We all know what progress is, right? It’s when we can do things better, faster, with fewer problems, and using less manpower, right?
Well, consider this case of apparent progress in trying to build ships in the face of labor (skilled trades) shortages.
HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding officials say a technology transition, years in the making, is helping them fight back against a difficult labor market.[1]
The national labor shortage brought on by the coronavirus pandemic has been felt by most industries across the country, and shipbuilders are no exception. One of HII’s chief competitors in the world of US Navy shipbuilding, General Dynamics, told Breaking Defense in February that people were the company’s “biggest challenge” at its San Diego-based shipyard.[1]
So how is our shipbuilding industry dealing with labor shortages? As one example, HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding claims that it is using computer technology to 3D design ships better, faster, with fewer problems, and using less manpower. Of course, every ship and aircraft program for the last four decades has made that claim and yet each program has been over budget, delayed, and problem plagued, seemingly worse than the previous one, so where’s the actual progress? In contrast, shipbuilding programs in the ‘40’s – ‘70’s had to crawl along without the benefit of computers and yet they were generally on time, on budget, and reasonably problem free.
So, what’s different about today’s Newport News Shipbuilding computer benefits claim? Well, as they tell it,
When HII puts the latest USS Enterprise (CVN-80) in the water later this decade, it will be the “first time in our history, and I believe in the Navy’s history, that the ship isn’t just designed in a 3D [computer-aided design] tool, but now we’re taking that 3D information and putting it on to a digital device and allowing our shipbuilders to build with that,” said Brian Fields, NNS vice president for the aircraft carriers Enterprise and the next aircraft carrier to be built, the Doris Miller (CVN-81).
I think we’ve been doing exactly that for quite some time now and yet not only has nothing gotten better, our shipbuilding performance has gotten demonstrably worse.
Setting the semantics, accuracy, and veracity of HII’s claim aside, what happens if we actually achieve our goal of being able to build ships with less people? Has anyone thought that through? What are the long term implications of adapting to, and even encouraging, smaller and smaller work forces? What are the implications of that trend as it relates to war?
As we strive to build ships with greatly reduced labor pools, are we forgetting to ask ourselves what will happen when, after years of adapting to labor shortages and learning to build without people, we find ourselves in a war and suddenly need huge numbers of people to manually build and repair ships?
Repairing battle damaged ships is not something that can be done with computers and utilizing an automated, robotic assembly line. Battle damage repair is mostly a manual exercise in demolition and creative, custom repair work. It’s all about trying to figure out how to reach and cut out that damaged piece of equipment, remove it from the ship, and replace it. It’s about trying to jury-rig a repair that was never part of the original design. It’s about trying to route cabling and ducting around a damaged area. None of that is in any computer program. That’s on-the-spot creativity and manual labor that requires … bodies … lots of bodies … lots of skilled bodies. It’s the exact opposite of trying to build ships with fewer people which is what we’re pushing for today.
If we can anticipate wartime scenarios where it will be critical to have lots of bodies, why are we trying to solve our shipbuilding challenges by adapting to smaller labor pools? Shouldn’t our direction and focus, as a matter of national strategic imperative, be on significantly increasing the size of the work force in anticipation of wartime requirements instead of adapting to smaller labor pools?
I understand that, from the shipbuilder’s point of view, it makes total economic sense to adapt to smaller work forces. Indeed, a smaller work force means larger profits for the builder. However, as pointed out, that drive is at odds with the larger national strategic imperative. This is a case where we need to recognize the requirement and demand – and, if necessary, subsidize – larger work forces as a matter of national security.
Of course, larger work forces won’t happen overnight but, if we don’t make it a priority, it won’t happen at all. Our society has so thoroughly indoctrinated high school students and educators with the belief that if the students don’t go to college then they’re failures, that our students can’t even conceive of a career in the trades. As a society, we have ignored the reality that college is not appropriate for everyone and not everyone is suited for college. We need to implement robust trades programs (they used to be called vocational education) in our high schools with direct feeds into our shipbuilding industry.
Taking the manpower issue further, what happens when our vaunted 3D computer design software and computer networks are cyber attacked and rendered useless (you don’t think China is going to sit back and let us build warships unhindered, do you?)? We’ll be back to manual labor, lots of it, and we’ll be lacking the required labor pool because we spent the preceding years learning how to build ships with fewer and fewer people, not realizing that we were creating future problems by accepting and embracing a shrinking labor force. Instead of accepting a shrinking labor force we should be actively and frantically working to enlarge it. We’ve discussed ways to do that would be successful. No, it won’t happen overnight but it must be done.
We’re proudly congratulating ourselves on our ability to adapt to ever smaller work forces and, indeed, companies are pushing in that direction because they see it as a way to reduce labor costs. But is that wise? There are times when near term efficiency becomes counterproductive in the long run and this is an example of that.
It’s analogous to the Navy’s push for minimal manning. It sounds good from a business case perspective but it’s a horrible policy as regards combat since minimal crews have no ability to absorb attrition due to combat casualties and no ability to perform damage control which has led to the recent development of intentional one-hit-abandon-ship designs. It also negatively impacts ship maintenance which is a poor business case result – no one factored that totally predictable result into the business case, did they?
The manpower issue is similar to the shipbuilding industry consolidation that occurred over the last several decades. Yes, the surviving companies became more efficient, however, that consolidation drive led to long term shipbuilding capacity limitations and lack of competitiveness which, ultimately, drove up ship prices. Our short term consolidation solution led to long term capacity and cost problems. We are solving today’s short term labor shortage problems with solutions which will lead to long term problems in the future.
Is it really progress when your short term solution is creating larger problems for the future?
________________________________________
Yorktown Battle Damage Repair
The USS Yorktown was badly damaged at the battle of Coral Sea. The repair time was estimated at 90 days. However, Yorktown was desperately needed for the looming battle of Midway. Yorktown sailed for Pearl Harbor where a repair crew of over 1400 workers swarmed the ship and completed repairs sufficient for combat in 3 days. Yorktown immediately departed for Midway.
For an excellent write up, see [2].
________________________________________
[1]Breaking Defense, “The labor shortage hit shipyards hard. Can technology help Newport News bounce back?”, Justin Katz, 31-Aug-2022,
This was a good coverage of the belief that use of the the software will reduce skilled labor requirements. As a way of background I've worked with this type of software in the offshore oil and gas industry for over 20 years. These are actually database programs which are used to generate 3d models. You need to develop a detailed library of components such as nuts bolts flanges structural sections etc. The software can drop out paper drawings, bills of materials, info for plasma cutters etc. The main advantages and maybe the chief labor savings are clash checks and minimizing rework. The marine versions of the software has been used in Korea, Europe, and China for a while.
ReplyDeleteAs you point out despite all these advantages you still need a large skilled workforce to fit, weld, pull and terminate cable, test , commission etc. to build the platform or ship or process plant in a timely manner.
Off topic sorry.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/navy-unveils-truck-mounted-sm-6-missile-launcher-in-european-test
Interesting article. Might change some assumptions. Could definitely see the use queued off X unarmed surveillance system. Take your pick cheap drone, Global Hawk off high peaking in sats seafloor sensors UAV etc...
Adapting the VLS tube to a mobile ground platform has been a long time coming. One system could allow the use of a large stockpile of proven and effective weapons, ranging from air-defense to missile-defense to long-range strike. The only issue is that it's BIG for a mobile ground system.
DeleteAnd it doesn't look nearly as cool as the old BGM-109G's mobile launcher (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-109G_Ground_Launched_Cruise_Missile) which held more munitions (4 tomahawks) and doesn't look all that much bigger than this new VLS-based system.
Welcome to globalism. The West doesn't really have any military advantage anymore. The East chose not to enter the "club".
ReplyDeleteAn outstanding post that could be broken into a dozen pieces, and each one has near-terrifying implications...!!!
ReplyDeleteMy "want to comment-o-meter" hit tilt so I just started with this!!!
Please feel free to offer some analysis. As you say, there are many good aspects to this that are discussion-worthy:
Delete-Should we subsidize a larger labor pool? If so, how? What's the mechanism?
-Should we mandate vocational education in the high school?
-Is the Navy's policy of early retirement, reduced maintenance, and minimal upgrades contributing to the shrinking of the labor pool?
-Do we want the skilled trades under the control of industry or should the government control a sizable portion of the labor pool via the public shipyards?
-Should we return skilled trades to the ships (welders, electricians, etc.)?
-Are we too dependent on computers? Should we intentionally limit computer involvement and automation in shipbuilding?
-How do we protect our computer construction efforts from cyber attack?
-Or, anything you feel is discussion-worthy.
Let me hear what you think.
I think a couple key things are:
Delete*Reintroducing non-college paths to young people. Public schools and their admins, even many parents are pushing college. We have major societal issues with no longer accepting blue collar work as a valid and worthy path. This could devolve into politics and a "new generations are lazy" rant, so Ill stop there. Im not sure how we can fix this part of the problem.
*I think we need to look at expanding public yards, and opening more. We cut our own throat be dumping supposed "excess capacity" in the BRAC years, and we're hurting badly from it now. I still have frustration over the closing of LBNS, the only under-budget performing public yard at the time, where my father worked. In order to man larger/new yards, we're going to have to pay very attractively, as well as go into schools and create vocational programs, and champion them there in order to create a new, young worker pipeline. Whether public yards ever should return to new construction or not is debateable, but certainly not a bad idea, if only to create additional facilities and workforce. The potential stability of a public yard job vs one in industry would be a good recruiting tool and one to aid in retention.
* The Navys maintenance and retirement programs are a train wreck, and need a top to bottom rethink. There are larger issues causing this, like endless deployments and COCOMS that need reigned in, but thats another conversation. Ship lifespans are currently too long. I agree with your notions of shorter lifespans, with less maintenance and major reworks. While adopting this will severly impact fleet size at some point, this not only gives the opportunity to enlarge and stabilize the shipbuilding base, but also gives the opportunity to rebuild the reserve fleet, which is of huge importance to me. With long build times likely never to change significantly, not having a sizeable reserve seems like a strategic blunder.
“As one example, HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding claims that it is using computer technology to 3D design ships better, faster, with fewer problems, and using less manpower.”
ReplyDeleteWhy were they not doing tis in the first place? If a change can allow the same quality of work to be done more efficiently, it should have been done regardless both to save taxpayer money and to get the maximum return on investment for the company. What I suspect they are actually doing is relying on the computer programs to find faults and problems, and forgoing the manual review that consumes a lot of man-hours (but also catches problems before they impact other aspects of the construction).
When you are talking about multi-billion dollar strategic resources, the cost of man-hours really shouldn’t be near the top of the list when it comes time to cut back and find savings. Especially since those meager cost savings would be quickly eaten up (and likely far exceeded) by the need to re-design and re-manufacture when issues crop up.
You know what really leads to cost savings? Economy of scale. I can accept building ships slow and in small numbers early in a class to find problems and fix them, but we should be striving to reach a point where we can be laying these down and building finalized tested designs in batches to realize the massive efficiencies of economy of scale. Modern warships are built in modules anyway, and many high-cost items such as specialized (often single-purpose) electronic and sensor equipment really benefit from scale.
" the massive efficiencies of economy of scale. Modern warships"
DeleteI've examined this in detail and documented it throughout the blog. There are NO demonstrable economies of scale in shipbuilding. I've examined the costs of multiple shipbuilding programs and not only are there no demonstrable cost savings over time, the costs almost always INCREASE over the rate of inflation. The only shipbuilding program that has possibly demonstrated an economy of scale is the Burke program and that is obscured by the accounting games (GFE, phased delivery, deferred construction funding, etc.) the Navy has developed over the course of the Burke program.
Not my use of the word 'demonstrable'. This means that cost savings cannot be shown. It doesn't necessarily mean that scale cost savings are not present. It may simply be a case of various cost-increasing factors swamping any scale cost savings that might exist. Commonly observed cost-increasing factors include continual change orders, concurrency, continual redesign, project scope creep, supplier parts shortages, etc.
Regardless, the end conclusion is that demonstrable scale savings do not exist and cannot be achieved.
You points on increasing the pool of labor is a major one. This is a lesson that was learned in WW2 for many industries, and the reason we used to have government-run small arms manufacturing centers was to ensure that there were people and more importantly institutional knowledge that could be spread out among wartime contractors when the time came to ramp-up production exponentially for a war.
ReplyDeleteDeliberately inefficient building programs (such as small government shipyards making small and/or experimental ships) during peacetime may cost more money, but they can save a massive amount of time (which translates to both money AND lives saved) when war hits. We should be building far more small/low-capability ships at the private/corporate shipyards regardless, and building small/cheap ships still creates a useful skilled labor pool that can be adapted to more specialized projects such as carriers if needed, and used to create skilled cadres to expand around during wartime. If we ever reach the amount of small frigate/corvette type ships we need, we can then turn smaller shipyards towards making tugs, firefighting ships, salvage ships, minesweeping ships, and the other countless small working ships that a decent navy needs and which we have terrible deficiencies in. Keeping shipyards open and always working keeps the labor force intact, and makes those jobs more desirable since job security would be very high.
Regarding the Yorktown repair, which is amazing even by the more impressive standards of the day, could a modern shipyard supply 1400 trained and capable shipyard workers on short notice even if they stopped all other projects? Could a naval repair yard? Could several? I have my doubts and these are issues that absolutely cannot be fixed at the last minute. Experienced labor forces and institutional knowledge take many years to build and one unfortunate incident (like a nuclear or even conventional attack on a major shipyard) could easily set such efforts back years.
I was also wondering if a Yorktown repair was possible today. A quick surf showed the the Pearl shipyard has about 6000 employees, quite a few more than Id expected. Now how many of them are actually capable of being part of a massive effort like that is the question. Considering how bad government bureaucracy is and how bloated management levels have become, as well as lower level make-work slots, it might be a stretch that 25% of the total staff could be useful for war repairs...
DeleteRegarding the vulnerability of computer systems, that should be manageable with common-sense air-gapping and security procedures (which should be followed anyway to keep our ship blueprints from hostile powers if nothing else). I don’t think the computers themselves are a hinderance. In the event of cyberattack (due to not air-gapping or doing stupid things like plugging in flash drives with viruses into a closed network), even civilian business network standards include regular backups of important files to secured and protected storage. Of course they don’t always do that, as the many prominent ransomware attacks on major companies demonstrates. But it is an issue that is simple to solve and has already been figured out. If the computers are somehow down for lack of electrical power or EMP attack, the shipyard equipment won’t be working anyway (though backups should still be safe in air-gapped and faraday-cage protected storage for use when power is restored, if common sense is being followed).
ReplyDeleteAs a slight aside, while my blueprint drawing background is from architecture and not shipbuilding, I was trained and tested on drawing using hand tools and vellum sheets before I was allowed to move to AutoCAD, under the rational that going straight to computers allowed bad technique and poor understanding to be hidden by the computer assistance, so I expect the institutional knowledge to do things the old-fashioned way still exists and is still being fostered to at least a basic level. This training was barely a decade ago.
RE: Backups. Backups are certainly important, but not a perfect solution. For example, there is always the potential concern that you back up the virus or trojan along with the other files !!
Delete"air-gapping"
DeleteIn the earlier days of computer security, air gapping was somewhat effective but this practice is less and less effective every day simply because it is not possible to isolate a computer and still have it be useful. People need to connect to the programs and data and every connection is a violation of the isolation. Data needs to be transferred to the production sites/machines/people and every transfer is a violation of the general isolation principle. Every computer, today, has wireless capabilities and those represent vulnerabilities. Supplier data must be input to the computer to be useful and supplier data may be compromised. Jump drives are a significant vulnerability. Peripherals, such as printers, are points of entry. Power lines could be used to enter a system. And so on.
The biggest weakness is people. Despite all the protocols, people still consistently do dumb things and will, inevitably, violate the isolation.
If one truly isolates a computer, the computer is no longer useful.
Backups can restore a computer - assuming the backup didn't contain the same virus or vulnerability - but whatever the original point of entry/attack was, still exists and the incident will simply be repeated unless the means of entry is identified and that is extremely hard to do.
DeleteThe economy is nearing full employment. Hard to find workers everywhere. We need more immigration.
ReplyDelete"The economy is nearing full employment."
DeleteThe problem is the labor participation rate.
It is currently at about 62.4%
Starting in the mid-1960's, women began entering the workforce in large numbers.
The labor participation rate peaked in 2000 at over 67%
Since that point it has been dropping.
Who has been leaving the workforce? Adult males.
As the nation's manufacturing employment has declined, the number of males fully participating in the economy has also declined.
If you want to find workers, that's where to begin.
Tighten up the bloated lists of men on government disability, for example, and get that labor participation rate back north of 67%.
That may still not be enough, which is where immigration has historically buoyed the economy.
Lutefisk
Social Security Disability applications and awards are at their lowest in over a decade.
Deletehttps://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html
According to this, aging baby boomers appear to be the main reason for the drop in labor participation rate.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/06/why-did-labor-force-participation-rate-decline-when-economy-was-good.html
"aging baby boomers appear to be the main reason for the drop in labor participation rate."
DeleteThat's highly debatable. The lingering effects of the various forms of COVID welfare are still being felt. For many, not working is still more attractive than working. This is not a sociology blog so I won't go further into it.
Your comment and reference suggest the economy is 'good'. It depends on what parameter you look at. There are many 'bad' parameters that suggest a poor economy. For example, from usafacts.org website:
- The economy added 6.7 million jobs in 2021, rebounding from 9.3 million lost jobs in 2020. Still a net loss of 2.6 million jobs.
- 2021's average annual unemployment rate was 5.4%, about 2.7 percentage points lower than in 2020 but 1.7 points higher than 2019.
- The labor force participation rate remains 1.2 percentage points below February 2020.
- About 12,000 more businesses closed than opened in 2020. Few, if any, of those businesses are coming back.
In addition, inflation has crushed American income and buying power. Supply shortages have further negatively impacted the economy. For most Americans, the economy that they feel in their pocketbooks is far from 'good'. This is not an economics blog so, again, I won't go any further.
I did not say the economy was "good". I said it was nearing "full employment", i.e. a strong labor market. This means it's harder for employers to find workers, especially workers who require specific skills (e.g. pipefitters, welders, electricians).
DeleteThere are different ways to try and solve this. You can make the jobs more enticing (e.g. higher wages, better benefits), but this will increase the costs of building ships.
You can increase the labor pool (e.g. immigration, increasing labor participation rate). With an aging population, there's only so far you'll be able to increase the labor participation rate. Boomers are going to retire.
Increasing immigration increases the labor pool and can offset Boomer retirement, but these people will have to be trained and motivated to take shipbuilding jobs.
I guess another option is to increase unemployment (i.e. make the economy worse), but this seems like the worst option, IMO.
"I did not say the economy was "good".
DeleteAs I said, your comment and your reference suggested this. From the title of your reference: 'participation-rate-decline-when-economy-was-good'. So, yes, that suggests that the referenced article - and you, by inference, since you cited the article, believe the economy is 'good'.
"There are different ways to try and solve this."
There are. Number one, and easiest to do, is to reduce all forms of welfare to near-zero. This alone would have a noticeable positive impact on the participation rate.
Second would be to drastically increase the pending work load for shipyards by engaging in upgrades and maintenance instead of deferring or eliminating maintenance and upgrades in favor of early ship retirements. Hand in hand with this would be to stop building large, multi-function ships and start building more numerous, smaller, single-function ships as I've outlined extensively throughout this blog.
"Immigration"
I assume you're talking about legal immigration since illegal aliens would be ineligible for the kind of work we're talking about.
"Social Security Disability applications and awards are at their lowest in over a decade."
DeleteThe link that you provided only goes back to 2007. The labor participation rate has been falling for 20 years.
We have 8 million people on disability and a workforce of 160 million. That is a person receiving disability payments for every 20 people working. That seems like a lot to me, and that 8 million does not include those receiving child or widow disability.
Here is the chart from the St. Louis Fed showing labor participation rate since 1950:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
Here is a table showing disability filing and awards going back to 1965:
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table6c7.html
Note the correlation between increased disability activity and a decrease in the labor participation rate, which also mirrors the reduction in US manufacturing employment:
https://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
I stand by my assertion that there is a supply of potential manufacturing employees already in the US, although probably needing supplementation by immigration.
A first step is to stop providing income and benefits to the able bodied that are not participating in the labor pool.
Lutefisk
"We have 8 million people on disability and a workforce of 160 million. That is a person receiving disability payments for every 20 people working. That seems like a lot to me, and that 8 million does not include those receiving child or widow disability."
DeleteAnd the disability demographics skew heavily towards older people. >30% are over 60. 56% are over 55. The average age is 55.
Aging population.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2019/sect01.html#chart4
"Note the correlation between increased disability activity and a decrease in the labor participation rate, which also mirrors the reduction in US manufacturing employment:"
From your link, SS disability awards in 2021 were the lowest since 1991.
"A first step is to stop providing income and benefits to the able bodied that are not participating in the labor pool."
No, the first step is to figure out why they don't want to go back, or can't go back. The implicit assumption in your statement is that they're just lazy. But a single mom may not be able to afford childcare. An unemployed man may not have the skill set or experience to get the jobs that are available. They may be too old. Ageism is a real thing.
Simply cutting people off without understanding why they're in this situation is just cruel and counter productive. You'll just spike homelessness and poverty.
"The implicit assumption in your statement is that they're just lazy."
DeleteNo, the implicit assumption is that we've made not working more financially attractive and beneficial than working.
"No, the first step is to figure out why they don't want to go back, or can't go back."
No, the first step is to remove disincentives to work. Yes, there will always be some who physically can't work but that is a very small portion of the potential labor pool.
"a single mom may not be able to afford childcare."
Then we need to disincentivize child bearing without financial means. Regardless, that is not the portion of the potential labor pool we're discussing. We're discussing able bodied people who have been disincentivized from working due to welfare in its various forms.
"Simply cutting people off without understanding why they're in this situation is just cruel and counter productive."
No, what's cruel is getting people 'addicted' to government support.
"Simply cutting people off without understanding why they're in this situation is just cruel and counter productive."
No one is suggesting a total, 100%, instantaneous cessation of all assistance. There will always be a very small portion of people who legitimately require assistance. When we discuss things such as eliminating various forms of welfare assistance, I expect readers of this blog to understand that such statements are statements of general policy not microscopic absolutes. I'll do you the courtesy of assuming you're capable of understanding that and that you're not looking to simply argue trivialities. With that now clearly understood, carry on.
i can see where this conversation is going. I disagree with you. You haven't provided any evidence to back up your assertions.
DeleteBut I'll let it go. Not worth more of my time.
Definitely true that our high schools fetishize college prep much more than they should. And the drive to make college free will make it even worse. We need to make it much clearer to high school folks that many trade jobs pay quite well -- even better than many jobs requiring college degrees.
ReplyDeleteHere's a joke that illustrates that:
A lawyer has a problem with his toilet. Calls the plumber. Plumber looks at the toilet and immediately determines that the flapper valve needs to be replaced. The whole process takes 10 minutes (since the plumber has to go back out to the truck to get the new flapper valve).
Plumber presents a bill for $100. The lawyer is outraged. "$100!! But it only took 10 minutes. That's $600 an hour. I'm a lawyer and I only make $400 an hour !"
The plumber says "Yes, and when I was a lawyer, I only made $400 an hour."
You have finally hit on a topic that I have been crowing about for the last 5 years......shipyard manning. HII currently, right now, has ads running on all the radio stations during rush hours advertising positions available for anyone 18 and up starting at 21 dollars an hour. No experience necessary. They will teach you a trade or you can stand around and firewatch or sweep if you desire. They recently started another advertisment campaign for what I call "Light Blue Collar" workers (Project Managers, schedulers, etc).
ReplyDeleteWhat HII is feeling is widespread throughout the Hampton Roads area by all the ship repair businesses and facilities. The small company I work for has enough work to keep an additional 10-20 people full time employed...but we can't find them. Or they only want to work 3 days a week. Or they have zero experience.
I blame the Navy for the fiasco that is shipyard manning. With the yo-yo effect of their ship repairs schedules, skilled tradesmen got tired of the constant lay offs and recalls and have gone on to find more stable work environments.
How do you fix it? That I am not sure of. People these days do not seem to want dirty hot jobs that pay extremely well....because they are hot and dirty.
I will make an attempt to answer two of your questions from above:
-Do we want the skilled trades under the control of industry or should the government control a sizable portion of the labor pool via the public shipyards? Public yards these days tend to only concern themselves with nuclear powered vessesl (in the case of subs they are doing a horrendous job). All other ship repair work is pushed to industry yards. The public yards are not manned enough to do all the work. There is a hand in hand relationship between public and industry.
-Should we return skilled trades to the ships (welders, electricians, etc.)? Absolutely. Whoever in the Navy hierarchy decided that sailors were "operators not maintainers" should be drawn quartered, tarred and feathered. Fully 50% of the repairs made to the Navy ships were done by sailors themselves not even a generation ago. I work with former Boiler Techs that used to re-tube steam plant UNDERWAY. And giving the sailors shore duty by having them in the intermediate repair facilities where they learn how to rebuild valves or do precision welding was a fantastic way to build that knowledge bas for shipboard repairs. All of that corporate knowledge has been lost.
Walk into any MMR on any ship and start to notice the corrosion built up on valves. Ask a sailor what this valve does and they have no idea...even though they have worked in the plant for over 2 years.
This is what I see every day in the ship repair industry and it is NOT getting any better. 3 more years and I am out of it and will not look back.
New summary of the Ford program. Even the USNI fanboys are critical in the comments. I put in a comment asking about a deployment date but it was censored. USNI censors comments more than anyone in the world.
ReplyDeletehttps://news.usni.org/2022/09/15/report-to-congress-on-gerald-r-ford-carrier-program-10
They finally got all the Ford's elevators certified. But after the ship got underway and the hull flexed a bit, how many stopped working?
Note it says "Navy officials state that the ship’s first deployment will occur in the fall of 2022, more than five years after it was commissioned into service."
Still no news about a deployment date.
https://www.facebook.com/USSGeraldRFord
I doubt they can fix the issue with the flywheels that power EMALS. They break down after a month of use and can't be repaired at sea. It's difficult to grasp that the Navy may be forced to scrap the entire class of four ships, but not until they are all completed and paid off of course. The LCS program prepared everyone for such a failure. They kept building them long after they proved a failed design.
"Should we return skilled trades to the ships (welders, electricians, etc.)? Absolutely."
ReplyDeleteIn the movie "Sand Pebbles" Steve McQueen plays a maintenance chief on a small ship in China. Most of the labor and work on ship was done by "coolies" local unskilled Chinese hired cheap. When the American crew threatened munity, an officer told McQueen he didn't need the crew because the coolies can run the ship. McQueen told him the coolies only had "monkey see, monkey do" training. They can run the ship if there is never a problem, but when something happens they have no idea what is causing it or how to fix it.
"The Sand Pebbles" is an even better book.
ReplyDeleteLutefisk
The fact that so much of the ship maintenance and upkeep is NOT being performed by their crews is absurd. What is the point of the A Schools and C schools if everybody is acting like OSs??? Have the schools been cut down, are the sailors not getting the in-depth training they used to get?? To this day, I still use the outstanding training I received in ET school...Theres almost nothing I cant troubleshoot to component level and repair. Whats changed that makes us reliant on non-crew repairs and maintenance???
ReplyDelete-Should we subsidize a larger labor pool? If so, how? What's the mechanism?
ReplyDeleteYes. We should recruit the best and the brightest from around the world. Give every foreigner in America lifetime visas and permission to work in any job.
-Should we mandate vocational education in the high school?
Yes. We could then do away with 2.5 months of freedom students may use for their own personal ends.
-Is the Navy's policy of early retirement, reduced maintenance, and minimal upgrades contributing to the shrinking of the labor pool?
No.
-Do we want the skilled trades under the control of industry or should the government control a sizable portion of the labor pool via the public shipyards?
Government all the way every day!
-Should we return skilled trades to the ships (welders, electricians, etc.)?
Only if the standards are adjusted for the unfairly disadvantaged.
-Are we too dependent on computers?
No.
Should we intentionally limit computer involvement and automation in shipbuilding? No.
-How do we protect our computer construction efforts from cyber attack? Solicit bids from around the world for the best computer programs. You can't put a price on national defense!
The Navy and the most of the rest of the country have decided complacency and business as usual are how things are to be done. Get with the program, even if it means drinking the flavoraid!