Credibility of Navy Leadership assailed on Hill

[usmarinemike]

-Way too much surface Navy speak for me.

-The lower ranks and promotion system(in the Marine Corps at least) is still a great model of a meritocracy. It seems that upper level field grade and general officer ranks have a bit of an abused meritocracy flavor, but still, is the cronyism still as bad as big business and (dare I say) the executive branch of the US government?

 

[A4sForever]

....And I'd also love to know how much the De Zeven Provinciën costs...

Funny what jumps to mind w/ certain associations. This is what I thought of when you said: De Zeven Provinciën. I guess I'm dating myself. :sleep_125

A fine lookin' ship in any case:

De Zeven Provinciën class cruiser

/threadjack

 

[Mumbles]

There is a good reason why my SWO brethern call FFGs "missile sponges".....

 

[Gatordev]

FFGs

DDGs

Better?

Still a 35% difference in crew size.

You can quote websites all you want, it doesn't make it true. But what would I know....

 

[Mumbles]

I think we should have kept these around a while.... just my .02

actually the PLAN has gone full tilt on small, fast, ASCM armed PTG construction.
Standby.... I think they could cause some heartburn for some future CSG Commanders
http://www.sinodefence.com/navy/littoral/type022.asp

 

[bert]

A couple of comments from the acquisition peanut gallery:

- We haven't just lost credibility on ship building: look at VH-71 or the Romeo/Yankee/Zulu - was re-manufacture ever really going to happen or were we full of crap from VERY early in the process?

- Flash has a good point about the difference between an FFG designed in the 70's vs on designed today right up until you consider development costs. Be it LCS/LPD-17/the Zumwalt, blah, blah, blah you can see how badly NAVSEA is broken. What would a FFG cost given our current development strategies?

- I'll be the first to unfairly chuck poop at the Air Force, but we are all the Air Force these days as far as acquisition goes. Comanche to Crusader to FCS to LUH if you Army guys are not feeling guilty enough, and 60 Minutes already covered Deepwater for the Coasties.

 

[xj220]

A couple of comments from the acquisition peanut gallery:

- We haven't just lost credibility on ship building: look at VH-71 or the Romeo/Yankee/Zulu - was re-manufacture ever really going to happen or were we full of crap from VERY early in the process?

- Flash has a good point about the difference between an FFG designed in the 70's vs on designed today right up until you consider development costs. Be it LCS/LPD-17/the Zumwalt, blah, blah, blah you can see how badly NAVSEA is broken. What would a FFG cost given our current development strategies?

- I'll be the first to unfairly chuck poop at the Air Force, but we are all the Air Force these days as far as acquisition goes. Comanche to Crusader to FCS to LUH if you Army guys are not feeling guilty enough, and 60 Minutes already covered Deepwater for the Coasties.

How did everything come to be this way? Why do these programs end of failling? Is it red tape or politics? I'm just curious since this is stuff way over my head.

 

[phrogdriver]

Sometimes I think if you asked a shipbuilder to recreate, bulkhead-by-bulkhead, a pre-1980's cruiser or frigate, our contracting system is so jacked that it would cost over a billion dollars to create ships that used to cost in the 10s of millions, even adjusting for inflation. I mean, yes, I understand the electronics are expensive, but in terms of the actual hull's ordnance and performance, it's not as though we're talking orders-of-magnitude differences here.

 

[Pugs]

even adjusting for inflation. I mean, yes, I understand the electronics are expensive, but in terms of the actual hull's ordnance and performance, it's not as though we're talking orders-of-magnitude differences here.

Well it depends on what you call inflation. Raw materials have gone up, certainly of late, at a rate far faster than inflation, energy costs too and the costs of shipyard workers today are a whole lot higher than it was. Their wages may have kept pace with inflation but it costs the company a whole lot more to keep them with health care and other "hidden" costs.

If you look at the track record of the Nimitz class as they've built more they've gotten very good at getting them done ahead of schedule and under budget but after you take one out for shakedown they're going to go back in the yards for months to have pretty much all of combat and other electronics rich environments ripped out and updated from what was bid and built over the years it takes to contract, construct and accept the boat.

All the ships are far more complex, the raw cost of electronics have gone down over time but the engineering behind them has gotten much more complicated and you're now paying for a lot more high-end engineering where before it was a team of Naval Architects and Engineers now its much bigger and spread across a whole lot more disciplines.

I'm not defending the Navy's mismanagement but Congress bears some blame here as well. When you minimally fund large projects across multiple life cycles of components you may end up with a better project but it will cost more. The V-22 and F-22 are prime examples of that.

 

[A4sForever]

.... but Congress bears some blame here as well....

I put 90% of the blame there. They are the "enablers" that have allowed this sorry situation to develop over the past 60 years.

 

[Mumbles]

^^ The "August Body" that is the U.S. Congress has seen fit to spread contracts for components of the F-22, for example, to something like 48 of 50 states. I'm not up to snuff on my procurement knowledge like some on the board, but that kind of smacks of spreading the pork around to keep voters back home happy.

 

[HeyJoe]

^^ The "August Body" that is the U.S. Congress has seen fit to spread contracts for components of the F-22, for example, to something like 48 of 50 states. I'm not up to snuff on my procurement knowledge like some on the board, but that kind of smacks of spreading the pork around to keep voters back home happy.

That isn't a result of Congressional direction, BUT it is due to the prime contractor making it so. In the case of JSF, the same strategy is worked on an international level. Most international partners insist on "offsets" for anything they buy and the job of working that is a very serious high level position. Back to F-22, I went to the Marietta Plan in mid 90s to view the prototype to work AIM-9X integration in the sidebays. They had the airplane next to table after table of the various components arranged by the state they were manufactured in with pertinent data (ie who made it, how many people employed and dollar value). They did that for visiting members of Congress and their staff to build support. I asked my escort how hard was that to do and his comment was "Really hard, especially in states like Alaska that are light on aerospace manufacturing".

 

[Flash]

I put 90% of the blame there. They are the "enablers" that have allowed this sorry situation to develop over the past 60 years.

I'm not defending the Navy's mismanagement but Congress bears some blame here as well. When you minimally fund large projects across multiple life cycles of components you may end up with a better project but it will cost more. The V-22 and F-22 are prime examples of that.

I think Congress bears a lot less of the blame than you think. Sure, there are some shennanigans on Congress' part when it comes to spreading the wealth, but there are a litany of programs that have not had a whole lot of congressional attention or interference that have been budgeting fiascos. They are an easy target, but I don't think they are the ones to be focusing on.

If you look at the track record of the Nimitz class as they've built more they've gotten very good at getting them done ahead of schedule and under budget

I would hope so, they have been building the same basic ship for 35 years.

Raw materials have gone up......costs of shipyard workers today are a whole lot higher than it was......the raw cost of electronics have gone down over time but the engineering behind them has gotten much more complicated.....a lot more high-end engineering where before it was a team of Naval Architects and Engineers

I think most of the blame can be spread equally between the military and the contractors. We have allowed our oversight of programs to become lax while constantly adding requirements to programs in the middle of their design, development, construction and deployment. This is not limited to just one program, the list of programs that have spiralled in cost includes all services and all types; SIBRS, the AAAV, LCS, Future Combat System, National Security Cutter, AH-1Z/UH-1Y, C-130AMP, etc. All of those can't be blamed mostly on Congress, there is something wrong with the system.

SIBRS and the C-130 AMP cost overruns can largely be laid at the feet of the contractors (look them up, they are/were both worth billions) while the AAAV and the UH-1Y/AH-1Z can be partly blamed on shifting requirements and some unrealistic ones.

And we don't even do anything when contractors do something blantantly wrong, like the contractors with the USCG National Security Cutter and 123' Patrol Boats, that were delievered with cracks in the hull.

Blaming Congress and saying it is the cost of doing business is a disservice to the military, and ignores the systemic problems that need to be fixed with the DoD procurement process.

 

[Pugs]

I think Congress bears a lot less of the blame than you think. Sure, there are some shennanigans on Congress' part when it comes to spreading the wealth, but there are a litany of programs that have not had a whole lot of congressional attention or interference that have been budgeting fiascos. They are an easy target, but I don't think they are the ones to be focusing on.

You missed my point. It's not about district set-asides, although I think that has more to do with it than you think. It's about setting requirements and a steady PFR to accomplish the goal with those record funds. If you look at the two 22's you'll find they have largely been funded by widely varied supplementals and not steady record funding. If you have to depend on that supplemental funding it is very difficult to establish a steady trend towards to delivery and you end up with a very cyclic and dynamic program that is highly inefficent toward any capability.

"Agile Development" is very much the buzzword in the acquisition community right now, done right it could offer better capability sooner and done with the current congressional mindset could easily result in simply more drawn out development at greater cost.

No one said building the next weapon system was easy.

 

[Flash]

You missed my point. It's not about district set-asides, although I think that has more to do with it than you think. It's about setting requirements and a steady PFR to accomplish the goal with those record funds. If you look at the two 22's you'll find they have largely been funded by widely varied supplementals and not steady record funding. If you have to depend on that supplemental funding it is very difficult to establish a steady trend towards to delivery and you end up with a very cyclic and dynamic program that is highly inefficent toward any capability.

No one said building the next weapon system was easy.

I think the V-22 is a bit of a different case than most other weapon systems, largely because of the unusual focus on the aircraft. Many other systems that I mentioned, never get much notice at all. I wonder how many people on this board ever heard of SIBRS or the C-130 AMP before they googled it after seeing it my post, maybe you and 4 or 5 others at most. And yet they both cost billions, with little interference from Congress.