Naval spending:I'm sorry...what do you mean...SUCESSOR to the SEAWOLF!?!!?

[zls44]

(snip)

EB's New Advanced Sub Takes A Name
August 17, 2003
By JOSH KOVNER, Courant Staff Writer

GROTON -- For the first time in six years, they christened a ship Saturday at Electric Boat.

This day belonged to the USS Virginia, the first of the new Virginia-class attack submarines, the most advanced in the world. It is also the first of what could be as many as 10 submarines built by an unlikely partnership between two fiercely competitive boatyards - Electric Boat and Virginia-based Newport News Shipbuilding.

"And what a day that was when we decided to come together," EB President Michael Toner said before Lynda Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson, christened the Virginia.

"They did it though," Toner said of the thousands of designers, engineers, and craftsmen who worked on the boat. "We're standing on it."

The $2 billion boat, festooned with banners and topped by two temporary, canopied stages, floated in the rollout bay like a pampered, 377-foot whale, unaware of the battle brewing in Congress over how to fund the Virginia-class program.

The crew of 103 men stood on the deck in dress whites behind Capt. David J. Kern as flags fluttered, the Navy band playedand 7,500 guests listened to the proclamations of the Connecticut and Virginia congressmen, the shipbuilding executives and the Navy brass.

For southeastern Connecticut, though, the most immediate benefit of the new submarine program - the successor to the Sea Wolf - is expressed not in the pomp of Saturday's event, but in the jobs and the measure of stability it will bring to Electric Boat.

http://www.ctnow.com/hc-submarine0817.artaug17.story
(snip)

Can one of our DU vets explain to me what they mean by SUCESSOR to the Seawolf? IT WAS JUST BUILT IN THE LAST TEN YEARS AT A COST OF $5(?) BILLION A SHIP. WHY DO WE NEED THIS!?!?!? WHY!

WHY IS THERE ALWAYS MONEY FOR WAR, BUT NOT FOR OUR SCHOOLS!

[Raster]

1. ...always money for wars...

"WHY IS THERE ALWAYS MONEY FOR WAR, BUT NOT FOR OUR SCHOOLS!"

Rhetorical, I know. Here's my take:

The US is the largest producer, exporter and consummer of conflict-based products including, but not limited to: aircraft, watercraft, assorted weaponry, etc. The military-industrial complex is an absolute neccesity for our "free-market economy," which exists because it's subsidized and heavily patronized by the military-industrial complex. In other words, you have to keep feeding the military-industrial complex, and to justify doing so you must have conflict. There are other requirements of the military-industrial complex, one of which being cheap energy. You get a two-for-one bonus special when you can incorporate a conflict situation into procurement for essential resources and components.

[zls44]

5. I know that...

I understand why from a technical standpoint...but that doesn't mean any of this is needed.

[Capt_Nemo]

2. The Seawolf program costs were unsustainable

(in terms of maintaining force levels) so the Navy had to come up
with an idea fast, of how to get rid of
it without hurting the interests of Electric Boat Co...
And there you have it: the "somewhat cheaper but not that much" USS
Virginia.
Don´t you just love the workings of the military-industrial complex?

[haele]

7. What the Seawolf turned into was basically an upgrade of the exsisting

Ohio class. The original concept of a smalller, more economic and versitile "boomer" type submarine that would quickly be able to replace both the fast attacks and the boomers was lost as various contractors and departments within the military did not want to lose money and/or prestiege.
Many of the promised technological advances never made it past the conceptual drawing board, as departments and contractors started worshipping the bottom line and cutting items that would cost more up front for a proper r & d on something like new and improved safer fusion technology for the reactors or fuel cell technology that could end up making a lot of money and improvements for them on the civilian side as well - than just tinkering with exsisting and increasingly obsolete technology to make that look "new and improved".

Holding and investment companies don't seem to understand that you have to spend money to make money. Most military contractors now are owned by holding and investment companies. Hence, the piling up of obsolete thinking and equipment, and the addition of Microsoft Windows to any system that can be computerized. It's all the bottom line with these people - and the money never seems to make it to the field where the crafts and trades are actually doing the work.

The Seawolf program is already obsolete. Which is a pity, because, conceptually, it would have been a great replacement for the current group of submarines.

There is a desperate need to change and/or upgrade the nature of subs in the US Navy; just as there is a need for change and upgrade in many of the other military boondoggles in the other services - both for mission change and cost effectiveness.

Haele

[Brian Sweat]

3. Admirals have a saying

It is not the cost of the puppy that breaks the budget, it is the pupkeep. Sometimes, replacing a system that is expensive to maintain, with a newer system that can save a large fraction of the replacement cost is actually a bargain.

My understanding is that the Virginia class subs are intended to replace Seawolf class subs that were never built. They are less expensive to build and less expensive to operate, so the are a bargain compared to the Seawolf class subs that were not built.

[Nederland]

4. Ask Holy Joe

IT WAS JUST BUILT IN THE LAST TEN YEARS AT A COST OF $5(?) BILLION A SHIP. WHY DO WE NEED THIS!?!?!? WHY!

Good question. You should ask Senator Joseph Lieberman, who, along with a couple other Northeast Democrats in Congress (whose districts get a tremendous amount of money from the Seawolf program) have consistently voted with Republicans to keep the program alive.

[zls44]

6. WOAH! PLEASE do not hold it against me

Look, I loathe Holy Joe as much as the next guy.

Between him and Rowland, I wonder how we're still a blue state...