Comments on: Shipbuilding Program is a Mess

By: oldguy

oldguy — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:04:13 +0000

Not enough cooperation at the program management level, on both sides of the street. How many ships had outdated equipment installed because it was cheaper to install useless equipment than to modify the contract and install current, supported equipment? PM’s are more concerned about protecting their own behinds than supporting the goal of the fleet, building better ships. A mess is the polite word.

By: DC2 Jennings

DC2 Jennings — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:34:57 +0000

Charles,
This isn’t about nationalizing programs. This is about the government actually having personnel on staff that know what they are talking about, instead of a bean counter making sure all the dollars and cents do not cause a Nunn McCurdy breech.
Imagine if you wanted to build a house. Would you rather have competent personnel (enough to actually do their job) working for you to make sure the general contractor building the house does their job. Or would you rather have the contractor be responsible for designing and building your house? What is the primary job of a business? Make money. That will generally come at your expense. Whether it be by cost increases, pushing for design changes to make more money, or cutting parts off the building even though you might want them there (oh you wanted a structured cabling system in your house sorry but that wasn’t included in our proposal).
Even local governments are putting request for proposals out on equipment and systems they know nothing about. They expect the contractors to give them what they want, even though they can’t effectively put what they want in writing.
BTW this isn’t something that affects just the Navy. If it isn’t the LCS, it is the JSF, ARH, AAV, FCS, etc. How sad was the USCG Deep Water project considering they gave the program to the Navy to manage?
“Mission creep” is another word for “cha-ching” to military contractors. I wouldn’t doubt that contractors “buy” jobs knowing they can make the money up by pushing “mission creep” ideas into the heads of those making the procurement decisions.
DC2

By: Charles

Charles — Sat, 30 May 2009 04:45:06 +0000

I’m trying to decide in my head if the government starts nationalizing programs, will quality improve? The Russians have state design bureaus, for instance…and one wonders if that correlates to their meh products, or is it their techbase?

By: Byron Skinner

Byron Skinner — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:06:03 +0000

Good Morning Folks,
I think DC2 Jennings nailed it, there is not a whole lot more to say. The U.S. Government right now is stuck in an acquisition cycle for the Navy of ordering a nuclear carrier at least every four or five years and ordering subs at a rate one every year for two years the third year ordering two new boats. The reason of course is to keep enough business in the shipyards so that they are profitable.
The Navy certainly doesn’t want it shipbuilding programs to become another “fogbank”.
A paper about a tear ago out of the Naval War College was rather frank about this issue in stating that during the 80’s and 90’s the Navy made some really bad decisions. The privatizing of shipyards and the closing of several under BRAC, especially Long Beach, Vellajo, Philadelphia and Brooklyn cost the Navy any surge ability it had to rebuild a fleet in case of a national emergency. It also went on the cover the issues that DC2 Jennings addressed and was critical of the revolving door of Naval Officers involved in acquisition/project managing/systems desing and specifications retiring early and going to work for the contractors who they were doing projects for.
Interesting, one of there recommendations and that was to keep all Admirals/Generals or officers involved in weapon systems on active duty or at half pay till age 65. Maybe thats not a bad idea?
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

By: Drake1

Drake1 — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:27:48 +0000

Thought I would pass this along.
“Northrop Grumman Inspector’s Lies Raise Alarms“
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4113502&c=AME&s=SEA

By: Sub_Eng

Sub_Eng — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:56:04 +0000

A significant contributor to our Navy’s inability to meet budget & schedule is NAVSEA’s inability to adjust fluidly with industrial ship construction. Every bit as serious as requirements creep on the design end is a rigid inability to cope with nonconformances during construction, which are inevitable with the large structure and tight tolerances of shipbuilding. NAVSEA is understaffed, which is forgiveable, but as a result of low manpower and lack of experience does not understand their own product. This, coupled with a complete separation off management and technical organizations, leads to a rigid “never deviate from the plan” philosophy, even when the deviations don’t impact performance. The result: piles of rework for marginal gain to The Fleet. The end product looks just like the drawing, sure enough, but the costs, as we see, are prohibitive.

By: Camp

Camp — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:37:23 +0000

Freezing designs and making only block changes, sounds like a reasonable policy. However, ‘buying cyberspace’ leaves me a bit skeptical. Technology may be a force multiplier, it’s not a force replacement.
I recall some discussion for adapting the LPD-17 hull or a stretched DDG-51 for the CG-(X) program. Did either of those concepts grow legs or get sunk as well?

By: DC2 Jennings

DC2 Jennings — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:39:54 +0000

The idea of a 600 ship Navy was a myth and a joke. I was part of that Navy, sitting on a 50 year old ship that wasn’t fit to go out to sea.
Shipbuilding in general (no matter where you are) is in a sad shape. This is due to the limited shipbuilding that actually occurs in the US today, with the exception of military shipbuilding. Therefore, as the experienced shipbuilding force retires, the shipyards do not replace this labor.
On the NAVSEA side, we have gotten rid of all of the beuracrats that once oversaw these shipbuilding programs. This was done because of previously held beliefs that the government doesn’t know what it is doing and certainly can’t do things as well as the business sector. That is why we got rid of fixed price contracts and moved more towards industry being responsible for designing, managing, and building our ships.
Now Secretary Gates wants to get back to actually having engineers and project managers within the government overseeing these projects. As long as we get qualified personnel, eventually we will get back to building quality equipment, managed by the purchasing customer (the government).
DC2

By: Drake1

Drake1 — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:59:04 +0000

From the time the wars started, we should raised taxes.
I also didn’t support any of the the bailouts. You don’t get something for nothing…that goes for military as well as social spending, but I digress.

By: AMMO

AMMO — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:53:48 +0000

Honestly, I’m not surprised. It seems like nowadays, the only branch you never hear about anything going wrong is the Coast Guard. Last thing I heard about them was that they set up firing ranges in Lake Ontario, and to stay away on certain days if you didn’t want to get shot.