ComNavOps has long stated that the Navy is building its ships weaker and weaker with each succeeding ship class.
The Burkes, our top of the line, front line combat vessel, for example, required strengthening strakes to deal with normal sailing conditions.
The Freedom class LCS had its flight deck weakened as a cost savings measure early in the design and construction process.
The Freedom class LCS suffers from excessive vibration due to insufficient structural strength which has led to Mk 110 (57 mm) gun accuracy issues.
The latest example is a Navy Times report that Independence class ships are suffering structural cracking which is forcing them to adopt restricted operating envelopes.[2] From the USS Omaha Temporary Standing Order Number 073,
NAVSEA assessed LCS 4-28 have under-designed structural defects at FR 35, 36, and 46. Metal fatigue is assessed to be caused from stresses in the lateral and vertical plane. To limit crack propagation; speed and sea state restrictions are imposed.
Ship operations restricted to 15 kts in Sea State (SS) 4 (max significant wave height 2.5 m/8.2 ft, avoiding bow and beam seas as far as practicable. … No operation in SS 5 or greater.[1,2]
Those are some pretty severe restrictions and negate the ship’s usefulness as a warship … to the extent that it had any to begin with.
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| Hull Cracks From Normal Sailing |
The ship’s crew have been instructed to monitor crack growth daily when sailing.
The Navy has been steadily and unwisely weakening the structural strength of its ships, presumably as an ill-advised cost savings measure. Of course, the use of aluminum doesn't help matters. These kinds of measures always come back to bite the Navy in the butt.
There has been a mini-flurry of LCS problem admissions recently and the extent of the LCS problems is surprising even me. This was truly a disaster of a program. The fact of the matter, however, is that all the problems were self-inflicted by the Navy so there is no sympathy to be had.
Bear in mind that the Navy has announced that they are going to retire, essentially, the entire Freedom class, keeping the Independence variant. However, it’s the Independence variant that is showing this class wide cracking problem and that will be forced to operate under severe limitations. Is keeping a known crippled ship class really a wise decision?
The LCS main strength and most important characteristic [3], arguably, was its speed. The entire ship was built around that single requirement. Now, the class is limited to slow speed and mild seas. The entire rationale for the ship’s design is now invalidated … if it wasn’t already.
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[1]USS Omaha (LCS 12) Temporary Standing Order Number 073, 8-Jul-2021
[2]Navy Times, “The littoral combat ship’s latest problem: Class-wide structural defects leading to hull cracks”, Geoff Ziezulewicz, 10-May-2022,
[3]The other characteristic that could be argued to have been the main design feature was the module swapping ability. Of course, that has long since been found unworkable and has been abandoned.
The Ticos also had tremendous cracking problems, with the lead ship being the worst in this regard. I don't recall whether the Spru-Cans suffered similarly - they're built on the same hull but are a thousand tons lighter.
ReplyDeleteBoth the Spruance and Tico class incorporated an aluminum superstructure which proved quite problematic in the Tico class in terms of cracking of the superstructure. Presumably, the Spruance class had similar problems although I have no documentation of that.
DeleteThe Spruances did suffer from superstructure cracking. In the early years the most severe were in the intakes for the forward main engines. Not aware if cracks developed in other areas of the superstructure. The ships did not have expansion joints in their superstructure.
DeleteThe Cruiser Pittsburg lost it bow in that typhoon in 45. Some problems get found and get fixed. Some of this may less be related to strengthening and more in designing in points of failure. Slimming up the front of LCS-2 bow really created a pressure point by design the commercial vessel did not have. These architectural basics are why I still have a 25 gram toothpick bridge that can span 7 inches and can hold 18 bricks and the steel bucket to put them in. More practical example, the open walkway on the main deck forward of the hangar on the OPCs. Lets the ship flex by design.
ReplyDeleteThe bow of the Pittsburgh stayed afloat, and was nicknamed the USS McKeesport (Pittsburgh suburb).
DeleteI have never been a fan of open exterior walkways. Seem to waste a lot of space. But you have supplied a reason for them.
"Lets the ship flex by design."
DeleteI'm not a ship designer. Perhaps you can educate me. Why would an open walkway allow flexing as opposed to a covered walkway or other structure?
As a tech writer I wrote work specifications for the LCS2 variant. The hull cracking issues are not in the bow as the OP suggests, they are in the AMAHs (the outriggers). During my time as a writer and lead writer for this class vessels, fully 60% of the work we churned out was for crack repairs to the AMAHs. Interesting that the Navy has told the crews to check the cracking daily. The AMAHs on these are air tight voids that can only be accessed by removing bolt on accesses.
DeleteBased on what the article says, could it be that there is an additional set of systemic cracks located other than the outriggers?
DeleteThe article mentions specific frames but I don't have a LCS framing document to reference. The frame numbers suggest a location amidships or aft.
On the other hand, the article specific mentions the bow.
Perhaps the vessels are riddled with cracks?
"I'm not a ship designer. Perhaps you can educate me. Why would an open walkway allow flexing as opposed to a covered walkway or other structure?"
DeleteThe steel hull wull bend and flex while the aluminum deck house won't in the same way. Breaking that aluminum portion in 2 reduces the overall flex on the aluminum portions. Plus alleviates effects of general sagging and hogging as the loading of the ship changes.
So, you're talking about the case of an aluminum superstructure on a steel hull? I get that if the entire superstructure were divided into one foot, unconnected segments, there probably wouldn't be any cracking. This would hold true for any material, of course, with some being more 'bendable/flexible' than others. Expansion joints fill a similar purpose on large, flat runs such as carrier flight decks.
DeleteThis also makes one question the wisdom of the current trend towards massive, all-encompassing superstructures such as on Zumwalt and LCS.
Zumwalt's suppperstructure is smaller relative to the hull compared to most. Obviously due to the beam and hull form, but even by length. It's also shorter and really just another hunk of the hull until the composite portion.
DeleteOut of curiosity, eyeballing scaled drawings gives the following superstructure (ss) length and percentage of total hull length data:
DeleteZumwalt length = 60 m, 34%
Freedom length = 55 m, 47%
Independence length = 38 m, 29%
Burke length = 65 m (39 m + 26 m), 40 %
Notably, the Burke ss is segmented into two separate portions, as indicated.
The Zumwalt ss is the longest continuous length and middle of the pack for relative length.
The Independence, at 128 m overall length, and being entirely aluminum, would seem to be far and away the worst case for continuous aluminum structure as regards bending and flexing. That being the case, one would expect cracking to occur throughout the length of the ship, concentrated wherever high stress points occur.
Freedom vessels, with long aluminum ss are also documented to suffer from cracking. As I understand it, the cracks are in both the hull and ss.
I don't know whether the Heritage class OPC is constructed of steel, aluminum, or a combination. Any idea?
All of this reinforces the fact that the Navy is building ships weaker with every succeeding class, apparently as a misguided and foolish attempt at cost savings.
OPC hull is steel and deck house aluminum. You can see it coming together on Eastern's twitter feed. Coast Guard even spelled out the desire for this in their RFP.
DeleteHow much of this may be part of the designs need not worry anymore with much armor belting? It seems a good part of the poor designs seem to coincide with not being worried (comparatively to pre-70's) with getting hit and surviving, more weapons will instead try to be beaten prior to hitting the ship. Once it was decided it was more to decoy being hit, it seems bad design has crept up and gotten worse with many progressive designs.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that the need for strongly constructed ships can be overstated.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just armor, it's the strength of the hull, deck, bulkheads, transverse bulkheads, etc, etc, etc...
This is not just to minimize damage and increase ship survival when taking missile shots from enemy ships. If we're going to contest the South China Sea I would expect contact between US Navy and PLAN ships.
If you're going to be playing bumper boats like that you need to have stout ships.
Lutefisk
Exactly. There may be a use for an aluminum ship, but less so likely gray zone actions / bumper boats.
DeleteYou can add the Perry's to the list, the ships had a major problem as the aluminum superstructure from the bridge to the rear of the hanger acted as the upper flange of the 'stressed main beam' as part of the main longitudinal structural system.
ReplyDeleteIt was not designed to take the loads and it stress relieved itself by cracking, additional heavy plates had to be welded to hull to correct the problem.
I've wondered if they never put the Zumwalt's on the high seas because of fears one would crack open.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, Zumwalt operated around Alaska for a short period and then sailed to Pearl Harbor for combat system outfitting and tests.
DeleteHow's the plywood superstructure holding up, anyway?
Delete"How's the plywood superstructure holding up, anyway?"
DeleteMakes you wonder if HE and incendiary will make a comeback...(??)
What has always struck me as particularly stupid is calling the ships "Littoral" Combat Ships, but giving them essentially zero capability to contribute anything worthwhile to the littoral combat effort (if that is in fact a necessary role, which is another issue).
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that to be of use in the littoral areas, there are three essential capabilities required:
- NGFS -- not going to work with a 57mm popgun.
- Shallow-water ASW -- engines are too noisy
- MCM -- the module has never worked, and take is from an old minesweeper sailor, that was a stupid idea to begin with
The MCM platform needs to be a dedicated ship (or two, one sweeper and one hunter). There are just too many things that are unique to the MCM mission to strap it onto another ship. The NGFS and ASW ship could be a single ship, along the lines of a WWII destroyer, but in keeping with ComNavOps's KISS principle, two separate smaller and simpler ships are probably better.
As for the LCS's supposed capabilities:
- Speed is not speed if you can't run fast without tearing up the hull. Moreover, littoral implies a lot of restricted waterways, and you don't go running around at 45 knots in a restricted channel. The last place you want to be doing 45 knots, or even 35 or 25, is anywhere near a mine field.
- Modular capabilities don't work if the modules don't work, and so far the LCS's haven't.
Re-engine them with simple, reliable diesels that will give you 25 knots or so, get rid of all the Rube Goldberg combining gears, give them to the Coast Guard as cutters, and go on down the road. To replace them:
- Build a bunch of ASW frigates,
- Turn the Constellations back into GP escorts like the original FREMMs instead of cheap AEGIS platforms,
- Build a set of new and larger AEGIS cruisers like ComNavOps's independent cruiser, with 8 inch guns an a large UAV/USV/UUV capability, and
- To the extent that you need a littoral capability, build some ASW corvettes, some gun and missile land attack patrol boats, and an MCM fleet consisting of drone/helo sweep mother ships (capable or launching ComNavOps's "wild walrus" UUVs that can destroy mines and anything else on the bottom) and minehunters.
"...larger AEGIS cruisers like ComNavOps's independent cruiser..."
DeleteYES to a new Aegis cruiser!
YES to an 8in gun cruiser!
But not on the same ship. Guns and anything AEGIS are waaaay different missions, so we'd get another multi-purpose, multi-zillion dollar, sub-optimized platform.
"Ill take: stealthy Aegis cruiser and a DesMoines restart for a hundred, Alex"
I'm sure you already know most of this, but I think the reason the obvious issues with the ASW and MCM missions you mentioned were ignored early on in development is because the LCSs weren't intended to do either of these things directly - the original concepts for both the ASW module and the MCM module had the LCS acting purely as a mothership, operating several unmanned platforms while itself staying at standoff distance.
DeleteNow for ASW this is obviously not realistic even if the original ASW module concept hadn't been a dumpster fire - the sub will hear a very loud surface ship at extreme distance as it crosses through a range where there is a convergence zone even if the sub is going too fast to have its towed array out, and will immediately conduct maneuvers for passive TMA and kill the Loud Crappy Ship(s) with either missiles or torps before it even knows where to deploy its ASW assets - but for MCM this approach doesn't seem obviously ridiculous. There were two problems that killed the LCS "standoff MCM" concept:
1) The unmanned systems (both influence/sweep and 'hunter' systems) that were the core of this concept didn't work.
2) The Navy went ahead with purchases despite not having done adequate testing to learn #1.
This left them in the untenable position of trying to turn either the Freedom or the Independence class into a bad copy of the Avenger class, which obviously didn't work out either despite the billions of good money thrown after bad in the attempt.
"Guns and anything AEGIS are waaaay different missions"
DeleteActually, they're not; at least not in this instance. The Independent cruiser's mission is strike operations without a carrier's presence. To accomplish that, the cruiser needs to survive, hence, the Aegis AAW. The AAW ENABLES the primary strike mission. They're not two different missions.
An independent cruiser would operate in a surface group with the Burkes providing the bulk of the AAW. The majority of the cruiser's VLS would be dedicated to Tomahawk cruise missiles with the remainder consisting of mainly quad-packed ESSM to deal with whatever incoming missiles the Burkes miss.
"the LCSs weren't intended to do either of these things directly - the original concepts for both the ASW module and the MCM module had the LCS acting purely as a mothership, operating several unmanned platforms while itself staying at standoff distance."
DeleteFor those who believe in modularity, this shouldn't matter. A module is a module and can be inserted into any host vessel and work perfectly. If the original module failed, the solution would be to simply develop another module - and the Navy tried exactly this and failed yet again.
As ComNavOps stated repeatedly - and the Navy came to eventually discover - a module, alone, is insufficient to achieve an optimized function set. The host vessel MUST be fully integrated from day one to the required function. The Navy failed to recognize this until just now (if they even do now) and they're realizing that they have a ship that is not actually capable of any effective function despite the module's abilities (or lack thereof) because the vessel can't be integrated with the module.
As an analogy, you can't put a race car engine into a pickup truck and expect to win races. The body of the vehicle has to be fully integrated with the engine to make an effective race car. This is such a simple and basic concept and yet so many people fail to recognize it and continue to believe that modules will work. By definition, they CAN'T !
"The host vessel MUST be fully integrated from day one to the required function."
DeleteWhich is why the LCS can never be a good MCM platform. There's just too much about it that cannot be fully integrated into the MCM mission.
This is not really related to mission-specific considerations, but maybe this will give you a quick and dirty idea of how different MCM ships are. Say the cooks want to open a can of tomatoes for dinner. They open the can, dump the tomatoes out, then wash the can and put it back on the shelf where they got it from. Why? Because the degaussing is set up for that can to be in that place. As I say, that's not really dealing with a mission capability, but it does give some insight into the precautions that must be taken any time you are near a minefield. Now obviously if you are not going to take the mother ship anywhere near the minefield, then maybe you don't need that. But one other thing about mines, those pesky little suckers have a bad habit of not ending up exactly where they were supposed to. So close enough to control drone operations, puts the mother ship in danger of mines.
"The AAW ENABLES the primary strike mission. They're not two different missions."
ReplyDeleteIts been a while since I reveiwed your fleet structure page, so I thought the Aegis/gun combo cruiser was CdrChips... So, while I see what youre saying about ENABLING the mission, doesnt kind of contradict the push for simpler, single purpose ships??? If a cruiser is the centerpiece of a SAG, and we are worried about its survival, then shouldnt we just send more Burkes with it, as many as necessasary?? I understand a very heavy ciws fit, maybe even the appropriate CIC/ link systems and accomodations for flagship/ an AAW commander, but does it also need Aegis??
While I firmly advocate smaller, single purpose ships there is a place for larger, more powerful ships and an independent cruiser is an example of that. Without some of these types of powerful 'backbone' ships, we'd have nothing but a fleet of combat canoes.
DeleteThe cruiser provides concentrated firepower (mainly strike missiles and larger caliber naval guns), survivability (armor and weapons), command and control, and a more extensive sensor fit (higher radars, added EO/IR). This ship will, by definition, operate in harm's way and requires robust self-defense (hence, Aegis/AMDR/whatever our latest radar fit is). If we could absolutely guarantee that there would always be a bunch of escorting Burkes than a robust self-defense would not be needed but, in combat, that's not the case. There will, unfortunately, be moments when the cruiser's escorts are lacking or overwhelmed and a robust self-defense is required, especially for a high end, expensive ship like this.
WWII battleships, despite operating with destroyer escorts, still mounted an incredibly large anti-aircraft weapons fit. This is the same concept albeit on a somewhat reduced scale.
If you're going to build large, expensive ships then you want to give them as much protection and self-defense as possible. Of course, being single function (strike), they are not tasked with area air defense but they are 'tasked' with robust self-defense!
"Its been a while since I reveiwed your fleet structure page, so I thought the Aegis/gun combo cruiser was CdrChips."
DeleteCDR Chip got his idea for this one from ComNavOps.
I have had it with Defense Contractors touting all of their CAD capability so that they can rush through the design phase and produce these kinds of weak designs. And shame on the Navy for not holding their feet to the fire for quality designs. Obviously the Navy has no one with experience enough to review these designs. After all of these years of sailing in all kinds of seas how can there not be a good understanding, and modelling, of the stresses that a ship hull will encounter? During the Munson Road test vehicles are instrumented to know what stresses are encountered. Navy take one of these early retirees and instrument it and drive it (or tow it if an LCS) through some seas and figure this out.
ReplyDeleteNO LCS contractor should be allowed to have ANY fee on these ships. Take everything back until only their costs are covered. Would we accept a car that cracks when driven on normal roads? Hell they drive on back country rutted dirt roads (and bottoming out sometimes) and don't crack.
Garbage in Garbage out and don't let it pile up and stop the flow of money.
"I have had it with Defense Contractors touting all of their CAD capability"
DeleteExcellent comment.
Every program for the last few decades has touted CAD as a miracle that will provide perfect ships and aircraft at almost no cost (a little hyperbole there) and yet every program seems worse than the one before it. There's a direct correlation between the use of CAD and the increasing failure of the products. Correlation is not necessarily causation but could there be a causative link? Is the use of CAD leading us to forego testing, cut design steps that would reveal problems, overestimate the 'strength' of designs, etc.? Hmm ....
"I have had it with Defense Contractors touting all of their CAD capability so that they can rush through the design phase and produce these kinds of weak designs. And shame on the Navy for not holding their feet to the fire for quality designs. Obviously the Navy has no one with experience enough to review these designs. After all of these years of sailing in all kinds of seas how can there not be a good understanding, and modelling, of the stresses that a ship hull will encounter?"
DeleteThe USN is going to have to cultivate a group of officers who can provide the necessary input. ComNavOps has not liked it when I suggested before, perhaps because I have not explained it fully and that because it is very difficult to describe fully any concept with a 4000-character limitation, but this is one area where I think we could borrow an idea from the Royal Navy.
Basically, the RN separates what the USN calls line officers into two career paths--weapons/deck and engineering, the latter divided further between propulsion, weapons/electronics, and air systems engineering. Engineering officers are responsible for running the ship, and weapons/deck officers are responsible for fighting the ship. Only weapons/deck officers are eligible for command at sea, and engineering officers go to senior shore jobs instead of command at sea. Had this system been in effect when I was on. active duty, I would probably have gone the weapons/electronics systems engineering route.
At any rate, the engineering officers are not just guys who stand main propulsion watches. They receive extensive training in their area of engineering, and their career is a combination of shipboard engineering in their specialty area, shore-based support jobs again in their specialty area, and formal education leading to advanced degrees in their speciality area. By the time an engineering officer reaches captain, he/she is very likely to have a PhD in marine engineering to go with a large amount of practical experience from seagoing and support jobs. Senior officers with this background could run design bureaus and serve on something like a revised BuShips. There would, of course, need to be a significant number of civilian naval architects and engineers staffing those organizations as well, but having actual experience represented at a high level would seem to be useful in avoiding some of the recent disasters.
It's only a concept, I haven't fleshed out all the details, but I do think it is worthy of consideration.
Who can you trust, who has the necessary experience and expertize, BuShips long gone, Cox & Gibbs were the naval architects for the Burke but more recently responsible for the disaster the that is the LCS Freedom class.
DeleteWhat are the options, is the situation so dire need to look abroad to Asia to one of the big shipbuilding nations, Korea and Japan, eg Hyundai Heavy Industries who currently building the Aegis KDX-III Batch II destroyers or maybe Japan's Mitsuibishi Heavy Industries etc, in Europe Damen have a good track record and won the contract for the design of the new German F126, Fincantieri also have an enviable record of building navy and cruise ships.
The flaw in this concept is that it's simply not workable due to career time constraints. A civilian naval design engineer spends years getting a Ph.D in the field followed by years doing grunt design work with slowly increasing responsibility, culminating in supervisory responsibilities where the person can actually design a ship (or supervise the project). It's an entire career ! It's not a tenth of a career with the rest spent sailing around the world or doing Navy joint shore foreign swap cross-training or whatever God-forsaken task the Navy would impose for a tour. Sure, actual shipboard experience is great FOR A SHIPBOARD ENGINEER but it's of only marginal usefulness when designing an entire ship. Yes, it would provide some insight into certain mechanical aspects of ship equipment and design but it would do nothing for understanding radar performance (another stand alone Ph.D requirement !), tactical combat requirements, sensors performance, nuclear power system design (another Ph.D task), electronics, fiber optics, computers, programming, etc. It would simply be a waste of time as far as building a naval ship design career path.
DeleteA person cannot do two careers simultaneously. It's that simple.
Now, reviving BuShips is well worthwhile and if we were to funnel people into that job at an early age and leave them there for their career, that would perhaps be workable. Even then, I have some doubts whether a modern BuShips person would be competent to design a ship as in the original BuShips days. The advent of computers, advanced sensors, sophisticated programming, modern electronics, electromagnetic spectrum combat requirements, etc. may have rendered the Navy sailor/engineer incapable of mastering enough disciplines to successfully design a ship today.
What a modern BuShips would do for us is provide a core of people who are at least capable of evaluating ship designs, if not capable of actually doing the design.
What would make more sense is to re-establish BuShips using civilian ship designers working under naval supervisors who don't rotate out but are permanently assigned to BuShips.
You cannot adeqautely review a design unless you are an experienced engineer that has designed things. Otherwise you can only look at the principals and make sure the 2nd law of Thermo is not violated. Unless an engineering officer works as a hobby on designing ship hulls, there is no way he can understand the static and dynamic calculations that have to be performed. Also remember that he has to know the CAD tool to be sure thtat the correct parameters are loaded in. Anyone can make a design look good in a simulation.
DeleteI am not throwing rocks at Engineering officers. I am a EE and when I did acquisition I could understand the principals and engineer the system, but I hired practising EEs &SWEngs to look at the detailed design of the boxes, cards and code.
A ressurected BuShips would have to have the experienced Civilian employees that a Engineering officer can draw on within the new ship's operational concept. An engineering officer can be a great system engineer or even the PM, but few and far in between are the ones that can do detailed design engineering.
Remember also that the Political Hacks running these programs don't want to hear things that cause the money and promotions to get sidelined so you have to KNOW from experience that something will not work, or is risky, to be able to battle them.
" It's not a tenth of a career with the rest spent sailing around the world or doing Navy joint shore foreign swap cross-training or whatever God-forsaken task the Navy would impose for a tour."
DeleteAnd that's not even remotely close to what I am proposing.
Responses to my post are discussing a number of things that I don’t have in mind, so let me try again to explain my idea. In return, I would appreciate it if responders would 1) reply to what I actually write, rather than building straw men around things I am not suggesting, and 2) come up with alternative ideas to compare.
DeleteI'm talking about a career path that would be designed to place JOs and department heads with more specific training and responsibility, and to prepare the senior officer to do things like commanding ship construction, repair, and maintenance facilities or staffing BuShips, all to address weaknesses that I see in the current approach—ship operating errors. maintenance backlogs, and FUBAR designs. I'm not naive enough to believe this is a total solution, but I do think it could help.
Over 20 years a typical engineering officer career would include shipboard tours as division officer, department head, and chief engineer, with shore tours including picking up MS and PhD degrees in related engineering fields, plus working in design bureaus and ship building/repair/maintenance commands. Upon reaching captain at 20 years, the officer would have something like 6 years at sea, 6 years picking up MS and PhD, and 8 years of hands-on design/construction/maintenance. You mentioned nukes, conceptually this could be thought of as an attempt to emulate nuke levels of expertise and focus across the engineering spectrum.
That officer wouldn't be the only kind of person in BuShips. It would have a full complement of civilian engineers and marine architects. It would just have senior naval officers with career paths like the one laid out above who would not necessarily do actual design work but would be use their experience to keep us from building more Fords and LCSs and Zumwalts. I would like to think that anybody who served a JO tour on a tin can would know that engine noise is an absolute no-no for any ASW platform.
Also, there seems to be this idea that you go from MPA to designing ships. The RN definition of engineer is much broader and includes weapons/electronics and aviation systems officers. So it's not just snipes but it also includes those other areas, and you would be producing senior officers with similar credentials in each of those areas.
There are some questions for which I don't know the answers. One would be with respect to weapons systems, how far does the responsibility of the weapons/engineering types go, and when do the cannon cockers take over. And I don't know exactly where the DCA fits in that structure but would want that area to get more attention than it does now. I'm sure the Brits have some problems with their approach that I don't know, and we would also have to evaluate and address those.
It's just an idea, not a concept that is fully fleshed out for implementation. It is intended to provide a way to provide an officer pipeline for something like BuShips or heading up ship building. repair, and maintenance activities, while also to providing ship crews with more expertise at the JO/department head level. This is an attempt to provide shipboard officers who are both better at operating and maintaining shipboard systems and better watch standers by separating the two paths and providing greater focus on each.
Based upon recent failures, the USN generalist approach to line officers does not appear to be providing the necessary officer expertise at either the shipboard or high command levels. Without something like this, how do we develop people to serve on BuShips? What alternatives are there? This is one that works or at least seems to. The Brits have had some shipbuilding errors, to be fair, but theirs seem to resolve mostly around lack of funding, and they seem to do a pretty good job of cobbling their way around some absurd political decisions.
"the USN generalist approach to line officers does not appear to be providing the necessary officer expertise at either the shipboard or high command levels."
DeleteYou're failing to recognize WHY the Navy approach is failing. It's not because the career path doesn't split. It's because the career path emphasizes everything EXCEPT sea duty and naval combat. As we've documented in this blog, ship captains and admirals have an appallingly brief amount of time at sea and in command. As one example, the much hyped first captain of the Zumwalt NEVER WENT TO SEA DURING HIS MAJOR COMMAND TOUR and he became a carrier group admiral WITH NO CARRIER EXPERIENCE. He simply had no significant sea time and even less combat training. It wasn't that his career path did or did not split, it was that he spent most of his career ashore doing staff work, exchange tours, joint assignments, foreign relations, or whatever other busy work the Navy assigns people to.
I would note that the engineers on the original Zumwalt crew never put to sea, either. What experience did they get out of it? It's not the split/no-split, it's the prioritization of shore make-work tours over sea and combat.
We're seeing more and more ships sitting idled for months and years waiting for maintenance which means less and less sea/combat time for the crews, officers and engineers alike.
Another example ... the captain of the Aegis cruiser Port Royal that ran aground hadn't been to sea in five years prior to the incident. That's not because his path split or didn't split. That's incorrect prioritization of shore busy work over sea/combat.
Again, note that all of the same applies to engineers. You can split the career paths but the engineers are still going to wind up doing 70-80% shore busy work instead of sea experience.
We don't even let our engineers do engineering anymore! The LCS engineers (are there any?) can't do maintenance and repairs. That's left for the shore contractors. The same applies to other ship classes to greater or lesser degrees. The Zumwalt is minimally manned. I'm guessing that leaves precious little time for the engineers to do any learning about anything other than just keeping the engines running. They'll leave the maintenance and repairs for shore contractors. They certainly aren't studying radars, electronics, computers, programming, sensors, electromagnetic spectrum applications, etc.
"at 20 years"
You just stated the problem with your approach! At 20 years, your example person would have only 8 years relevant design experience by your own calculation and, let's be honest, most of that 8 years ashore would be spent doing typical worthless Navy shore busy work not hands on design work. Realistically, the person would be luck to have a couple years of design experience.
In contrast, a civilian designer at 20 years would have 20 years of actual design experience at a design firm..
It's just not possible to pursue two separate careers: a sea/navy career and a civilian design career. You'll be like a Perry FFG: okay at multiple things and good at none.
"who would not necessarily do actual design work but would be use their experience to keep us from building more Fords and LCSs and Zumwalts."
You appear to have changed your tune on this. You originally called for this dual path to produce ship designers. Now you appear to want to produce semi-knowledgeable overseers. That's quite a step down! That's also a much more realistic and, potentially, achievable goal.
However, if all you want is a semi-knowledgeable overseer, you don't need a dedicated engineer, split path person. Anyone with a tiny bit of knowledge and a bit of common sense can fill that position. I (and others!) have pointed out all the problems with Navy designs without the benefit of a 20 year, split career path.
"Cox & Gibbs were the naval architects for the Burke but more recently responsible for the disaster the that is the LCS Freedom class."
DeleteLet's be fair and honest. G&C did not specify the ship concept, the requirements, the lack of mission focus, the lack of CONOPS, the use of non-existent modules, and the endless change orders issue by the Navy. Those were all 100% the Navy's doing. G&C designed what they were given and presumably did so at least semi-competently.
The lack of bridge wings was a Navy order.
The lack of galvanic corrosion protection was a Navy order.
The idiotic speed requirement was a Navy order.
The minimal manning that led to untrained operators was a Navy order.
The weakening of structure was a Navy cost saving order.
The criminally minimal weight and metacentric height reserves (in violation of Navy standards) was a Navy order.
And so on.
I honestly can't lay any known LCS defect at the feet of the naval architects. It was the Navy that screwed up the LCS and every other ship class.
"Responses to my post"
DeleteThis is a common complaint of yours. At some point, you have to ask yourself if every responder is wrong or if you are the problem? Maybe it's you that is failing to convey what you think you are? There's a common denominator ...
"This is a common complaint of yours. At some point, you have to ask yourself if every responder is wrong or if you are the problem? Maybe it's you that is failing to convey what you think you are? There's a common denominator ..."
DeleteThe common denominator that I see is that the arguments being raised to counter my proposals are often based upon things that I did not say. I think one problem was considering it from the USN concept of what an engineering officer is, whereas I was thinking more along Royal Navy lines.
"You appear to have changed your tune on this. You originally called for this dual path to produce ship designers. Now you appear to want to produce semi-knowledgeable overseers."
No, I didn't. Nothing changed. I just think you read it more carefully this time.
I think the first time I mentioned this, it was treated kind of as a go from MPA to designing ships. It was never that. It was always based on the concept that some sea time (probably about 6 years out of 20) plus advanced education (MS and PhD in naval architecture or marine engineering) plus some shore-based ship design, construction, and/or maintenance activity would produce better-qualified officers than we get now to serve in BuPers or similar organizations. It was always intended as a robust career path wit lots of meat on those bones.
But instead of "he said/he said" let's go back to the basics. What problems do I see (and I think everybody does):
- Bad ship designs
- Improper maintenance
- Lack of shipboard engineering expertise
All I've posted is a conceptual outline of an approach that I think could help with all three. If you don't like my approach, what is yours?
" If you don't like my approach, what is yours?"
DeleteYou're so focused on your proposed process that you're failing to see the real problem. It isn't the lack of engineering expertise! The root cause of the poor ship designs is the lack of a strategy within which to place a ship, the lack of a CONOPS which results in irrelevant specifications, the lack of an Analysis of Alternatives, the use of non-existent technologies, the prioritization of cost savings over combat effectiveness, and so on. In a word, the problem is leadership.
The decision to remove galvanic corrosion protection from the LCS wasn't due to poor engineering; it was a misguided attempt at cost savings.
The decision to install the hideously expensive dual band radar on the Ford wasn't the result of poor engineering; it was failing to understand how a carrier works in combat.
The decision to use non-existent technology on the Ford, LCS, and Zumwalt wasn't due to poor engineering; it was inept leadership.
And so on with endless examples.
Even if the Navy 'drafted' the entire Gibbs & Cox corporation into the Navy, it wouldn't improve ship designs by one iota because the things that are ruining the designs are not engineering failures; it's leadership failures. In fact, having in-house engineering would likely produce worse ship designs because Navy leadership would have even less incentive to listen to the engineers. Chain of command would silence the engineers. They'd simply be ordered to shut up and do as they're told.
Solve the root cause (inept leadership) problem and the engineering will solve itself.
I know your accounting background makes you want to solve problems with neat, orderly processes but that tendency blinds you to recognizing and addressing the root causes of the problems.
Only two things can solve the root cause:
1. Congress wakes up and exercises its oversight responsibilities and fires everyone in the Navy chain of command which has a vanishingly small chance of happening, or,
2. We go to war and repeat our cycle of failures and leadership replacements that happened at the start of WWII. This is a virtual certainty to happen, the only question being, when?
You can't start on a process until you've identified and corrected the root cause of the problem.
Cox & Gibbs failed to correctly estimate weight of the Freedom which basic in any ship design and of vital importance with Freedom as built with such minimal weight margins of ~1.5%, the INSURV acceptance trials found ship was 6% overweight and more likely to sink if damaged. During the post delivery maintenance Cox & Gibbs designed a kludge of welded steel tanks projecting aft six to eight feet on the stern to give the necessary additional buoyancy. Follow on Freedom class ships were redesigned and lengthened to give the necessary buoyancy.
DeleteCox & Gibbs if they had any competency as navy architects must at some time must have known Freedom overweight and consequential problems with ships buoyancy before the INSURV trials, were they complicit with the Navy in not disclosing the facts in letting Freedom going to sea in this state?
"Cox & Gibbs failed to correctly estimate weight of the Freedom"
DeleteI don't know that to be true. Do you have any documentation? Most ship classes turn out overweight due to things like equipment being added during production. For the LCS, the Navy was constantly issuing change orders throughout the first ship construction. G&C can't be responsible for that. I would also point out that when construction of Freedom began, the design work WAS NOT YET COMPLETE. This was concurrency. The design and blueprints were being developed and finalized while construction was proceeding. Again, not the fault of the designer.
I'm not saying G&C were perfect but it is far more likely that the problems were imposed by the Navy than from design mistakes. In fact, I know of no documented design mistakes.
The Freedom 'water wings' were a perfect example of the need for a prototype prior to production. We attempted to build a brand new type of ship with weight and height margins that violated Navy standards. It was to be expected that unanticipated problems would arise which should have dictated a prototype. The prototype's lessons should have fed back into production but by the time Freedom's lessons were learned we were already well into production.
"Cox & Gibbs if they had any competency as navy architects must at some time must have known Freedom overweight ... were they complicit with the Navy in not disclosing the facts in letting Freedom going to sea in this state?"
I have no doubt that G&C absolutely knew about the weight and stability problems but the Navy didn't care. It was the Navy, not G&C, who dictated the weight and height margins that WERE BELOW NAVY DESIGN STANDARDS. Let me repeat: it was the Navy not G&C who set the margins.
For some reason, you seem to have fixated on G&C as the root of the LCS problems despite no documented examples of design failure that I'm aware of. Do you have any documented examples? I'd love to see them. I have no particular interest in defending G&C. My interest is in accuracy and objectivity. If G&C made mistakes, I'd like to know about it but I've yet to see any evidence of it. There were lots of mistakes made but they all seem to lie at the feet of the Navy.
"It isn't the lack of engineering expertise! The root cause of the poor ship designs is the lack of a strategy within which to place a ship, the lack of a CONOPS which results in irrelevant specifications, the lack of an Analysis of Alternatives, the use of non-existent technologies, the prioritization of cost savings over combat effectiveness, and so on. In a word, the problem is leadership."
DeleteI agree totally.
But that's not the issue that I am addressing here. What I'm getting at are that
1) we throw JO's with little engineering training into shipboard engineering department slots and then don't understand when systems don't work;
2) our repair and maintenance activities are unable to keep up with fleet demand; and
3) our ship design process is a mess.
I don't think that developing an intensely trained group of engineering officers is enough to solve any of these. But I think it could and would help. I'd be interested in a comparison of our approach to the RN's, with relative strengths and weaknesses of each.
"the issue that I am addressing here"
DeleteYou're all over the map! You started by proposing a system to design ships in-house. Then you modified that to overseeing ?civilian? designers. Now, you're moving to shipboard repair and maintenance. Pick a lane!
Not only will your system not address shipboard operations and maintenance, it will make it worse by taking what little sea time there currently is and reducing it so engineers can pursue college degrees!
Your item 1) involves JO's and would be unaffected by an engineering career path.
Your item 2) is an infrastructure and manning issue and is completely unrelated to engineering career paths.
Your item 3) has a root cause that is totally unrelated to engineering career paths.
I'm completely lost, now, as to what you think an engineering career path will accomplish since it demonstrably won't improve any of the items you listed. You need to pause and give this some deeper thought.
You seem enamored of RN practices. Do you even know what the RN engineer path entails? How many years at sea? How many years ashore? What kind of college degrees, if any? And so on? I don't know but I suspect the process is not what you think it is. Maybe research it beyond 'it splits' and let us know some details. Perhaps that would clarify your thinking.
While Im not an engineer, and I understand the need for expertise in this, Id say that having a set of unbreakable standards, along with a rigid pre-design CONOP, would avoid a lot of this. In my mind, the idea of ROIs is kind of backwards. The fleet should come up with an "I need" list for a new ship. The warfighters (and not careerist Admirals, I mean O-6 and below, and even senior enlisted) should have lots of input. Then, somthing like a BuShips reincarnate should do the majority of the spec and design work. Only then should it be turned over to industry to do finish design and competitive bidding, with the majority of the design already set in stone. It almost seems like todays system is the tail wagging the dog...
ReplyDeleteCracking is not necessarily down to "weakening" the ships for cost saving reasons. What you tend to get is cracking in way of poorly designed details (eg brackets, stiffener interfaces) or in superstructures where the structure picks up global loading and the induced stress exceeds the strength of the structure at that point.
ReplyDeleteLCS is designed with relatively lightweight scantlings (and aluminium) to save weight. Because if you don't save weight, you don't make your desired high speed.
The superstructure issue is entirely down to the depth of the ship hull girder and the uninterrupted length of the superstructure. The higher the L/D ratio of the hull, the more it flexes (L/D above 13 is generally not a good place to be). If you have a long superstructure on top of that as well, it will pick up load and deflect (particularly if of dissimilar material - ally vs steel).
"Cracking is not necessarily down to "weakening" the ships for cost saving reasons."
DeleteCracking is always due to weakening. A properly 'strong' ship does not crack. Cracks, by definition, are the result of structural weakness. Whether that weakness was due to cost savings (as my discussions with multiple LCS design engineers indicated) or simply poor design is immaterial other than for assigning blame.
"Because if you don't save weight, you don't make your desired high speed."
And, if you are forced to operate in significantly restricted speed and sea state regimes due to cracking from excessively light weight structures, you don't make your desired high speed, either.
"L/D"
I'm not sure what this is. There's a length:beam ratio (L/B) but I don't think that's what you're referring to. There's a displacement:length ratio (D/L) but, again, I don't think that's what you're referring to. I'm guessing you're referring to length:depth ratio? For the Freedom variant that would be 378 ft / 13 ft (13 ft being the draft) which gives a L/D = 29. What the practical import of that is, I have no idea. Feel free to further explain this.
All ships crack to some degree, somewhere.
DeleteCracks - by definition - arise from a combination of localised stress concentrations and fatigue cycles. These tend to arise from poor detailed design, rather than a deliberate attempt to "weaken" the ship. This is usually something like a bracket not landing correctly on a stiffener, or having a lower aspect ration than one would like. Occasionally, you get a more obvious one, such as for example, a bulkhead being designed such that it does not align with a bulkhead on the deck below (usually happens with superstructures) or where for example there is a deck cut out (lift shafts, uptakes / downtakes) where the hull loads are not transferred smoothly into the adjacent structures. Leading to stress concentrations. Point being, it's rarely, if ever, a deliberate exercise, irrespective of what you may have been told.
L/D is indeed Length / Depth ratio. That's not the same as draught. Take a wooden or perspex ruler. Put it flat side down and bend it up or down at the ends. Now put it on it's edge and try the same. Significant difference in deflection, no? That's actually how ship girders accept load.
"rarely, if ever, a deliberate exercise, irrespective of what you may have been told."
DeleteWell, this appears to be one of the rare cases then. The Navy long ago publicly acknowledged weakening the initial design structural specs for the flight decks. The Navy also instituted a large number of cost savings measures that violated common naval design standards such as weight and height margins that were below Navy standards, deleting galvanic protection, deleting bridge wings, etc. The Navy has also acknowledged that the bow structures were too weak though without saying whether that was an intentional deletion or design flaw.
On top of that, as I mentioned, two engineers (who had no knowledge of each other) stated that the Navy instituted a general downgrading of the structural specs as a cost savings measure. So, yes, the weakening of the LCS was deliberate and, to no great surprise, resulted in negative consequences such as cracking, reduced flight deck ratings, excessive vibration at speed (affecting gun accuracy per DOT&E), anchor problems, etc.
The results are indisputable. The blame matters only to the extent that it confirms that many of the inherent LCS problems were intentionally self-inflicted by the Navy as opposed to incompetent design work by the naval architects.
Hmmm. By "the Navy" do you mean NAVSEA? Or somebody else?
ReplyDeleteIt's also worth remembering that both LCS designs originated from non-military ships - and indeed that was part of the premise that involved getting Austal, Bollinger and Marinette to build them. That was the original basis of the concept - all of which was predicated on "cheap" high-speed ships. A flawed concept IMO, but there you go.
You can't have high-speed ships with those margins in there, because it will increase the weight of the parent design beyond what it can live with to hit the speed, given its installed power. You can't increase the power because they're already using the highest power to weight ratio engines they can get their hands on (which will also lead to the GB issues). If you understand the conflicts inherent in wanting high maximum speed, combined with oceanic range (which neither parent design had) that also adds a weight penalty.
So I doubt they were "deliberately" weakened. What actually happened was that the Navy / NAVSEA did not understand what the consequence of the demand for high speed was going to be. That's what happens when the desire for one thing trumps all others. Unconsciously weakened may be closer to it. If I had to bet, I'd guess that the Navy / Navsea allowed the yards to use ABS rules for high speed ships - I don't think the Light Warship Rules were extant at the time - instead of Navsea standards (which were aimed at conventional steel ships in any case).
Its what happens when you hollow out the technical departments in Navsea - as coincidentally happened during the period of LCS (and Zumwalt) gestation.
"So I doubt they were "deliberately" weakened."
DeleteOf course they were deliberately weakened unless you believe that decisions were made using a random choice generator (that would probably have produced a better design!). Now, whether the decisions were made out of ignorance of the engineering principles involved or abject stupidity is an open question. Regardless, they were, most certainly, deliberate decisions.
I simply can't accept that the various decisions to down-spec the structural requirements were made out of ignorance. Anyone with a high school education can understand that reducing structural strength will have adverse consequences across the board. The people making those decisions knew they were making poor decisions. How they rationalized them is a mystery to me (cost savings, most likely) but rationalize them they did. You may wish to believe that that degree of stupidity is not possible and yet the entire history of the Navy's decisions over the last three or four decades clearly demonstrates otherwise.
As far as Navsea, they are clearly neutered and have very little influence in the Navy organization. We've seen clear evidence of this in the litany of ship acceptances with unfinished compartments, broken/damaged equipment, malfunctioning equipment, etc. If Navsea had any influence, we wouldn't have accepted most of the ships of the last couple decades. We've also seen Navsea's lack of influence in the profligate use of waivers, approved by the CNO's office, for safety, trials, tests, and performance. To believe that Navsea had any influence in the LCS requirements process is to ignore Navsea's history of incompetence and irrelevance. As you note, whatever technical competence Navsea once had has long since vanished.
I've presented solid evidence that the Navy knowingly and intentionally structurally weakened the LCS (likely as a misguided cost savings measure). Whether you accept that or choose to believe that the structural weakening just somehow happened without anyone's knowledge or involvement is up to you. The end result is the same either way: horribly designed ships that have inherent and uncorrectable flaws that have led to a multitude of problems.
The litany of intentional and unwise design decisions can be aptly illustrated by considering that the LCS' three main design objectives were (arguably):
Delete1. Speed
2. Module Swapping
3. Reduced Manning
The objective speed was never achieved and the overall design paid a heavy price for the degree of speed that was achieved.
Module swapping was found to be impossible for practical reasons (logistics, etc.) and engineering reasons (stability issues).
Reduced manning was a fiasco that led to equipment failures and maintenance issues. Manning has now settled at a level near or greater than that for a Perry FFG when the total crew requirements are added up (multiple crews per ship plus shore side support).
We can agree that the LCS was a poorly thought out concept.
DeleteHowever - I'd hardly call your selection of hearsay (independent design engineers or not) "solid" evidence. Particularly when the alleged "weakening" does not include what specification / standard they were reduced from and what spec / std was actually used.
You're ignoring the central logic here which is that both designs were based on commercial high-speed ships. High-speed ships are (by definition) weight-critical, which means that you can't go chucking Navy standards for conventional steel ships (let alone growth margins) at them and expect to meet your speed.
Whether you can accept that or not is immaterial.
"I'd hardly call your selection of hearsay (independent design engineers or not) "solid" evidence."
DeleteOh come on. Two LCS project engineers stated that the Navy downgraded the structural specs. How much more solid evidence can you get?
"alleged "weakening"
There's nothing 'alleged' about the weakening. The only slightly debatable point is whether the weakening was design incompetence or stupidity by the Navy. The engineer's statements confirm that it was stupidity. The stupidity conclusion is backed up by the myriad other stupid decisions the Navy has acknowledged making about the LCS.
If you want to ignore all that, feel free. I offer information for your edification but I can't make you accept it. That about wraps this up.
Two LCS project engineers stated to you that the Navy downgraded the structural specs. But you can't actually say what that difference was. Probably because they didn't actually tell you, but also that you don't actually understand the difference between Navsea design standards and (for example) ABS Rules. For starters one is not necessarily "weaker" than the other. They are different standards, aimed at producing different results. Absence of bridge wings, reduction in height allowances or weight margins (design, build, contract modification or through-life growth?) doesn't actually translate directly into a "weaker" ship.
DeleteClassic example for you. Which of these two structural design standards - UK Naval Engineering std 154 or Lloyds Commercial Ship Rules - would generally require thicker steel of a given set of mechanical properties? Which would result in a lighter structure?
The description of the defects in the Navy Times article suggests localised detailed design issues at Fr 35, 36 and 45, which broadly translates to the transition from the centre hull to the outer hulls - known as the cross-deck structure. It suggests that the independent motion between the hulls is inducing a higher stress than the detailed designer (G&C in this case) would have calculated. That motion is also inducing a fatigue cycle, which if not constrained (by the speed restriction) would cause the cracks to grow.
Here's the thing. The reason the details are "under-designed" is not due to "deliberate weakening". It's because there isn't a Navsea standard or "spec" as you put it for Trimaran hulls. Because the hullform is novel, the loading mechanisms are not fully understood, which means that the loading at those specific points has been underestimated. It happens. The proposed solution sounds like an insert repair - which is relatively straightforward and not uncommon - in those specific locations.
That's likely the truth of the thing. I'm sorry it doesn't fit your narrative that the Navy deliberately weakened the ship, but there you go. It certainly doesn't invalidate the idea that the LCS was a daft concept to begin with.