U.S. Navy's shipbuilding costs criticized

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=cc7f47a8856f5633

Some members of Congress are questioning the U.S. Navy's plan to expand its fleet to 313 ships, citing budget concerns and cost overruns, a report said.

While the Navy has projected spending $13.5 billion a year to build 30 new ships -- including the DDX destroyer -- the Congressional Budget Office says the annual tab will be closer to $18 billion.

snip...
Those issues, combined with consistent Navy cost overruns, have angered some members of Congress, the Chicago Tribune reported.

You'll never see a 313-ship Navy if these costs prevail, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said during a recent hearing. These are staggering numbers. In the past 10 to 15 years, the cost escalation has been astronomical.

more...

313 ships what amazing number almost magical... The US War MACHINE is unsustainable is right...

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. That's about 150 more than we really need, and about 250 more than we

sensibly need.

313 ships?

To fight whom? Our navy has so much more firepower than the rest of the world's navies combined, it's not even funny.

[VTMechEngr]

2. The Fleet is getting old and needs renewed.

No offense, but we need the Navy since we put troops all over the planet. The navy is a great method of transport, and can be stationed all over to provide whatever support we need. Many newer ships can mount land based attacks by Special forces or missiles. The newest class of submarine has been designed to monitor communications off coast and can launch seal attacks or missiles without ever being seen.

Naval ships have specialized purposes, which is why there are so many. Some launch Marine landing craft, others helicopters, carriers launch jets, destroyers protect the other ships from subs, etc, Tenders carry fuel, supply ships, hospital ships...

This country also is a major shipping country, and our navy protects the shipping channels that are this countries lifelines. Without the resources shipped here, our lifestyle and manufacturing would collapse. Or at least collapse even worse than Bush and his cronies have managed to do.


313 ships, to cover 72% or so of the planets surface.

As for ship building, our fleet is getting old, and we need newer ships. Otherwise, its like maintaining an old car, and could cost us even more.

[rppper]

3. we have just decomisioned all 30 of the......

spruance and all 4 of the kidd class destroyers, all built in the late 70's and early 80's. most still had a good 15 to 20 years of hull life left and were some of the most powerfull and advanced destroyers built. most had been converted to have a vls system and they were still one of the best ASW platforms on the ocean. the first ships of the burke class carried no asw helos, and had to have a major redesign added to them. we are still building the phase 2 arleigh burke class destroyers. we are decomisioning all of the 9 fossil fuel carriers, even though they are in good shape. all of the sturgeon class and the first flight 688/los angeles class subs are being phased out, most of which, while old, were still in fairly good shape....

the point here is that even our older subs, destroyers and carriers are still better than any other navy's, and we are not building replacements for them at nowhere near the same rate. the decomissioning of all the spruances and not re-fueling the first flight 688's is disturbing to me, as the overall cost in R & D and production for new warships is far greater than upgrading. even as is, they were better fighting ships than anything that could be thrown at them.

this wasn't the first blunder made by the navy either...15 years ago they were phasing out the perry class frigates untill someone realised that destroyers alone could not do a lot of the jobs the smaller frigates were capable of. they wound up recommisioning some of them or pulling them back out of reserve status. nearly all of the spruances have either fallen victim to sink-ex's or future sink-ex's....we didn't offer these ships up for sale to foriegn navies either....to advanced and powerfull....a waste of a perfectly good ship.

[haele]

4. So much of shipbuilding is political.

Being in the business myself for over 20 years, I've seen how the cost and effort it takes to reconfigure an existing platform (ship) to support new technology as it goes along.

I've also seen how the closing of Navy shipyards since the mid 'eighties (Thanks unca Dick! Thanks Trent!) has affected the ability, cost and skill effectiveness to reconfigure and refurbish existing platforms.

The Navy had, in effect, lost control of ship planning and configuration by 1998 to companies like Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin - both companies control over 80% of shipbuilding and ship repair facilities and the logistics that go along with them. The profits to them and and all the middlemen companies over those years has been astounding - at least twice in dollars than it would have cost to keep Philadelphia, Charleston, and Long Beach Naval Shipyards open and fully active instead of relegating them to satellite command oversight offices staffed mainly with contractors.

But, who wants to keep Union/Government service shipyard workers and engineers around. Who wants to keep the "corporate" knowledge of Navy architecture, the history of a ship, including oversight of all installations and modifications that go on any one particular ship?
It's just so much easier to let installations go on willy-nilly dependant on contract vagaries within work packages developed by a contractor who knows that they will not get that particular installation job (i.e. - "put that power converter here in this space - and move whatever existing equipment and fixtures needed to do the job wherever you can fit them"...when on a ship, space is critical to space and weight/stress requirements and every fixture and piece of equipment has to be mapped within to millimeters).
It's just "so much easier" to have a handful of mid-level government contract supervisors stuck overseeing more than one ship installation with four or five - or twelve to twenty different contract and subcontract companies that don't talk to each other on the same installation package. And hope that they either don't burn out running from ship to ship or don't just favor (turn a blind eye) to companies that they have made personal connections with or are looking to hire on with later on.

It's easier to let the government be hostage to private shipyard with it's own OSHA and QA procedures. It's easier to tell SUPSHIP (the Navy's Supervisor of Shipbuilding Command)that they can't control costs anymore because only certain private shipyards - which are all either owned or in partnerships between four companies - can do the job that's required.

There's still no competition or cost effectiveness in an environment where back in the early 80's, companies like GE, General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed, Hughes, et all were complaining that they were looking to expand from various "shipboard systems" manufacturing to shipboard installation, but "couldn't compete with public (Navy)shipyards" and their in-house installation logistics and quality assurance programs.

There's just more cost, more redundancy, more "errors" due to scattered oversight and less of a skilled workforce that need to be fixed. More so when the private shipyard is not union.
One favorite trick that cannot be used by a public (or union) shipyard is that while a private company may know they need "Y" amount of, say, welders to do a job they've won in contract for, but they'll too often hire "Y - X" on a subcontractor "exempt" basis (temp contract labor, no overtime) and still charge full hours worked to make a tidy profit. Charging people that don't work the job but need coverage is another favorite.
The gamble is that most of the time it takes the GAO a good two/three years to catch up with the contract auditing, and a small fine for "losing paperwork, the original contract administrator is gone and we have to reconstruct the original billing" is peanuts compared to the profit made.

Privatizing something as big as a shipyard can ruin a local tax base, destroy a middle class, and still not fix the original issue, which would be to "modernize" or somehow bring a seemingly stagnant and overblown ("we've always done "X" this way, why should we change?")system up to date and make it more cost and effort effective.

Sometimes, privatizing is just not cost effective to taxpayers.

Ah well, end of rant.

Haele