Werner wrote:Do you think they might take the hint from the fact that the technology demonstrator needs windshield wipers?
I doubt the guns and VLS launch tubes can be used effectively if the forecastle is constantly under green water.
Just looking at the press for the DDG-1000 for the year 2007, it looks like it rose in price by $500,000,000 between January and November, currently at about $3.5 billion per ship.
Some one is making a shed load of money and it's not the taxpayer?
Dave Wooley
If the USN is looking for a better example of naval procurement and program management than their own, they'd better look at something better than the Nansen as this whole program has been mired in controversey and is seem as a model of how not to buy warships.
I've thought a little more about this issue. I don't think I believe that the US warship building industry is intrinsically more corrupt or hugely less efficient than those in any other country. When the industry were told to mass produce Ticonderoga or Arleigh Burke, it did it effective and reasonably cheaply. Same with mass producing Nimitz class CVN. With the new designs, I suspect the relative distribution of the technical risk between the ship builder and the Navy has at least something to do with the recent performance of the US warship building indistry. It appears that the USN compels its builders to assume more technical risk, and offers less reward for taking those risks, then is common elsewhere. It appears that the US believe such practices somehow takes advantage of free enterprise and promotes private initiatives to improve the industy's ability to effectively innovate. It does not appear that the effort has had the desired effect. Rather than prompting the industry to accept the risk and device new ways to reduce risk, the industry started to think laterally and found a way to pass the risk right back to the Navy.
Last edited by chuck on Mon Dec 10, 2007 12:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Assessing the impact of new area rug under modeling table.
chuck wrote:I've thought a little more about this issue. I don't think I believe that the US warship building industry is intrinsically more corrupt than those in any other country. I suspect the relative distribution of the technical risk between the ship builder and the Navy has at least something to do with the recent performance of the US warship building indistry. It appears that the USN compels its builders to assume more technical risk, and offers less reward for taking those risks, then is common elsewhere. It appears that the US believe such practices somehow takes advantage of free enterprise and promotes private initiatives to improve the industy's ability to effectively innovate. It does not appear that the advantage in these fields are what it is cracked up to be. Instead the industry found another way to essentially pass the risk right back to the Navy.
A prescient observation. In the long run you cannot transfer the risks. That is an illusion, just like the illusion of corporate taxes. Corporations don't pay taxes; they transfer the costs to the consumers (or go bankrupt, which they try to avoid). Transferring risk to the manufacturer in this instance is just political sleight of hand. A company ultimately recovers it's investment in cost increases, or goes bankrupt.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
What's interesting about the current procurement is the total departure from reality. The USN was told in 2003 by an expert (David D. Rudko) that the LCS design could not meet it's objectives at any price, yet the program continued and the price allowed to rise from under $200 million to over $500 million before the red flag went up. Now, we see the same forces arising in the DDG-1000 program. How much further will the program be allowed to continue hemorrhaging tax dollars until it is put out of it's misery?
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
This points to a larger and more abstract problem with the USN system. In the past the USN has taken what would appear to be ill considered technical risks and the result was the risk converted itself into a financial one and was passed onto the tax payers. There is not real realizable and universal system for evaluating risks with naval systems, so the reaction of the US political system was to threaten the navy with severe punishment if it were to take such bad risks again in the future. There is no real way for the navy to tell which risk is really good and which isn't. So it devised a way to pass the risk onto its suppliers under the euphemism of "relying on private enterprise". This is made even easier when the very euphemism can effectively curry favors in the high political establishements. Unfortunately the private enterprise is where pragmatic risk managament expertise is at, and the private enterprise rapidly found a way to pass the risk back to the navy in a slightly altered form, leaving the Navy holding the bag.
The solution to this is to devise a new way to allow the Navy to take on the risks itself by developing a new set of public and political norms in regard to the navy that would only punish it if attemtps to pass the cost of ill-considered risk taking onto the customers, not to punish it if well considered risk taking does not pan out.
That last paragraph is the detail in which the devil resides.
In the '30s and '40s the naval aviation was a risky area. Technology was advancing rapidly. The USN published a requirement and the free market responded with proposals that received some public money to develop. At some point, the Navy selected from among the prototypes, and an airplane was procured. Sometimes, they bought them all, good or bad, in order to expand the source market.
Now, we have what is in essence a command market for military goods. The US Military is the only buyer, and they control the requirements and development of the system. It seems to me this lack of competition is the major shortcoming.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Francisco P. de Nanclares wrote:That�s probably the reason the aussies have chosen the same company for both, their ADF and LHD projects.
The RAN have ordered a F100 type vessel, not the Nansen, and the LHD is a totally different type. Neither order has much to do with the Norwegian Navy and the well discussed issues, which admittedly are largely down to Norway's own choices in their surface vessel selection and program management.
I dont think 5000 is too much for a FF. The burkes are 8000 tons and knox FF where 4000 Ships are bigger nowadays with no displacement treaties in effect.
Just remember, these renderings capture the DDG-1000 at it's most attractive angles. I'm sure at other angles it more closely resembles the Staten Island Garbage Scow.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
No other warship currently on the drawing board can hold a candle to the new two island Anglo-French "Supercarrier" in ugliness. Not only is that design unbelievably ugly when viewed in profile, it even manage to look ugly in planform.
BTW, the Fridjoff Nansen is not meant to use SM-2, but it will only have ESSM instead. WIth only 8 Mk-41 cells fitted, that's normal I guess. And indeed the programme was plagued by plenty of problems, they demanded too much from a ship that should have been small and cheap.
There is a very real question of just what the Nansen is. The ship has a down spec version of Aegis yet carries an 8 cell VLS for ESSM so it has a still extremely capable area defence air warfare combate suite with an armament that is only a little above a point defence fit. Why? For point defence you don't need Aegis, if you have Aegis it is a little meaningless without the sort of area defence weapons to make it work. When this is brought up the Norwegian response is always that they're ASW vessels, not AAW vessels, which really only intensifies the question of why fit Aegis? One of those aspects of ship design that is ignored by many is that to integrate good ASW and AAW capabilities into a single hull is both extremely expensive and very technically demanding, on the sort of budget and hull size of the Nansen's it basically can't be done IMO unless both aspects are deeply compromised, and personally I think they'd have been better building an optimised ASW frigate. Then there is the question of Norway wanting five hulls but not bothering to budget realistically for the costs to keep five operational with the result costs have risen substantially for the operations budget, there was a very good reason why the German yards offered Norway three hulls on the budget available as it was considered by those yards that three was all Norway could afford for what they wanted. Most of this is more a problem of Norwegian decisions than the actual builder. However, the various well publised concerns of the Norwegian Navy over poor build quality and poor program management during construction are a criticism of the builders.
32 missiles out to 50km with a control system designed to counter saturation attacks sounds like a fair AAW capability to me. Certainly much better than LCS-1's RAM point defense missiles and 5cm gun.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Yes indeed, but comparing the LCS to a Frigate is hardly an appropriate comparison, it's like comparing a River class OPV to a Type 45 Destroyer and complaining that the OPV is under armed. The LCS was never intended to have the capability of a Frigate, that the vessel looks like it'll cost as much as a Frigate is down to bad program management.
My premise about the LCS is 'all about the money'. Since we can't get the Navy to sit still on specs and the price to be reasonable, it's time to impose a solution. For the price, Nansen or La Fayette can do all the "real things" LCS can do, and at a much lower price.
Interesting that one of the things most responsible for LCS' price growth has been the sustained top speed, which the operators say is unnecessary and not particularly useful.
"Sea Frame" is a neat concept, but it economizes primarily on raw steel, which is the least expensive part of a warship.
If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
Personally I think the whole LCS concept is obsolete and the USN needs a return to focus on blue water ops after the era where the buzz words were "littoral" and "asymetric", but that's just me. In it's original conception of a relatively affordable basic inshore combatant to operate with the Zumwalt land attack destroyer the LCS was valid but times have changed and price escalation have made it a complete waste of money, when it is coming out at Frigate $$$$'s with nothing like the capability and when it strikes me that an off the shelf FAC could have performed the LCS role. This isn't just LCS, the Zumwalt price is unsustainable and it is questionable whether large land attack destroyers are the best use of USN new build resources when a follow on to the Burke and FFG7 may be a lot more useful.
I will miss you Werner. Fair winds and following seas.
back to the future , ugly as sin , no style but that's the direction navies are heading 