Here’s
an interesting contract award.
BAE Systems Land and Armaments LP has
been given a $80M contract to assemble 10 Mk45, 62-caliber, 5" gun mounts using older guns that
will bevstripped for parts and/or refurbished.
The wording of the contract announcement makes it a little unclear
exactly what is being done but I think that’s the scope of the work. The contract includes options which, if
exercised, would bring the cumulative value of the contract to $130,076,871.
Work will be completed by September 2016.
So, between $8M - $13M per gun mount, if I’ve
interpreted the contract correctly. I
wonder what a new mount costs?
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ReplyDeleteI would like to see a greater emphasis on gun mounts on ships. Sadly I don't think that we're going to see that happen.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I will note that other navies do often have several guns on their ships. Not saying they are perfect either, but it does seem like a good idea. I would agree with CNO that some armor is a good idea as well.
It's not exactly armor but the Flt III's will have a stronger structure in several places. The original Burkes were found to have been built a bit weak and have had to have strengthening patches applied just to stand up to normal sea wear.
Delete"It's not exactly armor but the Flt III's will have a stronger structure in several places. The original Burkes were found to have been built a bit weak and have had to have strengthening patches applied just to stand up to normal sea wear."
ReplyDeleteAll to the good... but I wonder why this happens? We've already spoken about the LCS being too weak. I've read in other places that the Tico's were over-stressing their Spruance hulls....
Isn't that part of the Naval engineering that they go through in designing a ship?
When we had a BuShips organization staffed by professional engineers whose entire career was building ships, yes, those kinds of things were handled on a routine basis. Now, the Navy doesn't design or even spec ships, has no professional competence to evaluate industry designs, and the responsible officers are on to their next assignment in a year and never see the results of their work.
DeleteAlso, and I can't stress this point enough, when we had BuShips operating we also had the stress of war. There was tremendous pressure to build WARships. Today, with no war, the pressure is to build ships as cheaply as possible, using the thinnest and cheapest materials, with an emphasis on green engineering (bio fuels and eco friendly light bulbs) and gender integration of shipboard facilities. We're building social experimentation cruise ships, not WARships.
There are other reason for unexpected problems popping up, take the problems with the SpruCans mid point. When they we design the engineers were told that the heavies weapon to possible would be a Mk26 missile launcher. what they got was the Mk41 VLS, a much heavier unit. The same think happen with the Ticos.
DeleteThe problems is you can't always guess where technology will take you, an engineer just makes his best guesstimate and hopes for the best.
By the way, remember that these are ships we are talking about and weight is a very important consideration when choosing material
This would be a good deal if they were replacing the 5"/62 with a 8"/55.... Of course that would still require a ship to come within 25km of a hostile target.
ReplyDeleteThe 5"/62s are a great secondary battery!