Lesson Learned?

A cursory recall of the Navy’s recent failed surface ship programs includes the LCS, Zumwalt, Ford, MLP, etc.  That’s a lot of data and opportunities for lessons learned, right?  The Navy, through trial and [mostly] error should be getting pretty good at managing ship acquisition programs by now, right?
 
One of the major lessons learned has to have been that concurrency (simultaneous design and construction) never works.
 
I wonder how the new Constellation class frigate program is doing?
 
The GAO annual report has this to say, 

Program officials stated that over 90 percent of the FFG 62 functional design and 80 percent of the detail design—which adds 3D modeling to show the configuration of equipment on the ship—were completed when construction began on the lead ship in August 2022. They noted that these results align with the Navy’s general expectations for design maturity needed before construction begins. However, beginning construction with an incomplete functional design is inconsistent with leading practices and increases the risk of costly design changes and rework.[1][emphasis added]

So, defying all logic, common sense, and bitter, costly experience, the Navy began construction of the Constellation before the design was complete.  Way to learn a lesson, Navy.
 

Constellation - Which will be finished first, the ship or the design?

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[1]U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Weapon Systems Annual Assessment”, Jun 2023, GAO-23-106059, p.148

LCS Bridge Wings

We’ve talked about the demise of the Navy’s in-house ship design expertise (General Board and BuShips) and the subsequent farming out of the design responsibility to industry and the negative consequences that engenders.  Here’s one small example of that phenomenon.  The Independence LCS variant was designed without bridge wings.  Bridge wings, as you know, are a fairly standard feature that allows the ship to be safely maneuvered in tight quarters such as when docking.

 

The lack of a bridge wing for the LCS was quickly found to be a problem and bridge wings were eventually incorporated into production beginning with USS Kansas City (LCS-22) and retrofitted to those ships lacking them.

 

In the photo below, you can see the LCS without bridge wings.

 

 

In the next photo, bridge wings have been added.

 

As best I can tell, the omission of bridge wings was a cost savings measure which, as it turned out, wound up costing more money after retrofitting, than it saved!  This also illustrates ComNavOps’ recurring theme about not designing WARships to a business case.  This business case design wound up costing more money, in the end, and produced a less efficient ship. 

 

Interestingly, the Swedish Visby corvette is a notable example of a ship without bridge wings – likely due to its extreme emphasis on stealth – but it compensates with an extensive camera system.

 

The Zumwalt class was also built without bridge wings and will likely never be retrofitted as the ships have been relegated to experimental use, for the time being.  I don’t know the rationale for omitting bridge wings on the Zumwalt – perhaps a stealth measure?  I also don’t know if Zumwalt has a compensating camera system.

LCS Concurrency and Prototype Lessons

Two pieces of news about the LCS program have appeared of late which highlight just how fundamentally flawed the program was.

 

The first piece of news was the announcement by the Navy that they are retiring the first four LCS after just a few years of service.(2)  Well, let’s be honest … it was just a few years of non-service since they never had functional modules and never conducted any useful deployments.

 

The second piece of news was the announcement that the USS Detroit is being towed back to port due to various mechanical failures including the problem-plagued combining gear which has sidelined almost every LCS that has put to sea.(1)

 

This program was so badly conceived and executed that the list of lessons are nearly endless.  However, I want to focus on two closely related lessons:  concurrency and prototypes.  The lessons from this failed program regarding concurrency (the practice of simultaneous development and construction) and prototypes are stunning in their magnitude and simplicity and yet the Navy continues to repeatedly and fully embrace those failed practices.  For those readers from Navy command levels, you can stop reading now because you’re just going to continue attempting concurrency so there’s nothing for you to learn, here.  For all the rest of you, let’s continue on and learn something about the impact of concurrency and, specifically, its impact on prototyping.

 

As you recall, the Navy committed to a run of 55 LCS ships before the design was even complete;  possibly before it was even begun!  Construction of the first two – arguably – four LCS was well underway before the ship designs and construction blueprints were finalized.  Every organization that has ever looked at the practice of concurrency has condemned it as extremely poor practice that inevitably results in higher costs and failed products.

 

For those who may not be familiar with concurrency and the problems it causes, I’ll offer the following brief description. 

 

The problem is that as the concurrent development proceeds, changes in product design are inevitably required.  Because construction has already begun and completed products have been produced, the newly identified changes have to be back-fit into the under-construction or already produced products which greatly increases costs ( building and then rebuilding - paying twice for the same product, in essence) and, in the extreme such as the F-35, the result is products that can’t be updated with the required changes or the updates are prohibitively expensive.  As the concurrent development continues and the current production design drifts farther and farther from the original products, the early products are rendered ‘orphans’ – non-standard, unfixable, and unusable.

 

On a related note, the LCS program is hardly alone in attempting, and failing, at concurrency.  The F-35 program, for example, has reportedly produced two or three hundred aircraft that are now concurrency orphans that the military has deemed too expensive or too difficult to upgrade.  These aircraft will be shuffled aside and left to rot – a few, perhaps, used for training purposes.  Another example is the Ford program which attempted to build a carrier while simultaneously developing new technologies such as EMALS, AAG, and weapon elevators, none of which yet work as intended.  Undeterred, even now, by the lack of functioning EMALS, AAG, and elevators the Navy has already committed to more Fords! 

 

Returning to the LCS, let’s take a look at the four LCS the Navy is throwing away.  LCS-1,-2,-3,-4 are being retired after just a few years because the Navy states that they are so non-standard that upgrading them to meet the current LCS norms would be cost-prohibitive.  For all practical purposes, the first four LCS were prototypes even though the Navy never referred to them as such until just now as they attempt to justify throwing away essentially brand new ships.

Four LCS Headed for the Scrap Heap

 

Now, let’s consider what a prototype is and why prototypes are built.

 

A prototype is a first of its kind.  As such, it is expected that it will have flaws and problems.  Indeed, that is the purpose of a prototype:  to find and fix design and construction problems so that subsequent versions can be improved.  The very concept of a prototype implies a cycle of one-off production, fixes and learning of lessons, and then feeding the changes back into the next version.  Prototyping is a cyclical process:  build, learn, feed lessons back into the process.  The Navy, however, defied all conventional wisdom and opted not to wait for the first LCS prototype to be wrung out and debugged.  Instead, the Navy plunged into full production without delay.  The result was that the prototypes failed to serve their purpose.  They didn’t identify problems for correction in the subsequent ships.  Instead, the subsequent ships were built with the same problems as the prototypes.  This is why the USS Detroit, the 7^th LCS and the 4^th Freedom class ship, is being towed back to port with a broken combining gear – the same broken combing gear that plagued the prototypes and every other LCS.  The lessons of the failed combining gear in the prototype LCS-1 were not passed on to the rest of the production run because the run was already well along before any lessons could be learned. 

 

What is the point of building a prototype if you don’t wait for the lessons to be learned?

 

The result of this incredible mismanagement is that the Navy is throwing away 4 prototypes.  This is also why you don’t build two different versions of the same ship:  it doubles your prototypes and doubles your wastage!  It’s one thing to throw away a prototype of, say, a pump but it’s another when the prototype is a complete ship that costs nearly $800M as the first few LCS did.  When the prototype is that expensive, you really, really, really, want to take full advantage of the prototype concept and learn all the lessons you can before building the next ship.  Of course, the Navy did not do that and now winds up throwing away $2.4B or so of useless ships.  The LCS prototypes failed to serve their purpose.

 

What did the rush to get LCS hulls in the water accomplish?  There have been no significant deployments and certainly none with a fully functioning module.  The ships have wound up sitting pier side.  They accomplished nothing.  There was plenty of time.  The prototype process could have played out with no detrimental effects and the Navy would have gotten functioning, debugged ships – well, to the extent that an LCS can be considered functioning given that they still have no modules and have myriad inherent design and structural flaws.

 

The purpose of prototypes is to find and wring out the problems before the subsequent ships are built.  Because of concurrency, the prototypes wound up serving no purpose.

 

 

 

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(1)Defense News website, “Littoral combat ship Detroit is being towed into port after another engineering failure”, David B. Larter, 7-Nov-2020,

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/11/06/littoral-combat-ship-detroit-is-being-towed-into-port-after-another-engineering-failure/

 

(2)Defense News website, “US Navy’s first 4 littoral combat ships to leave the fleet in 9 months”, David B. Larter, 1-Jul-2020,

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/07/01/the-us-navys-first-4-littoral-combat-ships-are-out-of-the-fleet-in-9-months/

Zumwalt and LCS - Main Batteries

What do the Zumwalt and LCS programs have in common?  Well, lots of things – all bad!  However, for the purpose of this post, the thing they have in common is that despite having commissioned ships in the class, neither has their main batteries installed and functioning yet.

Zumwalt

• 1 built and commissioned Oct 2016
• 1 built (tentative commissioning date Jan 2019)
• 1 building

As you know, the Zumwalt was literally designed around the Advanced Gun System (AGS) that was intended to rain precision firepower at ranges of 70+ miles.  As you also know, the Navy has cancelled the only munition the AGS was capable of firing, the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP), due to runaway costs and failure to meet range requirements.

A functional AGS does not exist.  The Zumwalt have no functional main battery despite being a commissioned warship.  We spent $24B to build a class with no main battery.  That’s some major league incompetence!

LCS

• 5 Freedom class commissioned
• 9 Freedom class built or building

• 7 Independence class commissioned
• 8 Independence class built or building

As you know, the LCS’ main battery is the modules – those swappable permanent modules that contain one of the LCS’ three main functions: Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), Anti-Surface Warfare (ASuW), or Mine Countermeasures (MCM).  Without one of the main battery modules, the LCS is just a patrol boat and not a very good one at that.

-          There is no functional MCM module.

-          There is no functional ASW module.

-          There is no useful ASuW module - it has been scaled back to the point of uselessness.

The first LCS, USS Freedom, was commissioned in 2008.  It is now ten years later with 29 LCS commissioned, built, or building and still no useful, functional, main battery.  A decade after commissioning and still no modules.  Wow, that’s some major league incompetence!

That is two major classes of surface warfare vessels and the two most recent classes to be built that have now been commissioned with no main battery.

That bears repeating.

The Navy’s two newest classes of surface vessel have been commissioned with no main battery.

How does this happen?  How does the Navy accept and commission a ship that has no main battery?  How has no one been fired?  How has no one been charged with fraud?  Has anyone’s promotion at least been delayed by a couple of months?

Okay, aside from simple complaining, what can we learn from this?

Well, the Zumwalt and LCS have another point in common regarding their main batteries – neither battery actually existed in a functional form when the Navy committed to building the ships.  The Navy assumed they could develop the batteries while the ships were building.  This is the concurrency that we’ve railed against and has been proven, repeatedly, to be a failure as a procurement method.  Concurrency has failed every time it’s been attempted and yet the Navy is still married to the concept.

It’s one thing to begin construction of a ship when the deck buffing machine is still under development but it’s insanity to begin construction of a ship when its main battery doesn’t exist.  Even the “fitted for but not with” philosophy, as bad as it is, is better than building with concurrency in the main battery.

I don’t know what it takes for the Navy to learn lessons.  Apparently, it takes more than the utter failure of two major ship classes (and the F-35, EMALS, AAG, Advanced Weapons Elevators, etc.)!

USS Ford - Ups and Downs

As we all know, the new aircraft carrier, the USS Ford, has had many problems, delays, and cost overruns due, mainly, to the Navy’s use of concurrency in attempting to develop new technologies at the same time as production.  Predictably (well, for everyone but the Navy), the attempt has failed.  The EMALS launch system and the Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) have been two notable failures.  However, there is another new technology that has been just as problem plagued but has not received as much attention – the ship’s Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE).  These elevators are used on carriers to move munitions from the ship’s magazines to the flight deck and handling areas for subsequent loading onto the aircraft.  The elevators are quite small compared to the main aircraft elevators.

One would think that small weapons elevators would be straightforward, well known technology and one would be correct.  However, the Navy opted to abandon the well established elevators of the Nimitz class and, instead, develop a brand new electromagnetic elevator that works similar to the EMALS catapult system.  As with the EMALS, development has been difficult and the Ford was delivered with non-functional elevators, all 11 of them.

Here’s more evidence of the lack of elevator installation upon delivery of the Ford.  A NavSea official stated,

 

The Post Shakedown Availability is planned for 12 months, with the critical path being Advanced Weapons Elevator construction … (5)

Note the use of the word “construction” as opposed to repair or fine-tuning or modification or something similar.  The elevators appear to have simply not been installed or, at least, not in anything resembling a usable form!

And,

The Navy announced plans to repair the ship’s 11 “Advanced Weapons Elevators” — all of which have been non-functional since the carrier first took to the water.

Currently, two of those malfunctioning elevators are being used to help “to identify many of the remaining developmental issues for this first-of-class system,” the Navy says. They expect to bring the full suite of elevators online with this round of repairs, but were sure to include in their statement that all the elevator systems “should have been complete and delivered with the ship delivery” in May 2017. (1)

If the Navy acknowledges that the elevators should have been “complete and delivered with the ship delivery”, why did the Navy accept the ship?  They should have refused delivery until the elevators were installed and functioning. 

  

To review, the elevators were initially developed by Federal Equipment Company (FEC) along with MagneMotion and Northrop Grumman Newport News.  FEC received a contract from Northrop in 2005 to build 11 elevators for the Ford aircraft carrier.  To be clear, these are the smaller weapons elevators, not the three large aircraft elevators.

On paper, the elevators are quite impressive.  Of course, paper claims always are!

FEC’s Advanced Weapons Elevator demonstrates a 24,000-pound lift capacity, with 150% overload capacity. Designed to move at 150 feet per minute, it accelerates to full speed in 2 seconds. The state-of-the-art elevators increase capacity over 200% and speed by 50% compared to the legacy elevators.

Features include motor thermal protection, emergency braking, and [a] "smart control system" that estimates the payload weight. (2)

FEC has built a test facility housing a full scale elevator with 32 feet of travel. (2)

The Advanced Weapons Elevators are similar to the EMALS catapult system in that they use linear motors and magnetic effects to move the object - the elevator, in this case, instead of an aircraft.

Here’s a brief summary of how the elevator works: (3)

• Linear motors are attached to each corner of the elevator
• Magnets inside each motor interact with electric coils lining the shaft
• A current pulses through the coils, lifting the magnets and platform
• Magnets hold the elevator in place

Of course, all this capability comes at a cost.  The AWE is around twice the cost of existing Nimitz class weapons elevators. (3)

Interestingly, the government (Naval Surface Warfare Center) posted notice in Feb 2018 of their intent to award a sole source contract to Hunt Valve Actuator (Virginia) for an elevator unit, installation, parts, support, logistics, etc. (4)  I don’t know if this means that the Navy has gotten fed up with FEC and decided to switch suppliers or if they’re simply developing an alternate source (then why the sole source designation?) or some other reason.

Aside from the idiotic use of concurrency, which the Navy seems absolutely wedded to in the face of repeated, overwhelming evidence of its failure, there are other potential issues with the electromagnetic elevators.

Advanced Weapons Elevator

Electromagnetic Shielding.  One of the major faults of the EMALS catapult system is that it uses very large and very powerful electric motors which, unbelievably, are not electromagnetically shielded.  Former CNO Greenert once referred to them as “electromagnetic beacons” when discussing emissions control (EMCON) protocols.  The stray electromagnetic radiation will keep anyone who’s interested well informed about the Ford’s location. 

The question arises, are the AWE elevators shielded?  If a major component like the EMALS is not shielded, it is highly unlikely that the elevators are.  Of course, given the size and emissions of the EMALS, the additional stray emissions from the elevators are unlikely to matter much.

This is just another example demonstrating that the Navy has forgotten how to design ships for combat.

Repair.  Yet another major fault of the EMALS catapult system is that single catapults – there are four – cannot be repaired without taking all of the catapults down.  The electrical supply system was designed in such a way that a single catapult cannot be electrically isolated for repairs.  The catapults are all up or all down.  The inability to isolate and repair a single catapult is a breathtakingly stupid flaw for a combat system.  The question is does this same flaw apply to the weapons elevators?  I have no idea but it’s a question that demands an answer.

In summary, the weapons elevators are an all too common example of what is plaguing the Navy today.  The desire to rush non-existent technology into production is causing cost overruns, schedule delays, and serious credibility issues.  If the Navy would only show a little patience and let new technologies mature in the lab, where they belong, they would come out far ahead in the long run. 

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(1)News Rep website, “Repairs on the USS Gerald R. Ford engines and elevators to cost another $120 million”, Alex Hollings, 16-May-2018,

https://thenewsrep.com/103256/repairs-on-the-uss-gerald-r-ford-engines-and-elevators-to-cost-another-120-million/

(2)Federal Equipment Co. website,

http://military.federalequipment.com/products/Elevators/AWE

(3)WVXU website, “The Navy's Next Generation Of Weapons Elevators Was Designed Here In Cincinnati”, Ann Thompson, 9-Apr-2018,

http://www.wvxu.org/post/navys-next-generation-weapons-elevators-was-designed-here-cincinnati#stream/0

(4)https://govtribe.com/opportunity/federal-contract-opportunity/advanced-weapons-elevator-engineering-services-n6449818r0013

(5)The National Interest website, “The Reason the Navy Is Exploding Bombs Near Its New Nuclear Aircraft Carrier”, Kris Osborn, 14-May-2018,

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-reason-the-navy-exploding-bombs-near-its-new-nuclear-25813

Ford Problems Continue

Here’s an update on the Ford’s continuing problems as documented in the DOT&E 2017 Annual Report.  Some of these problems are stunning and strongly suggest that the Ford is not even capable of routine operations.

·    “As of June 2017, the program estimates that EMALS has approximately 455 Mean Cycles Between Critical Failures (MCBCF) in the shipboard configuration, where a cycle represents the launch of one aircraft. While this estimate is above the rebaselined reliability growth curve, the rebaselined curve is well below the requirement of 4,166 MCBCF. At the current reliability, EMALS has a 9 percent chance of completing the 4-day surge and a 70 percent chance of completing a day of sustained operations as defined in the design reference mission without a critical failure.”    -  This means that the Ford is currently unable to conduct high intensity – meaning war – operations.

·    “The reliability concerns are exacerbated by the fact that the crew cannot readily electrically isolate EMALS components during flight operations due to the shared nature of the Energy Storage Groups and Power Conversion Subsystem inverters onboard CVN 78. The process for electrically isolating equipment is time-consuming; spinning down the EMALS motor/generators takes 1.5 hours by itself. The inability to readily electrically isolate equipment precludes EMALS maintenance during flight operations, reducing the system operational availability.”   -   EMALS doesn’t work reliably and can’t be readily fixed.  That’s a disturbing combination.  How did a system that can’t be isolated and repaired on the fly ever get past the first conceptual design meeting?  This is Navy engineering design incompetence on an almost unimaginable scale.  Yes, I understand that the Navy didn’t design the EMALS but they did review it and failed utterly to spot a major, major flaw.

·    “In June 2017, the Program Office estimated that the redesigned AAG had a reliability of approximately 19 Mean Cycles Between Operational Mission Failures (MCBOMF) in the shipboard configuration, where a cycle represents the recovery of one aircraft. This reliability estimate is well below the rebaselined reliability growth curve and well below the 16,500 MCBOMF specified in the requirements documents. In its current design, AAG is unlikely to support routine flight operations. At the current reliability, AAG has less than a 0.001 percent chance of completing the 4-day surge and less than a 0.200 percent chance of completing a day of sustained operations as defined in the design reference mission. For routine operations, AAG would only have a 53 percent chance of completing a single 12 aircraft recovery cycle and a 1 percent chance of completing a typical 84 aircraft recovery day.”   -  Are you kidding me?!  A zero percent chance of conducting war operations and only a fifty/fifty chance of recovering 12 aircraft????  Who let this abomination get this far?  This, alone, renders the Ford non-operational even for routine operations.

·    “[Dual Band Radar] Current test results reveal problems with tracking and supporting missiles in flight, excessive numbers of clutter/ false tracks, and track continuity concerns.  …  In limited at-sea operations, DBR exhibited frequent uncommanded system resets, and has had problems with the power supply system.”

There’s a common theme to all these problems and that is concurrency.  The Navy, despite every previous failed attempt at concurrent production and development, has stubbornly and stupidly insisted on pushing ahead with concurrent development and production and the results, predictably, are distressing.  We now have a commissioned warship that is not only utterly incapable of combat but can’t even conduct routine peacetime flight operations.  Some of these problems, like the AAG reliability, are not just slight deviations from specifications – they’re huge!  The AAG is, for all practical purposes, non-functional. 

The Ford may wind up being less of a warship than the LCS or Zumwalt !

F-35 Concurrency Orphans

We’ve repeatedly noted the lunacy of concurrent development and production.  The Navy tried it with the LCS and failed badly.  They tried it with the Ford and failed badly.  However, the F-35 is the poster child for the idiocy of concurrency.  Now the consequences are starting to come out.  We’re faced with a no-win choice:  either rebuild these non-standard aircraft for exorbitant amounts of money on top of the already exorbitant amounts we paid to build them the first time around or leave them as non-standard, non-combat capable aircraft – essentially throw them away.  Sure, we’ll use a few as maintenance trainers but most will have no purpose.

The National Interest website (1) reports,

“The new F-35 program executive officer, U.S. Navy vice admiral Mat Winter, said his office is exploring the option of leaving 108 aircraft in their current state because the funds to upgrade them to the fully combat-capable configuration would threaten the Air Force’s plans to ramp up production in the coming years.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

“Left unsaid so far is what will become of the 81 F-35s purchased by the Marine Corps and Navy during that same period. If they are left in their current state, nearly 200 F-35s might permanently remain unready for combat because the Pentagon would rather buy new aircraft than upgrade the ones the American people have already paid for.”

National Interest astutely notes that these “concurrency orphans” are the ones that cost the most money because they were purchased earliest in the program.  These are the aircraft that cost $150M-$200M each.

Let’s look at that cost a bit closer.

For nice round numbers, let’s call it 200 concurrency orphans at $150M each.  That’s a total of  $30 billion !!!!!!!

$30B lost to concurrency.

That’s $30B worth of aircraft that will never be operational, never see combat, and will wind up sitting in storage somewhere while they are slowly scavenged for parts.

What could we have done with $30B? 

-          We could have bought 2 Ford class carriers

-          We could have bought 16 Burkes class destroyers

-          We could have bought 7 big deck amphibious ships

-          We could have bought 337 advanced Super Hornets (2)

-          We could have bought untold quantities of logistics support ships, minesweepers, ASW corvettes, and maybe, just maybe, a shell for the Zumwalt’s gun!

Worse, we are still producing non-combat capable aircraft and testing is still on-going so the final concurrency orphan tally will be markedly higher – perhaps 300 or so aircraft.

Come on, seriously, someone has to go to jail for this.

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(1)The National Interest website, “108 U.S. F-35s Won't Be Combat-Capable”, Dan Grazier, 16-Oct-2017,

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/108-us-f-35s-wont-be-combat-capable-22742

(2)USNI News website, “Navy Wants to Buy 80 More Super Hornets for $7.1B Over the Next Five Years”, Megan Eckstein, 13-Jun-2017,

https://news.usni.org/2017/06/13/navy-intends-to-buy-80-more-super-hornets-in-fydp-to-ease-fighter-shortfall

Are You Freaking Kidding Me?

Are you freaking kidding me????

As reported by USNI News, the Navy is going to conduct an in-depth review of the Ford because of all the problems it’s encountered (1).  The review is being triggered by a memo request from Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s chief buyer, to SecNav Ray Mabus.

“The review – outlined in the memo to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus from Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall – calls for the Office of the Secretary of Defense to take a closer look at key subsystems of the carrier that Kendall said could hamper the “schedule and performance” of Ford … “

This makes, what, about 900 reviews the Navy has conducted in the last year to investigate badly flawed programs.  If they truly need all these reviews then they have no idea what they're doing.  What has been the result of all these reviews?  In almost every case, no matter how flawed the subject, the recommendation and result is to stay the course.  What’s the point of reviews that don’t change anything?

Don’t we have an Admiral in charge of carriers?  Yes, we do!  Program Executive Officer (PEO) Aircraft Carriers for the Navy is RAdm. Thomas Moore.  He’s the guy with complete responsibility and authority for seeing to it that the Ford is progressing smoothly.  If things have gotten so bad that the Pentagon’s chief buyer has to mandate a review, shouldn’t we start by firing the PEO?  Where’s the accountability.  What’s that phrase?  “Not on my watch.”  Well, this has happened on his watch and he needs to be held accountable.

“What we have to determine now is whether it is best to ‘stay the course’ or adjust our plans, particularly for future ships of the class,” Kendall wrote, “The first step in that process has to be a completely objective and technically deep review of the current situation.”

The first step has to be a completely objective and technically deep review of the current situation??!  Are you freaking kidding me?  Shouldn’t a completely objective and technically deep review of the current situation be performed every day, if not every hour, in PEO’s office?  If we don’t have a completely objective and technically deep review of the current situation sitting on PEO’s desk, right this moment, and updated every hour, then PEO needs to be fired.

“The memo identified five areas the 60-day review will cover: propulsion and electrical system components, Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), Advanced Arresting Gear, Dual Band Radar and Advanced Weapon Elevators.”

Are you freaking kidding me??!  We need 60 days to figure out what’s going on?  I’ll repeat, if PEO Moore hasn’t got an up-to-the-minute completely objective and technically deep review of the current situation sitting on his desk then he needs to be fired.  We don’t need 60 days – 60 minutes should suffice and should be about 59 minutes more than we need.  If we truly need 60 days, those 60 days should be dedicated to a Court Martial of PEO for dereliction of duty.

“With the benefit of hindsight, it was clearly premature to include so many unproven technologies in the Gerald R, Ford.” 

Are you freaking kidding me??!  Benefit of hindsight??!  Every blogger and commenter with a double digit IQ, and most of the ones with a single digit IQ, knew and stated that trying to incorporate so many non-existent technologies into a production ship would cause problems.  Aside from the incredibly obvious common sense that would preclude such a course of action, the history of the LCS and the F-35 should have made it clear that concurrency and the incorporation of non-existent technology is idiotic and leads inexorably to cost overruns and schedule delays.

RAdm. Moore - PEO Carriers - Fire Him!

Don’t try to ease the blame by claiming the problems only became visible with the benefit of hindsight.  Anyone and almost everyone saw this train wreck coming many years ago.  Only the idiots running the Navy failed to see it.  The rest of us saw this with absolute certainty and said so long ago.

So, what does the Navy think about the state of the Ford?

“Those new technologies, “compounded the inherent challenges of a first in class design,” Navy spokeswoman Capt. Thurraya Kent said in a Tuesday statement to USNI News.  “Consequently, a comprehensive test program, the most integrated and complex shipbuilding test program to date, was developed to address the integration of these technologies. This test program has proven to be highly effective at resolving many first-of-class ship issues through the testing of developmental systems onboard CVN-78 and proving the performance of these systems.””

The Navy is quite pleased, it appears.  The test program has proven to be “highly effective” at resolving issues, the Navy claims – so effective that the ship is only billions of dollars over cost and looking to be around two years overdue for commissioning.  Even better, the Navy has hinted that many of the new technologies will be non-functional when the ship is commissioned.  Isn’t a commissioned ship supposed to be ready to fight?

This is the Navy’s idea of “highly effective”?  This is the Navy’s idea of how to run an acquisition program?  This is the Navy’s idea of sound project management?  This is the Navy’s idea of cost control? 

Are you freaking kidding me?

The Navy is in absolute denial.  People at the top need to be fired for this.

The Detroit Lions, long time joke of the National Football League for their perennial losing ways, once had a coach named Darryl Rogers in the mid-1980's.  After a few dismal losing seasons, he was frustrated, depressed, and wanted out.  He disgustedly remarked to a reporter, "What does a coach have to do around here to get fired?"

What does an Admiral in the Navy have to do to get fired?

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(1)USNI News website, “Pentagon Conducting New Review of Gerald R. Ford Carrier Program”, Sam LaGrone, 30-Aug-2016,

https://news.usni.org/2016/08/30/pentagon-conducting-new-review-ford-carrier-program

Navy Admits AAG Failure

The Navy may be forced to abandon the Advanced Arresting Gear system for the Ford class carriers after huge cost increases, schedule delays, and continuing technical challenges.  As reported by USNI News website (1),

“…SASC [Senate Armed Services Committee] laid out a pattern of cost increases from about a $476 million in costs for research development and acquisition in 2009 for four systems to a 2016 cost estimate of $1.4 billion – about a 130 percent increase when adjusted for inflation.”

A 130% increase – sounds about right for a Navy project!

USNI suggests that the Navy will replace the AAG in subsequent Ford carriers with a traditional arresting system.

“Ultimately, USNI News understands, the goal is to have the planned AAG systems on the ships that follow carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) – John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) and Enterprise(CVN-80) – replaced with a more traditional but enhanced version of the current Mk-7 MOD 3 arresting gear.”

At least the Navy recognizes the problem as evidenced by the following statement.

“Last year Program Executive Officer for the Navy’s carrier program told reporters that the service and General Atomics discovered the water twister – a complex paddlewheel designed to absorb 70 percent of the force of a landing – was under engineered and would be unable to withstand prolonged use without failing.”

“ ‘The Advanced Arresting Gear has become a model for how not to do acquisition of needed technology,’ a senior Navy official told USNI News on Tuesday.”

The issue is not the AAG, per se, but the concurrency of attempting to develop a non-existent technology while also initiating production.

Aside from the excess costs and schedule delays, a larger issue is what to do with the Ford.  We can put conventional arresting systems in the subsequent carriers but what do we do with Ford?  If the AAG is installed, it becomes a one-of-a-kind system that will prove difficult or impossible to maintain and eliminates any commonality between Ford and any other carrier in the fleet.  If we retrofit a conventional system to Ford, the costs to remove the AAG system, re-engineer a conventional system into place, and actually procure and install it will cause further cost overruns and schedule delays. 

This is a classic no-win situation.  The Navy’s foolish insistence on concurrent development and production has bit them in the ass once again.  You’d think the Navy would learn but they remain incapable of learning lessons.

This is why you don’t begin production that depends on non-existent technology.

The lesson can’t be any simpler or clearer.  Even the Navy’s mentally challenged leadership should be able to grasp it by now.  But, of course, they won’t.

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(1) USNI News website, “Navy May Back Away From Advanced Arresting Gear for Ford Carriers”, Sam LaGrone, May 24, 2016,

https://news.usni.org/2016/05/24/19801

IRST

The Navy is developing an Infrared Search And Track (IRST) sensor as a means of producing passive, infrared target location and tracking with accuracy sufficient for weapon guidance.  This would be useful for combat while remaining “stealthy” and not broadcasting with one’s own radar and for operating in an electromagnetically challenged environment where normal radar operation is degraded.  The system is initially intended for the F-18 Hornet.

DOT&E has reported its assessment of the IRST in the 2015 Annual Report.

“The system tested in OA 1 [ed., Operational Assessment 1, conducted in 2014] could not detect and track targets well enough to support weapons employment in an environment that reflects realistic fighter employment and tactics.”

Disturbingly, the unit’s basic design criteria is questionable, according to DOT&E.

“The Key Performance Parameter (KPP) and the derived contract specification for detection and tracking describe only a narrow subset of the operational environments where the Navy will employ IRST. Meeting the KPP (with a narrow reading of the KPP requirement) does not ensure a useful combat capability.”

Who came up with the initial spec????

IRST Mounted in Nose of Fuel Tank

Despite this, the Navy granted approval to enter into Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP).  This is a growing trend in the Navy, to accept products that fail to meet specs or fail to demonstrate useful combat capabilities.  Why are we building and buying a product that is not yet useful?

IRST Fuel Tank Mount

All of that aside, an IRST ought to offer a much needed capability for very little impact on aircraft performance (the IRST is mounted in the nose of the centerline fuel tank so fuel/range will be slightly reduced).  This is just one more incremental improvement that will help keep the Hornet viable.  I just wish the Navy would complete development before entering into production.  This is concurrency, again, which will require the initial IRST’s to be remanufactured, eventually.

Update:  This is why the DOT&E is so important and why there is tension between the Navy and DOT&E.  The Navy is entering into LRIP even though DOT&E testing shows the IRST to be of very questionable combat value.  If DOT&E didn't exist, we'd never know about the problems until combat revealed them and the Navy would have already committed to full scale production of a marginally useful system.  Why the Navy insists on putting badly flawed and substandard systems into full production is beyond me.

F-35 Tidbits

Here’s a quick update on the F-35, courtesy of GAO (1).

Software.  First, a refresher on the F-35 software development.  Software is being developed and delivered in blocks with each block adding new capabilities and moving the aircraft closer to full operation.

1&2     A  Training

2B       Initial Warfighting Capability;           Marine IOC

3i         Extension of 2B;                                Air Force IOC

3F       Full Warfighting Capability;              Navy IOC

Engines.  Engine reliability is still a major issue.

“Data provided by Pratt & Whitney indicate that the mean flight hours between failure for the F-35A engine is about 21 percent of where the engine was expected to be at this point in the program. The F-35B engine is about 52 percent of where the engine was expected to be at this point.”

Look at those percentages.  That is some awful reliability!  Who’d have thought that the B version would have the more reliable engine?

Cost.  As of Dec 2014, GAO reports the total program cost estimate as,

Development             54.9B

Procurement              331.6B

Unit Cost                    $159M per aircraft

So there you have it.  With all the proclamations about $80M aircraft, the actual unit cost is $159M.  That’s a little different than what the program managers and LM are telling us, huh?

Concurrency.  This is a stunning bit.  We’ve thoroughly documented that the practice of concurrency (production of an item while it’s still being designed and tested) inevitably adds cost as products have to be reworked multiple times to fix and modify problems uncovered during testing.

“As of June 2014, DOD estimated that at that point about $1.7 billion in funding was needed to rework and retrofit aircraft with design changes needed as a result of test discoveries.”

$1.7B required for concurrency corrections??!!  The report doesn’t state how many aircraft are affected but let’s say there are 100-200 that have been produced or are in production at this point that are affected, so that works out to around $9M - $17M per aircraft for concurrency fixes.

Is that the end of the concurrency costs?  Well, no.

“… with more complex and demanding testing ahead and engine reliability improvements needed, it is almost certain that the program will encounter more discoveries.”

So, the concurrency costs will continue to add up.  I hope the F-35 supporters add these costs into the production costs as they make their claims about how cheap the F-35 is.

Finally, bear in mind that this aircraft hasn’t even come close to working through all its test points.  There are lots more problems to come.

(1)GAO, “F-35 Joint Strike Fighter”, Apr 2015, GAO-15-364

Ford Problems

Stars and Stripes reports (1) that the Boston Globe has obtained a Navy report that describes potentially severe problems being encountered during continued fitting and testing of the new carrier, the Ford.  Here’s some excerpts from the article.

“The U.S. Navy's newest aircraft carrier, a multibillion-dollar behemoth that is the first in a next generation of carriers, is beset with performance problems, even failing tests of its ability to launch and recover combat jets, according to an internal assessment by the Pentagon obtained by the Boston Globe.”

“The Globe reported Friday that early tests are raising worries that the USS Gerald R. Ford, christened in November, may not meet the Navy's goal of significantly increasing the number of warplanes it can quickly launch — and could even be less effective than older vessels.”

“At least four crucial components being installed are at risk because of their poor or unknown reliability, states the 30-page testing assessment, which was delivered last month to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other top Pentagon leaders.”

 

“In addition to the launching and landing systems for jet fighters, officials are also concerned about its advanced radar system. It also remains unclear if a key weapons elevator will work as promised.”

“A number of other systems, such as communications gear, meanwhile, are performing at less than acceptable standards, according to the assessment by J. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation. Gilmore concluded that the Navy has little choice but to redesign key components of the ship.”

I don’t find the existence of problems to be terribly troubling.  A new ship class is expected to have teething problems.  The disappointing aspect of this is that the major problems have been predicted for several years, now.  Components such as EMALS, the AAG, radar, etc. were installed before completing development and testing.  It’s a lot easier to find and fix problems on land, in a test facility, then to do so on an installed system.  Large amounts of money have already been spent retrofitting the Ford to accommodate modifications and fixes to these systems and, apparently, much more will be spent in the coming years.

Was there really a need to rush these systems into service?  None are game changers from a combat perspective.  In theory, they’ll provide some nice advantages eventually but we have a bunch of Nimitz carriers that are functioning just fine without them.  Couldn’t we have waited five more years and installed the new systems on the next carrier after a thorough development and testing period?  We’d have saved many hundreds of millions of dollars and wound up with mature designs.  Did we learn nothing from the LCS fiasco?  Instead, the Navy continued its recklessly irresponsible pattern of concurrent design and production and concurrent R&D and production as we’ve discussed repeatedly in previous posts.

The Navy’s response was predictable.

“Rear Adm. Thomas J. Moore, the program executive officer for aircraft carriers, defended the progress of the ship in an interview and expressed confidence that, in the two years before delivery, the Navy and its contractors will overcome what he acknowledged are multiple hurdles.”

When everyone tells you that you’re wrong about something you can either choose to believe that there might be something to what they say or you can stubbornly believe that they’re all wrong and you, and you alone, are right.  Which response is most likely to be the correct one?  If your name is Einstein, you may be justified in believing that you, and you alone, are correct.  If, however, your name is anyone else, you might want to pause and reconsider when everyone tells you that you’re wrong.  On top of that, if you’ve been through this exercise a dozen times and you’ve been wrong every single time, it’s just the definition of insanity to continue to believe that you’re right and everyone else is wrong.

The Navy continues to ignore GAO, Congressional Research Service, DOT&E, and ComNavOps, among others, preferring to believe that they know better.  Sadly, history does not support their belief and this is just the latest example.

That the Ford has problems is not a concern.  That the Navy continues to exhibit a pattern of stupidity is a concern.

(1) http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/01/11/new-carrier-plagued-by-problems-in-test-phase.html?comp=7000023435630&rank=2