Do you legitimately think that Trump or his bros want a "workforce" to exist when they are all finished? Serious question.....
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Road to 350: What Does the US Navy Do Anyway?
- Thread starter Randy Daytona
- Start date
Do you legitimately think that Trump or his bros want a "workforce" to exist when they are all finished? Serious question.....
Brett, which statement below did Randy make that was inaccurate? Even official Navy sources have acknowledged the issues within our shipbuilding and maritime maintenance infrastructure and workforce. I can tell you from personal experience that these issues exist and that we are working on figuring out how to fix them. I feel like you're shooting the messenger here.
The messenger that I’m shooting is a bad faith actor. I’m not commenting on the message.
From what little I've seen and heard about him he is a bit like Ward Carroll, but with less actual experience and credibility.
I am not sure you can lay all the blame of our shipbuilding industry at a lack of subsidies and tariffs, foreign shipyards have been building first-class products at much less cost for decades now. While there is likely some need for government assistance a company that relies primarily on something like that often does not produce the best product.
And while our shipbuilding industry needs help I wouldn't say we've forgotten to build warships to scale, as DDG's and SSN's continue to be built at a decent rate. I think many of the issues with the FFG's seem to be with the Navy and not the shipbuilder, though from what I've seen they do have issues as well.
You can't shoot feelings
Judging by the last 2 decades of offshoring and H1B visas, does anybody on Wall Street want a US workforce?
That said, President Trump would be interested in “Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters” by giving them meaningful and rewarding blue collar jobs - and these voters would be highly likely to reward said benefactor and his party.
There are some industries that are dual use, have tremendous national security implications, and must be supported at all costs. Shipbuilding is one of them.
The Virginia class subs were first laid down under Clinton, the first Burke under Reagan. We have no ability to surge production. As for new ships, the LCS, Zumwalt, Ford, hardly inspire confidence in being on time or on budget. I agree that the Constellation class frigate’s issues are with the Navy constantly changing specifications.
Interesting article:
Ship Wars: Confronting China’s Dual-Use Shipbuilding Empire
China is leveraging its globally dominant commercial shipbuilding industry to support its naval modernization—and foreign companies are inadvertently helping. This report outlines how the United States and its partners can confront China's dual-use shipyards.
Burkes did relatively well in construction because we developed a pretty good idea of what we want them to do, and it fit well in the Fleet design. If you dig back far enough though, they had their growing pains…there’s a reason my first ship was first nicknamed “Always Broke.” Once the design stabilized we got pretty good at building them. And the Fleet actually wanted them enough to let the design go through the growing pains. So I’d agree with Flash…there are some designs we do know how to build. The problem is capacity, which is both about infrastructure and the labor force. Where you have a point, is that we don’t have another labor pool and spare yards to tap to increase capacity. FFG is an example of that…the yards that are stamping ships out for us are tapped out, which in what incentivized us to look for someone new…which has been part of the problem.There are some industries that are dual use, have tremendous national security implications, and must be supported at all costs. Shipbuilding is one of them.
The Virginia class subs were first laid down under Clinton, the first Burke under Reagan. We have no ability to surge production. As for new ships, the LCS, Zumwalt, Ford, hardly inspire confidence in being on time or on budget. I agree that the Constellation class frigate’s issues are with the Navy constantly changing specifications.
Interesting article:
Ship Wars: Confronting China’s Dual-Use Shipbuilding Empire
China is leveraging its globally dominant commercial shipbuilding industry to support its naval modernization—and foreign companies are inadvertently helping. This report outlines how the United States and its partners can confront China's dual-use shipyards.www.csis.org
LCS, Zumwalt and Ford are examples of ships where the Navy tried to get too fucking clever for its own good. Ford…y’all know plenty about the problem of shoving all the experimental technologies into a ship at once. The first two were designed to requirements and missions that made zero fucking sense, the Navy couldn’t make up its mind what it wanted, and the Fleet hated the idea of what the Navy was pushing. We really should’ve just fucking built more Burkes and FFG7s instead of trying to get cute.
Constellation is a bit different…though some themes repeated. It does actually fit the conventional Fleet design pretty well, in the sense it is at its worst still a shit load better than a FFG7, and the Fleet would immediately know WTF to do with it.
Where Navy did screw up is in signing up for a design requirement that made no sense…forcing it to adopt an “in service” foreign design inspired false confidence, because at a minimum we had to rip out all their weapon systems to incorporate ours. Then someone (Congress?) fucked it even harder because a whole lot of exemptions in the original Euro design from “Buy American” got shit canned, forcing them to swap in additional US mechanical and electrical systems too. I’m not sure who screwed up the survivability standards requiring further redesign. From folks I know - the shipyard didn’t do great either. They apparently didn’t actually expect to win, and weren’t actually ready with enough engineers/architects and skilled technical labor in the yard to actually deliver what they signed up for.
Bottom line, the aviation analogy I would use:
We bought a Eurofighter, then declared we’d be able to rapidly onshore the design to build despite:
1) Needing to replace all the avionics, ordnance systems, and radar/EW with US systems
2) not checking if we could just accept their structural standards…it’d be like taking an AF jet and deciding we needed to beef it up for carrier landings then surprise face - it’s a heavy pig
3) instead of going to an established manufacturer like LM or Boeing, deciding to go to a relatively new startup who had only previously built jet trainers.
3A) after picking the new guys, make it even harder for them by telling them midstream that they need to up the amount of the European design using US parts. So…engines, electrical systems, whatever it takes to hit some arbitrary number
We did this, it’s called the T-45.
Thank you for the extended reply. Perhaps poorly phrased, but the point I was trying to get across is that the Virginia is a 30 year old design, the Burke a 40 year old. Considering the LCS and Zumwalt, I am not confident of the ability to design a warship or produce it on a war footing scale.
On a separate subject, I thought this was a fascinating concept from China. Perhaps the Prius of submarines, the Type 041. It apparently uses a small nuclear reactor to charge its batteries, not to directly power the sub. It appears to have a lot of the endurance of a nuclear sub, if not the speed - and interestingly was built in a different shipyard. This has potential, especially in areas like the South China Sea.
Chinese Submarine That Sunk Had Exotic Hybrid Nuclear Powerplant: Report
New details are coming to light about China’s Type 041 Zhou class submarine and its experimental propulsion system. New details are coming to light about China’s Type 041 Zhou class submarine and its experimental propulsion system.
www.twz.com
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
The Virginia class submarine is a downscaled version of the Seawolf class submarine.
I'll never forget doing a tour at Naval Reactors where the engineer was ecstatic that the Navy discovered that it could save a ton of money by incorporating Henry Ford's assembly line process toward building ships. This was in the 21st century. And NR is arguably the most technologically forward-leaning sub-organization in the DoD.
Anyway, the HM&E problem is mostly solved when it comes to building ships. Like, it's nice but not mission critical that the VACL submarine is designed to avoid freeze seals to perform nuclear maintenance on some components... although some poor QA on nuclear welding during initial construction has cost the DoD hundreds of billions. The rubber meets the road in combat systems sensors and ordnance.
You are literally making no sense.
Yeah, I’m lost. I just figured it was because I’m not a sub guy.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
In layman's terms: The navy discovered a 1940s manufacturing process in the 00s to save money. Apparently this required a hull change from the seawolf class to virginia class. Everyone high-fived themselves about this "novel" discovery.
The engineering of ship's hull and propulsion systems is mostly optimized with very small room for improvement, aside from ensuring quality of work from our barrel bellied, alcoholic, felony-convicted shipyard bubbas. Combat system sensors (radar, sonar, ew, etc.) and things that go boom are where we can make meaningful technological advancements.
Sorry for the jargon.
The engineering of ship's hull and propulsion systems is mostly optimized with very small room for improvement, aside from ensuring quality of work from our barrel bellied, alcoholic, felony-convicted shipyard bubbas. Combat system sensors (radar, sonar, ew, etc.) and things that go boom are where we can make meaningful technological advancements.
Sorry for the jargon.
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I get you. Yeah the TLDR of my post would’ve been that you and Flash were both kinda right.Thank you for the extended reply. Perhaps poorly phrased, but the point I was trying to get across is that the Virginia is a 30 year old design, the Burke a 40 year old. Considering the LCS and Zumwalt, I am not confident of the ability to design a warship or produce it on a war footing scale.
On a separate subject, I thought this was a fascinating concept from China. Perhaps the Prius of submarines, the Type 041. It apparently uses a small nuclear reactor to charge its batteries, not to directly power the sub. It appears to have a lot of the endurance of a nuclear sub, if not the speed - and interestingly was built in a different shipyard. This has potential, especially in areas like the South China Sea.
Chinese Submarine That Sunk Had Exotic Hybrid Nuclear Powerplant: Report
New details are coming to light about China’s Type 041 Zhou class submarine and its experimental propulsion system. New details are coming to light about China’s Type 041 Zhou class submarine and its experimental propulsion system.
it’s a fair point to question if we could design a new warship today. I heard CNO Gilday pretty much rip a bunch of people a new one that Constellation needed to not be a fuck up to essentially put that same perception to bed. I have no idea why the hell they picked FMM (the new guys) to do first of class design and construction, especially given how much they were going to have to modify the imported design.
What gets lost in the shuffle is DDG Flight III going relatively smoothly. It’s not quite as noticeable as a brand new ship class, but it was also a major ship redesign from the previous ship design
War footing scale for ship construction is a more complex discussion. I’m not sold we actually need it, or that we could even do anything productive with it even if the material side could support it. But for now we have the yards that we have, who have the capacity they have. If we want more, we need to be ready to pay a lot more.