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Subject: Zumwalt Joins The Seawolf Club
SYSOP    4/22/2014 5:17:23 AM
 
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faster_blue    reducing costs   4/22/2014 7:42:45 AM
The best way to reduce costs is to order foreign.  South Korea or Japan have excellent ship building facilities.  Order a dozen ships from S. Korea and see if the American yards figure it out. 
 
Or nationalize the yards.  Give the workers a GS number, the stockholders a check and management the boot.
 
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keffler25       4/22/2014 8:01:15 AM
 In the quoted post an ignorance of actual reality..
 
Nationalizing the American shipbuilding industry is what produced this mess.
 
To drive costs down... encourage commercial domestic competition with a a relaxation of current corporate welfare as practiced by the American Congress as is done with the American space program.
 
It was how the modern American steel navy was built.  
 
Might put more American commercial shipping to sea as well.

The best way to reduce costs is to order foreign.  South Korea or Japan have excellent ship building facilities.  Order a dozen ships from S. Korea and see if the American yards figure it out. 

 

Or nationalize the yards.  Give the workers a GS number, the stockholders a check and management the boot.

 
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Chris       4/22/2014 10:56:52 AM
While the Seawolf class was also stopped at 3 boats (not 2, as the article indicated:  USS Seawolf, USS Connecticut, and USS Jimmy Carter), what it did do was provide a tremendous amount of the design basis for the excellent Virginia-class that the US has been and will be building for some time to come.
 
If the technologies built into the Zumwalt class are as successful as they think they might be, we'll see a lot of its design features finding their way into subsequent destroyer/ship designs as the article indicates.  
 
It is also notable that all three of the Zumwalt-class ships are slated for deployment in the Pacific, and I've recently read a report that indicates that the Navy is going to evaluate the new ships carefully, and may yet decide to build more of them than the currently scheduled/planned three.

 
 
 
 
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HR       4/22/2014 11:37:19 AM
The Spruance where mentioned here but they where optimized for anti-sub work mostly against the Soviet Navy and today they would not have that useful against what foes we do have. The Perry's where also mostly anti-sub platforms with very little other capabilities. Their early retirement has not meant that much of a loss when compared to the LCS that are coming in line now and more so when you compare it to the potential next development in the LCS which I hope will have more anti-air capacity than current.
 
" A similar fate is now unfolding for the new LCS (Littoral Combat Ship) design, which is basically a “frigate for the 21st century” and optimized for coastal operations. It cost more than expected, had more development problems than expected and, as expected, orders are shrinking. " - I think there is more than a small amount of editorializing in this statement. There will be an LCS in the future but it seems that in order to placate critics it will be larger and more heavily armed with organic weapons... no matter if in the future they take those off to save weight. And I believe that the tri-hull one is superior to the sea skimming version and you might see a cancellation of the latter. But that is speculation built on what I am reading.
 
Also, there are complementary programs that fit the LCS profile ships that are marching along and not being stopped. 
 
The size of the Zumwalt is mind boggling and that needs to be addressed. Maybe bring back the concept of an Arsenal Ship. But for the money a small carrier with a well is 10 times more flexible and useful and a submarine can do the land attack just as well... the only thing that differentiates it are its guns and those can be mounted on specialized ships. While I do not know what is wrong with the Zumwalt exactly it does seem to be trying to do too much.
 
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Chris       4/22/2014 12:40:26 PM
A similar fate is now unfolding for the new LCS (Littoral Combat Ship) design, which is basically a “frigate for the 21st century” and optimized for coastal operations. It cost more than expected, had more development problems than expected and, as expected, orders are shrinking.  
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LCS suffers from a number of problems:  poor reviews from every watchdog organization that has investigated it (including the Navy's own inspectors) have revealed that LCS shouldn't be exposed to combat, and the only feature it has that "optimizes" it for the littorals is its relatively shallow draft.
 
It's sea-frame is only built to the navy's level-1 standard, is very short on protection features for its crew, and its base armament leaves a lot to be desired,  even with the "surface warfare" mission package.
 
The USS Freedom variant recently finished its first deployment to Asia, where it performed poorly, and left its crew exhausted from lack of sleep because they couldn't keep up with maintenance, even with help from the 18-member Surface Warfare crew, the contractors they had aboard, and the 10 additional crew assigned to the ship before she was deployed (the crew size is now 50, instead of 40), according to the GAO report released this month.  The other mission packages, have far less crew able to help with maintenance chores.
 
The concern is that the crew size is so far off count, that the ship will have to be redesigned to support the increased crew size.  It would seem that the folks at Lockheed failed to do the math when it came to designing automated systems, maintenance workloads, and crew sizes by a large margin.
 
No word on the USS Independence class. 
 
 
 
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HR       4/22/2014 2:02:04 PM
Do not confused paid consultants with independent watch-dogs. Many of the critics are on someone's payroll.
 
And the government agencies that audit these programs ALWAYS find faults... they even report faults that have been corrected and faults that are acknowledged and being fixed.
 
The Freedom had a very difficult deployment. The crew size can be tweaked but what could not be tweaked where constant problems with breakdowns that the Independence did not have. This has many serious observers wondering about the possibility that the tri-hull might be the one design they keep.
 
For informed reading on the LCS I suggest following Christopher Cavas who is one of the few journalists who has actually sailed on the LCS and who has covered them from their inception and normally avoids editorial type opinions.
 
 
Knowing what I know about the history of smaller surface combatants I consider modularity of extreme importance and would hope the Navy sees that too and continuous with that concept.
 
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HR       4/22/2014 2:30:37 PM
This is Cavas' latest. It is from the 19 Apr and I will urge anyone interested in this topic of the LCS to read it. It is well balanced, not advocacy matter of fact presentation and real insights will help anyone who is looking for a reporter with no cat-in-the-fight attitude, see below.
 
 
Now, when you read that the Reagan folks where pushing for a Perry / FFG 7-class frigate you should also read lobbying efforts by Bath/General Dynamics. And of course Lockheed Martin is the target of the criticism and how much truth is in any of it is questionable since both of these giants will pay reporters and think tanks to give opinions that are conveniently tilted on one direction or another.
 
It is clear that marketing wise the Austral people are out-gunned and in my mind what ever virtues their design has will need to overcome the barrages coming from those two quarters. I do agree with Cavas that another Perry is out of the question but my reason for thinking that is that it will be hard to up-date and modernize as well as having a what is now considered to be a tiny flight deck to deploy what is its most important weapon: the helicopter and now the drones too.
 
 
 
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trenchsol       4/22/2014 3:07:05 PM
I assume that cruiser version will have SM-2 and/or SM-3 instead of ESSM ?
 
 
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budanski       4/22/2014 5:00:52 PM



The best way to reduce costs is to order foreign.  South Korea or Japan have excellent ship building facilities.  Order a dozen ships from S. Korea and see if the American yards figure it out. 


 


Or nationalize the yards.  Give the workers a GS number, the stockholders a check and management the boot.

Isn't real problem here the politicians who oppose any program unless their state has a piece of it. bolts bought in PA, nuts bought  GA… not from the same manufacturer. The JSF has like 48 states involved.
 
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HR       4/22/2014 5:30:36 PM
Wikepedia says it has the Sea Sparrow. I assume the vertical launch tubes will take anything you want to put in them and I believe it has 80 of those.
 
This is a strange ship and I am not thrilled by it. In many ways I am glad we are only getting a few of them. Having the missiles located along the perimeter of the ship where they are the most vulnerable is odd. The hull type is one that looses buoyancy as it sinks which is the opposite of others. And it is trying to do too much... I always wondered if the guns where a concession to the Marines to get them to support the project; I do not think they will ever be used.
 
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