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Friday, August 21, 2020

USS Albacore and Submarine Development

The submarine USS Albacore prototyped the now-standard US tear drop shaped submarine hull and represented a major leap in technology.  During that same general time period, the US Navy made additional extensive improvements in submarine technology which saw the introduction of nuclear reactors, new hull shapes, new propeller systems, new diving/control plane systems, greatly enhanced quieting, deeper dive limits, new ‘flight’ control systems, and much more.


USS Albacore


So, what’s our interest in the Albacore, today?  It’s the lessons that Albacore offers about how to develop technology.  We’re so used to the incessant drum beat of developmental and acquisition - often, the two being concurrent! - failure that we’ve forgotten that we once completely understood how to engage in technological advancement and acquisition and, most stunning to us today, we’ve forgotten that we used to be able to execute large leaps in technology in very short time frames – times that, frankly, seem like fantasy to us and, if anyone proposed similar time frames and similar degrees of advancement today, we’d laugh them off as unrealistic dreamers.  So, let’s look at the Albacore and its lessons.

At the end of WWII, the Gato/Balao class subs represented the peak of US submarine technology but, even then, it was apparent to naval designers that there was so much more potential in submarines but that it would require some radically new technology.  Not even the evolutionary advancement of the Tang class, essentially an improved WWII sub, could realize the submarine potential.


Tang Class


The missing, necessary piece of the potential puzzle was a way to transform the submarine from a surface ship that could, on occasion, submerge to a true undersea vessel that was inherently more at home under the water than on the surface and would perform better underwater than on the surface.  Thus, in 1949, Navy designers began conducting extensive hydrodynamic research into new hull forms.  The Navy wanted to design and build a prototype new hull form and they embarked on that effort the right way, with extensive wind tunnel and water testing prior to construction of the actual sub.  By the time the prototype submarine, the Albacore, was built, the Navy already knew the new tear drop shape hull would work.  The purpose of the prototype Albacore, then, was to find the small problems and map out the performance envelope.

What you can’t do – and we didn’t – is leap straight into a production commitment of 55 ships (the LCS) before the conceptual design was even done and before research and development was even partially begun.

The Albacore lessons tell us exactly how to develop new technology:  theorize, research, test, develop, refine, test some more and when you have a solid concept, design and build a prototype – a single prototype, not an entire class based on unproven technology.  Albacore proved the validity of this approach.  Unbelievably to us, today, Albacore went from a theory in 1949 to a commissioned prototype in 1953 – just 4 years.  Today, it takes us 4 years just to line up all the component manufacturers in all 50 states that will supply parts for a new program!

Lest you think this was some kind of fluke occurrence, the Navy went from WWII style submarines in 1952 to true, modern, nuclear powered, attack submarines in 1959.  That’s right … in seven years the Navy developed a completely new submarine with all the features we now recognize in modern submarines and they did so using a series of developments and prototypes, as listed below.  Study the table below and contemplate the incredible advances, the unbelievably short time frames and the extensive use of one-off prototypes.



US Navy Submarine Development and Prototyping
Class
Commissioned
No.
Comments
Tang class
1951-1952
6
improved conventional WWII design
Albacore
1953
1
tear drop hull
Nautilus
1954
1
first operational nuke sub; S2W reactor; prototyped on land at the S1W facility by Argonne National Laboratory in the early 1950’s
Darter
1956
1
improved Tang; new acoustic sensors; new fire control; new maneuvering control
Seawolf
1957
1
tested liquid metal cooled reactor
Skate class
1957-1959
4
first production run of nuclear subs;  based on the conventional Tang class
Barbel class
1959
3
tear drop hull; combined control room, conning tower, attack center in one space, bow torpedo tubes;  diesel engines; hydraulic ballast controls
Skipjack class
1959 – 1961
6
nuclear power; single shaft; tear drop hull
Triton
1959
1
nuclear powered fast surface radar picket submarine
Halibut
1960
1
first guided missile submarine, carrying Regulus missiles



Note the speed of construction with many classes being entirely commissioned within a one or two year period.  In fact, in the 4-5 year period from 1957-1961 we commissioned 16 submarines including 3 prototypes which, today, we accept as an article of faith that they take many times longer to build.


Skate Class


Also, note the small size of the classes.  We didn’t commit to production runs of dozens of units while we were still developing the technology.  Small runs of 3-6 vessels was sufficient to populate the fleet while avoiding the inevitable obsolescence that accompanies rapid technological change.  We built small classes, comfortable that as the technology advanced we could feed the developments into the next small class.  Contrast that with today’s desire to build classes of up to 55 ships with unproven technology.  Even the new frigate represents a risk in that we’re locking into a design for a production run of 20 despite the pace of technological advancement.  One can easily predict that we’ll soon be trying to shoehorn new technology into frigates that weren’t designed to receive it.


Barbel Class


Note, too, the concurrent development of different technologies: nuclear and diesel, for example, and the use of multiple, different prototypes.  Contrast that with the LCS or Ford where we attempted to combine every new technology into a single ship – and were puzzled why the effort failed.


USS Halibut Guided Missile Submarine


Today, we’d take all those improvements and force them into a single new design which would be three decades overdue and cost a bajillion dollars.  In contrast, the Navy wisely broke the developments up into small chunks and built single prototypes or small runs to evaluate the improvements and then fed the lessons learned back into the development and production cycles.

History screams lessons at us but we steadfastly refuse to listen.  Albacore and the early developmental efforts that produced today’s modern submarine provide us the lessons and template for our own development efforts and yet we ignore the lessons.  We need to study our own history, learn the lessons, and readjust our expectations to much faster and more productive standards.  We cannot afford to keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over.




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Here’s a few more interesting tidbits about Alacore:

Albacore’s design was authorized in late 1950 and the submarine was commissioned in 1953.  By comparison, the first LCS required over 4 years to go from contract award to commission and the Zumwalt required 11 years!

Albacore used conventional diesel engines.

Not only did Albacore prove out the tear drop shape hull but the sub was used for other developmental advancements as her career progressed.  She was used to test various stern configurations and propellers including concentric contra-rotating propellers, various noise reduction measures, and various sonar equipment fits.  Albacore was decommissioned in Dec 1972 due to diesel engine obsolescence.

36 comments:

  1. Interesting, particularly about the Triton. I would have thought there could still be a use for that type of sub. 24 Hour persistence (no need to land and re-fuel etc). Also if it gets "hot" disappear under the waves.

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    1. Yeah, it makes you wonder about the Navy's MUSV and whether it ought to be a submersible.

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  2. Back then people had the war still in mind, when wasting time and money on pipe dreams was a good way to get lots of men killed.

    Now "war" means "bombing third world fanatics that can't really fight back", and even record-breaking strings of failures seem to have no real consequences.
    (The Ford will cost 20+ billions and might still be worthless against a peer even then.)

    Now this is all fine and dandy until actual war comes back again, and many lessons will be "re-learned" by force.

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    1. The difference in mentality then and now is stunning, isn't it? The mystery, to me, is why the Navy can't study and learn from their own history especially when the lessons are so painfully obvious.

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    2. "The difference in mentality then and now is stunning, isn't it? The mystery, to me, is why the Navy can't study and learn from their own history especially when the lessons are so painfully obvious."

      Because they are not a war-fighting entity any more. They are a career-building bureaucracy.

      Every bureaucrat's top 3 priorities, in order, are 1) my career, 2) my agency, 3) doing the job we are supposed to do. The more top-heavy and bureaucratic the Navy becomes, the more career becomes more important than doing the job.

      We had them in Vietnam. Guys who had been staff pukes all their career, and needed to get combat box checked off on their resume. They would pitch a fit because nobody wore rank insignia or saluted, until somebody explained to them that Charlie liked to shoot the guys that everybody saluted. Some of them got the message then. The rest went home in boxes soon afterwards.

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  3. One word explains a lot of that: Rickover. Guy could be a bit nutty, but he knew what he wanted and he was focused on getting it.

    Let's think about how this would apply today. We'd have done everything possible to prove up EMALS on shore before taking it to sea. Then we would have built one Ford, and kept building Nimitzes until the Ford proved up--or didn't.

    We would done everything possible to prove/disprove the LCS and Zumwalt concepts before building the first one. Then we would have built one of each (or two LCSs, one of each type) and proved it up before building more. In the meantime, we would have kept the Ticos and Sprucans and Perrys going. We should have been making things like simplified GP escorts and ASW frigates all along, and kept the shipyards busy with them while we were testing the LCSs.

    And when we proved up the prototype and started building classes, don't keep putting in change orders every time you decide to do something different. Unless the change is a major safety change, build the one you are building now, make the changes on the remaining ships in the class, and come back and retrofit the earlier ones when they have a major maintenance period.

    And keep ships for their design lives. Those major maintenance periods are a key to maintaining ships' lives, so don't defer them.

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    1. While I completely agree with you CDR Chip on what Rickover would have done or what would have happened during 60s and 70, maybe even 80s, forget for a second the warrior mentality and high levels of experience backed by actual war time experience but look at US industry today: can we actually do some of this stuff today? I'm not convinced at all that we could have developed USS Ford then just switched back to a USS Nimitz class carrier, I know we did it with USS Enterprise than built other class carriers but are you so sure we could pull that off today? I'm not. I think we just don't have the base, knowledge or just plain flexibility to that. I know USN is going to try it with new boomers and Virginia's on the same line and its going to be super tight schedule wise and capability wise. USA might not be able to be as flexible as we want because it's not just the mentality anymore: it's we might not be plain able to do it anymore.

      That's just cutting metal, what about memory chips, computer chips, other electronics, optics, rare metals, even software,etc...we have in some of these areas little to zero internal to the USA capability left.

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    2. "I think we just don't have the base, knowledge or just plain flexibility to that."

      Do you know what capabilities you have? That's right, you have the capabilities you practice. If we can't switch back and forth it's because we've stopped doing so. If we would do it, we'd be able to do it! It's a bit of the chicken and the egg question. The point is that there is no inherent reason why we can't switch other than we don't.

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    3. I think that we've hogtied ourselves a bit by "preserving the industrial base" as well. For instance, having one yard that builds nuclear carriers is a problem. We write multi ship contracts, and gave away our flexibility. I understand its not a simple process to change things, but when the Ford became an overexpensive nonfunctional mess, I imagine the ability to go back to building Nimitzes would have created unreal legal and monetary penalties that would have overshadowed the production line difficulties. As CNOs post shows, the prototype path is clearly the smart way to go, but we've contractually obligated ourselves to keeping builders yards open. The time and cost overruns are things that should be penalized, not accepted. I don't see a way to change things, but its a monster of our own making. We've gone from rewarding "on time under budget" to paying millions (billions?) more for ships that are functional only YEARS after commissioning, if ever!! The entire system is badly broken. How do we fix it??

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    4. While clearly Adm Rickover was very effective, I wonder if he didnt create a bit of institutional momentum of ignoring or discounting combat experienced men and leaders(?) My father had an extremely brief interveiw upon attempting to join the nuclear navy.
      "So Chief, you were on Fleet boats in the Pacific during the war?"
      "Yes, sir."
      "You cant teach an old dog new tricks, dismissed..."
      So he served til retirement in 64 aboard Albacore and a couple Barbels...
      Todays leaders are absolutely immune to history, and the lessons contained within. Of course now those folks have no worthwhile experience to draw from...

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    5. "So he served til retirement in 64 aboard Albacore and a couple Barbels…"

      He lived the history! He's got to have some fascinating stories about those early days of a new kind of submarine. A ComNavOps' salute to your father!

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    6. Thank you sir!! He did indeed, starting with having been aboard the California just a few weeks before Dec 7th. Then went aboard Phelps for a couple years, (the Phelps reunions allowed me to meet some amazing people, including Adm Zumwalt) being there for torpedoing Lex, Midway, and all the other battles til he volunteered for sub duty in early 44. Stayed in subs until retirement. He did some time aboard Blueback, which Ive taken my kids on tours of in Portland. Then he worked for the now gone Long Beach Naval Shipyard in the sonar dept...which allowed me to grow up down in the drydocks and going out on sea trials for the then-new Spruances. After a second retirement and nearly instant boredom, he started a sonar/ASW consulting company, and did that until his success caused the big suppliers to cut him off and close him down. Almost exactly 50 yrs of service to the country and US Navy... He passed away ten years ago, but the stories and dedication will never be forgotten. Truly a member of the greatest generation....!!!

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    7. "One word explains a lot of that: Rickover. Guy could be a bit nutty, but he knew what he wanted and he was focused on getting it."

      One could describe Commandant Berger the same way. The difference being - pending history's judgement - that Rickover was right about what he wanted and Berger is wrong.

      One other difference between the two men is that Rickover came from a WWII combat background and Berger comes from a peacetime, low end threat background. Does that explain why one man was right and the other appears to be wrong?

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  4. This boils down to what RAMD Wayne Meyer once said, "Build a little, test a little, learn a lot." Though, I would change middle part to "test a lot.'

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  5. Our contractors are corrupt behemoths with zero competition designing on CAD and no-bid, maximum, guaranteed profit, all overseen by a kleptocracy-driven round-robin of generals and admirals that rotate between the Pentagon, the contractors, to staff positions at the White House and Hill and back to the Pentagon as civilians keeping the entire scheme going. How else to explain the f-35, the Ford Class CVNs, Osprys and the endless stream of failed ship types and shady defense protocols detailed by the Skipper on these here pages every day? It ain't Stars and Stripes for these guys, it's about money. Fact is, without this site and a very few others, we'd no little of their shady inclinations. When you have a compilation of crookedness, distilled to perfection as it is here, it's easy to see. GM2 and Carlton Meyers is another. Not much after those.

    Bet our Skipper here (CNO) has been offered some nice money to button this site up.

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    1. "Bet our Skipper here (CNO) has been offered some nice money to button this site up."

      I'm holding out for a Ferrari - or a bag of chocolate chip cookies!

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  6. Some of the interviews prospective applications to the nuclear schools had with Rickover were, shall we say, interesting.

    Like one officer was told: "P*ss me off. You have ten seconds". The officer looked around, saw an expensive model of the Nautilus, used it to sweep the contents of Rickover's desk on to the floor, and then smashed the model into pieces.

    He got into the nuclear school and became a sub skipper.

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    1. Probably my favorite, except my father's of course, is about the officers all having lunch with Adm Rickover. One JO added salt to his food before eating. The Adm noticed, and said "you just assumed it needed salt!", and poof, the JO was out of the nuke business... No, I dont have a reference for the story though LOL

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    2. "Some of the interviews prospective applications to the nuclear schools had with Rickover were, shall we say, interesting. "

      I would describe mine as interesting. I didn't really have a passion for getting into the program. I was actually invited by them to apply, I think because I was NROTC and a math major from a university that had a strong and well-deserved STEM reputation, and our program had put a bunch of people into the nuke program. The day of my interview, he was also interviewing a bunch of prospective COs, and in the waiting room they were all cramming for the interview. "Does this pipe connect to that pipe?" "No, it connects to this tank." I'm sitting there thinking, "Wow, if I have to memorize everything down to that level of detail, I'm not sure this is for me." I think my lack of passion came through in the brief interview and I was thrown out, but told to wait. A CDR came out to the waiting room and told me I was going to go back and prepped me for what to say. By that time, I had about decided I'd had enough, and the second session went pretty quickly. He asked me what I would do if I were rejected from the program, and I said, "Probably go be a first lieutenant on a destroyer somewhere." That was it, he threw me out.

      I think it was the right answer for both the program and for me. I just didn't have anything approaching the passion that those PCOs had.

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  7. This kind of development has been implemented by China. In 2018, China reported its JF-12 explosive wind tunnel which had been running a couple years then. It allows Chinese engineers to simulate hypersonic prototypes. We then realized why most Chinese hypersonic devices test succeeded while US' failed. US could not build a similar one. Usually, if PLA allows it to be reported, China has one more advanced.

    Root cause is, I think, because numer and quality drop of US STEM graduates. Not only China graduate more than 8 times STEM students than US each year, brightest Chinese students tend to choose STEM. Brightest US students usually want to be lawyers, financiers, medical doctors, ... than engineers and scientists. You can see most top tier universities' STEM filled with foreign students, especially graduate schools.

    Sorry, you cannot simply claim your second tier students are better than other nations' top tier ones. This kind of national pride is worthless.

    How to encourage bright American high school graduate study STEM?

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    1. To be fair, fraud and plagiarism are rampant in the Chinese STEM world at a level unimaginable in USA/EU/Japan.

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    2. I highly disagree with this assessment. Let's even assume what you said is right, we should have identified the shortfall during the teaching process. Hell if you say there is corruption in our colleges (does that also means do our STEM students are even that good?),the ones that worked in the US have only demonstrated exceedingly well for foreign students. I myself has worked with some of these Chinese students through a program in my school and I can say for sure that they are outstandingly good at what they do. With friends studying in China, they have nothing but praise for the education system, focusing on discipline and theoretical understanding of subjects. They do have a few nitpick like lack of realistic/physical experiment or how the workload is much more heavy than their American equivalent. That being said, I do think that these shortcomings will be solved with a good American education.

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    3. You can encourage qualified American students to study STEM by making it a good experience studying STEM. I love math and science, and I think I am pretty good as well, but I would never dream of wasting years of my life going to college.

      That is not even mentioning all the fake classes, and fake degrees (I have seen people get engineering degrees for making games that would get Steam lambasted if it published them). Qualified people go into the things that provide prestige; with everyone going to college and everyone getting degrees, that is no longer STEM. Failing that, they go into things that provide them money. That is finance.

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    4. I don't disagree with your point of making it a good experience but in itself, STEM degrees are inherently difficult to be into. Let's take the massively popular Computer Science as an example. If we be real here, CS are an extremely boring degree where you went out of your way using words and numbers to create something out of a box that wasn't popular until 10 years ago. But why do we produce thousands of these students every year? The mystical nature of any new fields, the large almost cult following of technologies in new sector. We just simply need to incentive these students with things that we ACTUALLY need to get done like Hypersonic Missile, MCM Capabilities, Realistic Tests of Weapons (Who wouldn't like to see millions of dollar blow up for the name of safeguarding nation?!??), etc
      . You get my point.


      "That is not even mentioning all the fake classes, and fake degrees (I have seen people get engineering degrees for making games that would get Steam lambasted if it published them)." You do have to provide some kinds of sources for this claim cause I would like to read more about this. The thing is that i feel like the" game" is supposed to be a proof of concept for whatever project they are doing and by definition, would not fit in any kinds of Steam environment. It certainly did contribute to the fact that these engineering degrees getting awarded but i highly doubt it's the only reason or even a major contributing factor.

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    5. "If we be real here, CS are an extremely boring degree where you went out of your way using words and numbers to create something out of a box that wasn't popular until 10 years ago."

      Your going to have to say this again. I can't quite understand what you are saying here. Either way, I can't testify to the boringness or not, however there are many people who enjoy STEM and many enjoyable fields in STEM.

      I know people with no desire to go to College, who have taken Calculus AP exams just because the enjoyed the field. I know many people who have taught themselves code just because they enjoyed.

      If you make universities a place where students are challenged by extremely demanding courses, and only the best are accepted, and lessons are relevant and not "gender studies," you will have more talented students then you know what to do with.

      If we further create design bureaus within the military, which require extremely demanding testing to enter, and are considered prestigious occupations (Similar to the German RMA designers) we would easily be able to resurrect the engineering and technological prowess we had the 40s and 50s.

      "You do have to provide some kinds of sources for this claim cause I would like to read more about this."

      I have been looking to find the source for this. I remember reading about it years ago, so it might take some time. Basically, someone for the Master's Degree made a some neo-liberal, diverse, role-breaking, and other assorted buzzwords nonsense game, with atrocious gameplay, and it was accepted.

      It wasn't like this game was experimented with some, say, new AI system. It was just a political game, and taken away from its politics it was just garbage. I will inform you if I found the source.

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    6. Well said, Master.

      Long story short, nobody ever won a competition by lowering his standards.

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    7. 2016 data showed:

      https://www.industryweek.com/talent/article/21998889/the-countries-with-the-most-stem-graduates

      Conditions are worse.

      Key problem - lawyers, etc. make more money than STEM graduates.

      In tech field, defense tech companies are not best places to work, not as good as Apple, Google, Microsoft, ... etc.

      With time progress, it is nature that Chinese military tech will surpass US if nothing changes. Trump's actions to curb H1-B can reduce foreign STEM students thus further reduce STEM graduates. While not rely on foreigners, US need to encourage smart students to study STEM.

      China's J-20, 055, DF-17, GJ-11, .... don't come from stealing US drawings but years of tech accumulations.

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  8. (Don McCollor)...Importantly, Rickover demanded that the prototype Nautilus reactor run for months to ensure reliability. Another was to have a full-scale mock-up made of the engineering sections before construction of a nuclear vessel started. Expensive, but mistakes are even more so...

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    1. Don't want to turn Rickover into a deity because the man did have some issues BUT there is one thing that is sorely missing today: accountability. Anybody would want to have been there at the time and tell Rickover that XYZ project is messed up? Not working to specs? Over budget? Need another year? Ouch....

      Today, you blow the budget, don't hit specs, need a few more year: you're promoted!!!

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  9. (Don McCollor)...Rickover had issues and faults, but generally failure was not one of them...

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  10. This question is definitely unrelated to the topic of the post but i haven't find anywhere else to ask this question.

    Do you have any recommendations for any websites or blog posts to further the understanding of the readers? Do you have any more books or videos/movies that you think is highly informative or interesting to take a look at (apart from those that you already review I mean)? Do you ever think of making a free comments post for readers to ask or bring your attention to things that you might have missed?

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    1. I do, occasionally, offer an open post session. Because it's not a regular feature, feel free to make an occasional off topic comment.

      As far as additional reading/viewing, just search 'naval blogs' and you'll find lots of sites. It just depends what, exactly, you're looking for. If there's a specific topic you're interested in, ask and I'll offer a reference, if I can. Of course, for general knowledge, there's always the library. Wiki is also good for general knowledge.

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    2. I would love if it you could provide some references for a fleet operation. To be exact, I would like to see some up-to-date information as most books are much more focused on WW2 or early Cold-War which i feel like reflects the general misunderstanding that the fleet operations are over. Are you also aware of a general overview or views from the Navy as well? Thank you in advance!

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    3. " would love if it you could provide some references for a fleet operation."

      Honestly, there has been little or nothing written about modern fleet operations. Hughes "Fleet Tactics" discusses small vessel fleet ops which is around half of what the Navy wants to do with their distributed lethality concept.

      The best source of fleet operations descriptions is WWII readings. While the technology has changed, the underlying concepts of fleet ops has not.

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  11. Test-beds can also be created as servce extensions instead of a whole new class. For example You could have taken a Ticonderoga (which the navy is always trying to retire anyway) and replaced the forward gun and some of the VLS cells with a 155mm prototype instead of building it only on the Zumwalt. It would have had less available rounds, but still testable. And when it was still too expensive to shoot, that older hull could be retired without wasting it on a new one. Ditto the power system for the Zumwalt. Then the Zumwalt would have just been a testbed for the stealth features like the extreme trumblehome but with a pair of 5" guns and more VLS instead of an unusable 155mm paperweight.
    We are retiring LA class subs before their time. Why not do as we did with the George Washington class and insert a middle section to test equipment for the new Columbia class instead of throwing it into a new hull?
    We could have tested the unreliable engines of the LCS class on a Flight 1 Burke when it came in for a FRAM or other refit. When we saw they were undependable, we could have required a new engine or bigger engine rooms for the LCS Class. With a dependable engine in place then 1/3 of the problems would have been avoided. The Flight 1's could also have mounted the proposed Modules for the LCS on the hangerless flight deck for testing as well.
    Using an older vessel for testing is even cheaper than one off builds.

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    1. Your general concept of using other ships to test portions of new equipment is spot on. Further, we can also use civilian ships to test equipment for a fraction of the price of a navy ship. For example, the LCS propulsion system could have been tested on a small civilian cargo ship which could have been obtained for pennies. Similarly, the LCS modules could have been tested on large tugboats or small cargo ships. Of course, the modules didn't (and still don't) exist so there was nothing to test but you get the idea.

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