOL

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 16:34:55 +0000

LOL And your friend is quite right! 🙂 It’s one of the reason’s I’ve been amused for about a decade by the whole thing (I have a friend also who is a retired Navy Captain, and an Uncle who was a Lt.)

What the hell… it’s only money, right? 😉 And it all goes to the MIC corp’s, and they don’t give a rat’s about anything except the money. I worked for GD, so I know. *shrug*

I was also a Jnr. project manager for part of our Collins Sub project, & another Navy project here.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 15:38:46 +0000

An ex-Navy friend of me merely laughs at the notion that 90 people are going to be able to handle all the tasks of running a Zumwalt-class destroyer. She notes that the sea is continually attempting to turn any ship into a pile of rust and corrosion. Paint and lubrication do not apply themselves. The removal of the steam pipes does remove one huge maintenance task, but there are way too many systems even with the steam pipes gone for all the maintenance tasks on the similar-sized ships she served on be successfully accomplished by 90 people. She also notes that all systems will need at least two people capable of repairing them in the event of battle damage, and given the number of systems, 90 won’t do.

She served in a ship, I haven’t, so I assume she has a good handle on the maintenance required to keep a ship in service. She seems to think 90 people would be overtasked and that they’re going to end up needing roughly 140 people to actually keep it going, especially with the need for redundancy in the event of combat losses (redundancy in *people*, I mean). After all, you don’t want to be dead in the water because your one and only expert in engine management system control module repair managed to be in exactly the right spot to be pranged by a Silkworm that the fire control computer missed because it was overwhelmed by a simultaneous launch of 1,000 Silkworms!

Of course, the problem is that they aren’t going to have *berths* for 140 people. I expect that each Zumwalt thus will have to be accompanied by a tugboat. The tugboat will be what actually provides it with its propulsive power :).