It’s not often that the Navy
does anything that surprises ComNavOps.
Disappoints, yes. Surprises,
no. And it’s absolutely unheard of that
the Navy surprises ComNavOps in a positive way.
And yet, that’s exactly what has happened – well, kind of – and not by
the Navy.
Navy Times website reports
that the Pentagon has instructed the Navy to conduct full ship shock tests on
the carrier Ford (1). The Navy had
attempted to put off the shock tests either indefinitely or until the next Ford
class carrier, CVN-79, was ready which would be in 2023 or so.
You’ll recall that the Navy
has thus far declined to perform shock tests on any LCS. Also, I’ve not read of any plans to conduct
shock tests on the Zumwalt DDG or the America LHA although, to be fair, there
may be such plans and they just haven’t been made public.
As a more general statement,
the Navy has been trending towards less and less testing of ships with many
tests being indefinitely deferred according to the various DOT&E reports.
This abrupt change in plan
is good news. Building an entire class
of ship without doing shock testing is just asking for unexpected and unwelcome
findings when damage actually occurs.
Waiting until several ships into a class to conduct the tests simply
means that any required fixes will assuredly cost much more by having to be
retrofit than if they were incorporated into the vessels during
construction. This is identical to the
concurrency issues that help drive up costs on the F-35. Plus, do we really want our sailors deploying
on ships that may have structural and shock issues? Don’t we want our warships to be as ready and
resilient as possible? Why has the Navy
begun to defer shock testing? But, I
digress …
While good news, the
directive was totally unexpected. The
Navy was firmly “committed” to not performing the test. Something changed and for the directive to
come from the Pentagon means that whatever changed had to have occurred at a
pretty high level. I can’t even begin to
speculate who has sufficient clout and interest in the Navy to mandate this.
The directive came from the
office of Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official. I had no idea he had the authority to order something
of this magnitude if, indeed, he is actually the person behind this.
I’ll be keeping a close eye
on this and watching to see if this affects the Navy’s plans, or lack thereof,
to conduct shock testing on other ship classes.
This is a very good
development for the Navy. It’s a shame
that it had to be imposed rather than embraced.
(1)Navy Times, “Pentagon
Directs Shock Tests on Carrier Ford”, Christopher P. Cavas, August 11, 2015
The look of panic in the eyes of the shipbuilders will be a thing of beauty?. Will they say, can we do a computer simulation instead ? Or even do a series of live small tests and 'extrapolate' on a graph?
ReplyDeleteBest of all, why dont we delay any such test until the problem goes away...not the real problem, but the person who ordered the test in the first place
The real question is, are they going to follow through?
ReplyDeleteI think that there is going to be a powerful faction within the USN that will oppose this and fight this like crazy.
Why do you believe that? I tend to agree but for the life of me I can't come up with a reason why the Navy would balk at such testing. It can only make for better ships and there is no downside other than a few months delay in the initial deployment. Any thoughts?
DeleteYou answered your own question. Better ships are not the goal here. Keeping the money flowing is the goal and ship designs and manufacturing that looks bad jeopardizes the flow of money.
DeleteSadly, you're probably right. I'd just like to believe better of our military leaders.
DeleteThe past few decades of actions has not been grounds for much in the way of optimism about the quality of leadership - military and civilian alike.
DeleteMaybe we need a blog that focuses on the managers we keep picking instead of the leaders we need. Some investigative sunshine on what these managers have REALLY accomplished BEFORE they are promoted might help. Lord knows the troops know the ones that do things and know the ones that are politically correct.
DeletePeople first, ideas second, things third.