I know I’m not the first to point this out but have we just completely abandoned corrosion control even for surfaces we can easily reach?
We can’t maintain one ship and we want to expand to 500 ships?
What is the crew doing all day? It's obviously not navigation training and I doubt it's combat training. Can't we find a little time for corrosion control?
Maybe there is an app for that?
ReplyDeleteIn any case the USS Stout looks worse overall unless that is from the news
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37094/check-out-how-rusty-and-battered-uss-stout-looks-after-spending-a-record-215-days-at-sea
"What is the crew doing all day?"
ReplyDeleteGender training?
This has been discussed a lot on other blogs. Many of the cited reasons include reduced crews, paint thats significantly inferior to older formulas, and environmental regs that make chipping and painting much more difficult. Our fleet is looking like the the ex-Soviet navy in the 90s!!
ReplyDeleteThere need to be environmental exceptions made to allow us to preserve our multi-billion dollar national defense assets!!!
I believe in reduced crew size as a key issue. I not buying the paint thing. That says the navy simply is not willing to divert funds into boring spending vs a useless rail gun. I sure you can tell me how great lead based paint is but my house is not looking like that rust bucket for lack of it.
ReplyDeleteEnvironmental regs also looks like a lame excuse. How do thay make chipping and painting more difficult. Or if they do solve the problem. Wow regulations about removing asbestos from refurbished building made my uncle's job more cumbersome, but had they been there when he started maybe he would not have died at 55.
"I believe in reduced crew size as a key issue."
DeleteAgreed, this one of those moments when you don't even need to be in combat to see how stupid the "minimal manning" fad is.
The environmental regs vary from state to state, but an example ive heard is that ships arent allowed to chip paint in San Diego, or if so must have massive efforts to ensure nothing (0%) goes into the water...ie; scaffording with tarps to contain the debris. City/state govt will sue the Navy if caught. So while obviously I dont support polluting harbors with paint chips, there has to be a happy medium. And frankly I think the military needs more exemptions from environmental and ciry/local regulations in order to do their training/maintenance.
DeleteMy ship was always kept squared away, but to be fair, a significant % of crew was deck department due to their responsibilities for running/maintaining all the UNREP gear aboard, and if they werent UNREPPing, they were chipping n painting. The joke aboard was that they painted their way around the ship, and when they got back to their starting point, that paint was barely dry before they chipped it off. I imagine combatant ships have a significantly smaller percentage of deck department personnel, and coupled with minimal manning, I can see ship preservation as nearly overwhelming. Coupled with poor paint and inability to do the work in port, the shoddy condition of the ships frankly makes sense. Its still unacceptable, and needs to be addressed. Theres no reason a ship should be embarrassing when pulling into a port....
"I sure you can tell me how great lead based paint is but my house is not looking like that rust bucket for lack of it."
DeleteI doubt your house is subject to the wind, water, and salt air that Navy ships are.
"Environmental regs also looks like a lame excuse. How do thay make chipping and painting more difficult."
I think Jjabatie's post covers one way pretty clearly.
I give you the salt water but it subject to wind, tree limbs and water and snow and cold and heat and sun. Its just I drag my ass out and paint or repair the damage.
DeleteThe Royal Navy ships coming bad from the Falklands looked pretty bad, but at least they had a reason.
DeletePainting ships and houses arent a good comparison. The paint formulations are totally different, and getting continued adhesion on steel and aluminum vs on a house where the original coats "soaked in", and successive coats always have a solid base, is an immensely different scenario...
Delete@Jjabatie
ReplyDeleteAlthough given the record of say cold war era nuclear sites that are just permanent boils on the local environment you can I think see why localities might not be willing to allow more lee way. Trust the Pentagon when it says is sure its harmless paint.
Well my thoughts on that are, that the local and state governments are seemingly telling the federal government what to do. In the case of national defense, it should be the other way around. I think that whenever possible, comply with environmental regs, but if it overtly curtails, increases cost, or makes somthing much more difficult, the regs get set aside....
DeleteNot really buying all the excuses from USN, not seeing quite the same level of corrosion on any other foreign vessels...maybe USN is patrolling more than most BUT still, seems excessive compared to other navies...LCSs look like shit even when they are brand new! A little corrosion is normal but it's just wayyy too much when it comes to USN.
ReplyDeleteBTW, we keep talking about MANNING and HIGH UP TEMPO OPS, anybody here thinks that some 18 to 20 year looks at that ship or even other USN ships that are WORSE looking and think, oh yeah, I want to sign up to be gone at sea for most of the year and spend my time in a rust bucket?!?!?
HELLOOOOO USN? Anybody home!?!?
But..... how about gender training, sir? Everyone would join up if the military is diversified right?
DeleteWait the second, if it's going up, why is the Navy complaining about a lack of recruits? I feel like it doesn't correlate or maybe it's not working. Hmm, well we should leave this issue to the industry and contractors because they know best, right?
It's a lot of things. Ship maintenance is done by contractors, so budget cuts mean that the crew pulls maintenance instead in port. That means the crew isn't training, and they're too tired to absorb what training they do get. Sailors aren't properly trained when posted to a ship, either. New crew members don't get the training and guidance that they should because the senior crew are busy doing maintenance instead.
ReplyDeleteEven with the crew working overtime, they don't get everything fixed before the deployment date. The deployment is sacrosanct - a captain will be fired for missing the deployment by ten minutes but will be commended for taking out a rusty destroyer with no working surface search radar while short crewed.
The crew is too small by far. An Arleigh Burke can handle up to 320 or more, but they're deploying with about 280. That shortfall ends up on corrosion control, among other things.
The Navy has bridge crews that don't know how to navigate civilian shipping lanes. What little time isn't spent frantically flailing away at the job of pushing the boat through the water should get spent on crucial training. Money and time for cosmetics are going to come in dead last.
The Navy cannot address these problems. Every captain, squadron commander, fleet commander, and higher has gone on the record stating that: 1) the US Navy is the best trained in the world, 2) the ships are in good material condition to meet their deployments, and 3) their manpower is entirely sufficient to meet the tasks at hand.
An honest CO would state that his destroyer is not in sufficient material condition to deploy, his crew is not properly trained to operate it even if it was in good condition, and there aren't enough sailors assigned to operate it even if the ship was up to specs and the crew trained. That captain would be immediately cashiered. No officer dares to speak the truth and until they do the Navy will continue to spiral downward.
But how does USCG manage it. I was able to find a few pictures of NS cutter that did 180 days in the pacific. It had some drip rust lines around the anchors but it was otherwise pretty tidy white and red.
DeleteIts not like their budget is better than the USN, is simply they are not cutting crew levels?
On a long deployment I can see see hull side degradation, but the top side rust of the Stout seems to really suggest real problems.
The USCG is part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the DoD. Their maintenance budget wasn't brutalized by sequestration. Their cutters don't need stealth or fancy electronics or high end weapons so there's nothing to get with their savings.
DeleteThe Coast Guard isn't undermanned or lacking in training, either.
The USCG has a coherent strategy and training and ships to meet that strategy.
The biggest issue, though, is that the Coast Guard isn't universally dishonest about their readiness.
"The USCG is part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the DoD."
DeleteWhen I have a chance, I plan to learn more about the USCG and their place (if any) in a future war. I read about them being deployed around the World. I guess that this is for law enforcement, then.
Fortunately, the Navy has a solution to this problem. As CNO has put it, the Navy cannot "resist the temptation to gold plate them."
ReplyDeleteYou know, gold doesn't rust. That's why those ships cost so much! BRILLIANT!
The actual Navy solution has been to not bother with maintenance, allow the ships to deteriorate, retire them early, and then ask Congress for money to buy new ships.
Delete"The actual Navy solution has been to not bother with maintenance, allow the ships to deteriorate, retire them early, and then ask Congress for money to buy new ships."
DeleteThat is, of course, ridiculous. As you know, there are also other ways to reduce rusting beyond just paint. For example, do you know if our ships contain galvanic anodes? Heck, I put a new one in my swamp cooler (this is N.M.) every few years, it is nearly 20 years old and not a speck of rust!
"You know, gold doesn't rust."
DeleteThat's the kind of idea you could become an Admiral with, you know.
ComNavOps, that is because new ships are "sexy" to Congress, not maintaining what we have.
DeleteI have been involved in the US Navy ship repair world for the last 10 years and had over 6 years of sea time as a Marine Officer before that. One thing I have seen change is the attitude of the average sailor and the Navy in general. Sailors are no longer "maintainers" they are "operators" and will tell you as much. It is not unheard of to send a "fly away" team to a ship in mid deployment to do repairs. Sailors maintain just enough to keep it together until the contractors can come aboard and make the over priced full repairs.
Well thay could go with bronze the green patina bronze is technically not a rust and looks cool.
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember back in the old days, weather permitting, ships returning home would run fast and get a few hours ahead of track, then use the time to lay to the day before entering port and spiff everything up.
ReplyDeleteThat was SOP on mine...!!!
DeleteI collect military books, what a surprise, anyways, said it before, saying it again, its shocking to see the paint and the condition of EVEN ANG and Reserve jets in the 80s that you see in the books. Even old Phantoms looked great. Navy ships looked sharp even if they were old....we spend over $700 billion and gear looks like shit. There's no pride. Its the top leadership that don't care and don't set the example. All the other stuff is just pathetic excuses.
ReplyDeleteBased on 360M square feet of paintable surface for a Nimitz CVN, and a light ring gold flash thickness of 2 microns, I estimate it would cost USD 2 Billion to gold plate the exterior/interior of a Nimitz CVN for the gold alone. As this is rather less than the extra expense of the Ford Class compared to the Nimitz Class, I believe we need a different metaphor to "gold-plating", as our ships now cost far more than mere gold-plating.
ReplyDelete"Germany refuses to turn a 'blind eye' to China, teams up with Australia" - https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/germany-refuses-to-turn-a-blind-eye-to-china-teams-up-with-australia-20201102-p56apf.html.
ReplyDelete"
November 2, 2020 — 5.05pm
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German officers are expected to be deployed with the Australian Navy and a German frigate will patrol the Indian Ocean under Berlin's plan to manage China's influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the German Defence Minister, said the Indo-Pacific had become crucial to the world’s well-being.
"We believe that Germany needs to mark its position in the region," she said."
President Xi is doing so well the Germans are coming back to the Pacific after 100 years when we rolled up their bases in WW1.
hahaha. I have to laugh. The present day Bundeswehr has, with only the tiniest degree of irony, been described as a mildly aggressive camping organization.
ReplyDeleteLet's not expect too much help from our German 'allies' if ever the going gets tough.
Pretending to be grateful to us for having defeated them in two world wars is seriously taxing even Germany's talent for hypocrisy.
Some research in the 1990's looked at using stainless steel and unidirectional framing of ship hulls. The resulting designs were lower cost than conventional construction.
ReplyDeletePage 29 of the first link shows the cost of the steel in a DDG-51 to be $11.6 million and the cost for a stainless steel hull to be $39.6 million. $30 million per destroyer would seem to be a small price to pay considering the stainless steel hull has additional benefits in signal reduction.
MLW
Stainless Steel Advanced Double Hull
Advanced Double Hull
http://www.shipstructure.org/Keynote_Beach.pdf
https://p2infohouse.org/ref/32/31635.pdf
That is a fascinating bit of information. I'm not a mechanical engineer so I can't evaluate it. Any idea why the Navy has not pursued it?
DeleteAre there any examples of commercial ships built with stainless steel?
Stainless Steel is used in chemical tankers but only for the tanks not the hull. So there is some use in the commercial shipbuilding but to a limited extent.
DeleteThere have been one-off ships that have been constructed from Stainless steel but I am unaware of any production runs of Stainless steel vessels.
Welding Stainless steel has some extra regulatory standards dealing with the chromium fumes created and the need to protect the welders. They are fairly easy to deal with and a good fabricator should protect the welder from fumes regardless if they are welding steel or stainless steel.
"Any idea why the Navy has not pursued it?"
That really is the Billion dollar question or rather the Three billion dollar per year question. My cynical side thinks that the shipyards don't want ships that don't require extensive refit and repair due to corrosion to cut in to that profit stream. More likely it was just inertia that prevented adoption.
P16 patrol boat
Some additional information about stainless steel in shipbuilding.
ReplyDeleteUse of Stainless steel in shipbuilding
Because it's non-magnetic, we had a class of sweeps with stainless steel diesels. Building a ship of stainless steel would have the advantage of reducing significantly its magnetic signature.
DeleteWhile not specific to the OP I was wondering if anyone can confirm the following?
ReplyDeletehttps://eurasiantimes.com/faulty-chinese-military-hardware-is-paving-way-for-india-to-emerge-as-a-global-weapons-exporter/