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For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
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Attackcoog Offline
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Post: #1
For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
How wrong can admirals or generals be? Maybe 30 billion wrong? The Navy leadership recently came about as close to saying they made a huge mistake as you will ever see.

The US Navy has built 32 Littoral Combat Ships---with 3 more still to be built. The ships were to last 25-30 years. They were originally conceived as low cost small heavily armed high speed ships that could operate in shallow water--yet still duke it out in a deep water affair with larger vessels. During the design process they morphed into large fast ships with minimal armament featuring "mission bay modules" that could be easily swapped out to convert the ships quickly into submarine hunters, mine sweepers, or a surface combatant---depending on need.

Fast forward to today. Costs have ballooned. They arent cheap. They have built around 32 of them, with 3 more to come. The high speed engines are unreliable. A decade after ships began entering service, none can really fulfill any mission because none of the mission modules work. Last year none were sent on patrol because they couldnt really perform any mission reliably. Worse yet---the resurgence of modern Russian and Chinese blue water navies have made the ships seriously undergunned in any fight vs their Chinese/Russian peers.

So, the Navy has decided fixing the flaws in these 32 ships (soon to be 35 ships) is not worth the money and will decommission some of these near worthless vessels. Of the 4 ships the Navy proposes to retire, all theoretically have nearly 2 decades of life left--and one is only 6 years old. In all---the 30 billion spent on these vessels (about triple what they were supposed to cost) is likely a complete waste of treasure.

So admirals and generals can make mistakes. Sometimes our general and admirals are flat out wrong. In the case of the Littoral Combat Ship----this decision was right down the fat middle of these guys area of expertise. Imagine how wrong they can sometimes be when they are discussing the course a White House administration should take—-an area that is far afield of a general’s expertise. Im as big a supporter of those who serve as anyone---but we have to remember, anyone can be wrong.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/1...ade-early/
(This post was last modified: 02-14-2020 06:50 PM by Attackcoog.)
02-14-2020 03:02 AM
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DragonLair Offline
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
We have to fix the procurement model. Cost plus is a terrible idea
02-14-2020 06:08 AM
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 06:08 AM)DragonLair Wrote:  We have to fix the procurement model. Cost plus is a terrible idea
Agree, but realistically no company is going to take the risk. Not sure what the answer is

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02-14-2020 06:29 AM
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
Think thousands of dollar hammers and the like. Hold the manufacturers accountable and maybe crap like this wouldn't happen so frequently. If you tell us you can design and produce x for x then try to add y to the cost you get slapped with fines and booted from the contractor lists, if your design fails, same. If private companies can't or won't deliver then maybe it's time to somehow put the responsibility for manufacturing these type items onto all the fine engineers and tradesmen currently enrolled.
02-14-2020 08:38 AM
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 08:38 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  Think thousands of dollar hammers and the like. Hold the manufacturers accountable and maybe crap like this wouldn't happen so frequently. If you tell us you can design and produce x for x then try to add y to the cost you get slapped with fines and booted from the contractor lists, if your design fails, same. If private companies can't or won't deliver then maybe it's time to somehow put the responsibility for manufacturing these type items onto all the fine engineers and tradesmen currently enrolled.

There are only so many companies in the business.

What we need are better trained people on the defense side. Trained in negotiating and trained in focusing on what is needed vs. what is desired.
02-14-2020 08:55 AM
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shere khan Offline
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
His wife told him to take the job to protect the country. He's a Comeyesqe worm.

Dont even try the "muh military service, I'm beyond reproach" shite with me
(This post was last modified: 02-14-2020 09:06 AM by shere khan.)
02-14-2020 09:02 AM
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 06:29 AM)EverRespect Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 06:08 AM)DragonLair Wrote:  We have to fix the procurement model. Cost plus is a terrible idea
Agree, but realistically no company is going to take the risk. Not sure what the answer is

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as a former design engineer, I'll offer my two cents....

subsidize the engineering side on the front end with agreement from the brass and build a prototype with full agreement.... test.....then, re-engineer the prototype, and test again....repeat/rinse until success...

engineering = applied common sense

the problem is 'The Peter Principle'.....the dipshites are tits on a boar hog....

hence, I don't play that game anymore....
02-14-2020 09:10 AM
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Post: #8
RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 08:38 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  Think thousands of dollar hammers and the like. Hold the manufacturers accountable and maybe crap like this wouldn't happen so frequently. If you tell us you can design and produce x for x then try to add y to the cost you get slapped with fines and booted from the contractor lists, if your design fails, same. If private companies can't or won't deliver then maybe it's time to somehow put the responsibility for manufacturing these type items onto all the fine engineers and tradesmen currently enrolled.

You usually can't add Y to the cost after a contract is signed unless you have a change order. If your design fails and is not remedied by the contractor, you'll get T4D and you won't be participating for awhile.
02-14-2020 09:41 AM
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 09:41 AM)fsquid Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 08:38 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  Think thousands of dollar hammers and the like. Hold the manufacturers accountable and maybe crap like this wouldn't happen so frequently. If you tell us you can design and produce x for x then try to add y to the cost you get slapped with fines and booted from the contractor lists, if your design fails, same. If private companies can't or won't deliver then maybe it's time to somehow put the responsibility for manufacturing these type items onto all the fine engineers and tradesmen currently enrolled.

You usually can't add Y to the cost after a contract is signed unless you have a change order. If your design fails and is not remedied by the contractor, you'll get T4D and you won't be participating for awhile.

You aren't going to T4D a contractor when you have already sunk $1B into the project. You'll keep throwing good money after bad. It is the same thing as too big to fail. T4D is only used against small contractors doing staff augmentation that fails to put butts in seats.
(This post was last modified: 02-14-2020 09:44 AM by EverRespect.)
02-14-2020 09:44 AM
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
Like clockwork...Kelly says something bad about Dear Leader...and the machine goes into warp speed to discredit him. This time by citing a story that doesn't even mention Kelly, a marine BTW.

What a pathetic fail. 03-rotfl

Remember the good ole' days when only the dems followed the Alinsky model?
02-14-2020 09:57 AM
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fsquid Offline
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 09:44 AM)EverRespect Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 09:41 AM)fsquid Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 08:38 AM)TigerBlue4Ever Wrote:  Think thousands of dollar hammers and the like. Hold the manufacturers accountable and maybe crap like this wouldn't happen so frequently. If you tell us you can design and produce x for x then try to add y to the cost you get slapped with fines and booted from the contractor lists, if your design fails, same. If private companies can't or won't deliver then maybe it's time to somehow put the responsibility for manufacturing these type items onto all the fine engineers and tradesmen currently enrolled.

You usually can't add Y to the cost after a contract is signed unless you have a change order. If your design fails and is not remedied by the contractor, you'll get T4D and you won't be participating for awhile.

You aren't going to T4D a contractor when you have already sunk $1B into the project. You'll keep throwing good money after bad. It is the same thing as too big to fail. T4D is only used against small contractors doing staff augmentation that fails to put butts in seats.

I've also seen so many T4Ds changed to T4Cs after a negotiation also.
02-14-2020 10:04 AM
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Post: #12
RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 09:57 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  Like clockwork...Kelly says something bad about Dear Leader...and the machine goes into warp speed to discredit him. This time by citing a story that doesn't even mention Kelly, a marine BTW.

What a pathetic fail. 03-rotfl

Remember the good ole' days when only the dems followed the Alinsky model?

Kelly didnt say anything bad about Trump. He actually said something bad about himself. He is confused about the chain of command and who the boss is, just like IUD Vindman.
02-14-2020 10:53 AM
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Attackcoog Offline
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 09:57 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  Like clockwork...Kelly says something bad about Dear Leader...and the machine goes into warp speed to discredit him. This time by citing a story that doesn't even mention Kelly, a marine BTW.

What a pathetic fail. 03-rotfl

Remember the good ole' days when only the dems followed the Alinsky model?

My point is Trump ran on a platform and has done everything within his power to do what he said he was going to do. I never voted for Kelly, but I respect his long service to the country. So now, it appears that Kelly disagreed with the way the president runs things. He has that right, but what I’m trying to point out is just because Kelly was a general doesn’t mean he is right and Trump is wrong. Military leaders are not immune from making huge administrative policy mistakes (like the Littoral Combat Ship).

The truth is, Kelley was there to help Trump institute the policies he was elected to fulfill. If Kelly had a subordinate in the Army that kept undermining Kelly from fulfilling his mission—-my guess is that subordinate would be gone. If Kelly wants a different American policy—-run for office, sell the population on his vision, and get elected. But as Chief of Staff, his job was to help the president get his agenda implemented—-not “protect the nation from Trump”. Best I can tell, the animosity between the men springs from Kelly providing too little “helping Trump get his agenda fulfilled” and too much of Kelly’s own agenda (which I don’t remember voting for).
(This post was last modified: 02-16-2020 12:11 AM by Attackcoog.)
02-14-2020 11:12 AM
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 06:29 AM)EverRespect Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 06:08 AM)DragonLair Wrote:  We have to fix the procurement model. Cost plus is a terrible idea
Agree, but realistically no company is going to take the risk. Not sure what the answer is

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There has to be estimating programs that have gotten significantly better to understand the cost of building this type of equipment. The construction companies have equipment to help them do takeoffs and they do can do equally large projects. The engineers have to design it before you start building it. Taking a design build approach seems like a mistake
02-14-2020 05:26 PM
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 03:02 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  How wrong can admirals or generals be? Maybe 30 billion wrong? The Navy leadership recently came about as close to saying they made a huge mistake as you will ever see.
The US Navy has built 32 Littoral Combat Ships---with 3 more still to be built. The ships were to last 25-30 years. They were originally conceived as low cost small heavily armed high speed ships that could operate in shallow water--yet still duke it out in a deep water affair with larger vessels. During the design process they morphed into large fast ships with minimal armament featuring "mission bay modules" that could be easily swapped out to convert the ships quickly into submarine hunters, mine sweepers, or a surface combatant---depending on need.
Fast forward to today. Costs have ballooned. They arent cheap. They have built around 32 of them, with 3 more to come. The high speed engines are unreliable. A decade after ships began entering service, none can really fulfill any mission because none of the mission modules work. Last year none were sent on patrol because they couldnt really perform any mission reliably. Worse yet---the resurgence of modern Russian and Chinese blue water navies have made the ships seriously undergunned in any fight vs their Chinese/Russian peers.
So, the Navy has decided fixing the flaws in these 32 ships (soon to be 35 ships) is not worth the money and will decommission some of these near worthless vessels. Of the 4 ships the Navy proposes to retire, all theoretically have nearly 2 decades of life left--and one is only 6 years old. In all---the 30 billion spent on these vessels (about triple what they were supposed to cost) is likely a complete waste of treasure.
So admirals and generals can make mistakes. Sometimes our general and admirals are flat out wrong. In the case of the Littoral Combat Ship----this decision was right down the fat middle of these guys area of expertise. Imagine how wrong they can sometimes be when they are discussing the course a White House administration should take—-an area that is far afield of a general’s expertise. Im as big a supporter of those who serve as anyone---but we have to remember, anyone can be wrong.
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/1...ade-early/

OK, so their mission modules don't work. But it's really worse than that. The one advantage they have is speed, and the last thing you want to do in a minefield is go running around at 45 knots. And the engines that give those 45 knots--when they work--are so noisy that the prevent proper sonar performance for anti-submarine warfare (ASW). And for anti-surface warfare (ASuW) they have a 57 mm popgun that is roughly half the size of WWII destroyer guns. And they are so ill-suited to damage control/repair that the doctrine is that if they take a hit, you abandon ship. So they're basically worthless. The most common recommendation I see in naval discussion groups recently is to give them to the Coast Guard, which needs cutters. Only problem is the Coast Guard doesn't want them, either.

But that may not be the biggest mistake the Navy has made in procurement. The Nimitz class aircraft carriers are perfectly good ships, and they cost about $9 billion each. There is an alternative proposed by the RAND corporation called the CVN-LX that has a hybrid nuclear/gas turbine/electric propulsion system and updates in other areas that is about the same price. Instead of building more of either, the Navy has opted to build 3-4 Gerald Ford class carriers, that are coming in at about $15 billion each. And so far, everything on them works just fine--except the catapults, arresting (landing) gear, weapons lifts from magazines to flight deck, and main engines.

The Navy also built three Zumwalt class "destroyers" with 155mm guns. The only problem is that they have no bullets for the guns. The estimated cost for the three ships is $12 billion, or $4 billion each.

I'm more familiar with Navy foul-ups in procurement than I am with the other services, but I'm told that similar errors have been made in the other services. One problem I am aware of is that in a misguided effort to cut costs with a common design for a fighter/attack aircraft for Air Force, Navy, and Marine needs, which were different. So we ended up with the F-35 in three different versions, one for each service, and the tradeoffs made to meet each one's needs adversely impact the other two branches. Not to mention that it is coming in at something like $120 million a pop, when there are perfectly useful fighters at half that cost.

We have more people in the Pentagon today than it took to win WWII. A recent study by McKinsey broke down defense costs of various OECD (advanced) nations into combat, combat support, and other (administrative overhead) costs. The average for OECD countries was 14% combat, 23% combat support, and 63% admin/other/overhead, which is bad enough. The US numbers were 9% combat, 14% combat support, and 77% admin/other/overhead.

If you are getting the impression that we could cut defense spending by something probably on the order of $150 billion a year and end up with better national security, I think you're right. But the problem is that if you try to cut back on defense spending, the people determining where the cuts go are that overhead. And the idiots who made those procurement decisions are still in charge over there. This may be controversial, but what you have at the Pentagon is a whole bunch of paper shufflers like Vindman, who maybe had one combat tour, when the real war heroes have been pulling three or four, and they are making incredibly bad decisions because they don't have a clue what they are doing.

If I were president, I would hack the Pentagon staff back to no more than WWII levels, I would cut outside consultant fees in half, I would fire every officer who signed off on the LCS, Ford, and Zumwalt programs, I would tell the officer promotion boards that we want to promote warriors and not paper shufflers, I would put a stop to wars that we don't intend to win, and I would demand that the military come up with a viable grand strategy and concepts of operations (CONOPS) to implement that strategy.
02-15-2020 09:25 PM
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-14-2020 10:53 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 09:57 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  Like clockwork...Kelly says something bad about Dear Leader...and the machine goes into warp speed to discredit him. This time by citing a story that doesn't even mention Kelly, a marine BTW.

What a pathetic fail. 03-rotfl

Remember the good ole' days when only the dems followed the Alinsky model?

Kelly didnt say anything bad about Trump. He actually said something bad about himself. He is confused about the chain of command and who the boss is, just like IUD Vindman.

You never served?
02-15-2020 10:39 PM
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shere khan Offline
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-15-2020 10:39 PM)Mr_XcentricK Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 10:53 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 09:57 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  Like clockwork...Kelly says something bad about Dear Leader...and the machine goes into warp speed to discredit him. This time by citing a story that doesn't even mention Kelly, a marine BTW.

What a pathetic fail. 03-rotfl

Remember the good ole' days when only the dems followed the Alinsky model?

Kelly didnt say anything bad about Trump. He actually said something bad about himself. He is confused about the chain of command and who the boss is, just like IUD Vindman.

You never served?

Playing the service card. Plenty of idiots in the military. I'm glad Trump has democrats defending a few of them even if they are seditious. Maybe it will become a fad for democrats. They seem to favor whatever the hive mind dictates.
02-15-2020 11:24 PM
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Post: #18
RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-15-2020 11:24 PM)shere khan Wrote:  
(02-15-2020 10:39 PM)Mr_XcentricK Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 10:53 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 09:57 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  Like clockwork...Kelly says something bad about Dear Leader...and the machine goes into warp speed to discredit him. This time by citing a story that doesn't even mention Kelly, a marine BTW.

What a pathetic fail. 03-rotfl

Remember the good ole' days when only the dems followed the Alinsky model?

Kelly didnt say anything bad about Trump. He actually said something bad about himself. He is confused about the chain of command and who the boss is, just like IUD Vindman.

You never served?

Playing the service card. Plenty of idiots in the military. I'm glad Trump has democrats defending a few of them even if they are seditious. Maybe it will become a fad for democrats. They seem to favor whatever the hive mind dictates.

If they had done same thing under the previous President you all would be singing their praises. My point was every member is taught to follow orders unless they are unlawful. They were doing what they were trained to do it had nothing to do with D or R it was a question of lawful or unlawful.
02-16-2020 01:23 PM
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shere khan Offline
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RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-16-2020 01:23 PM)Mr_XcentricK Wrote:  
(02-15-2020 11:24 PM)shere khan Wrote:  
(02-15-2020 10:39 PM)Mr_XcentricK Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 10:53 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 09:57 AM)Redwingtom Wrote:  Like clockwork...Kelly says something bad about Dear Leader...and the machine goes into warp speed to discredit him. This time by citing a story that doesn't even mention Kelly, a marine BTW.

What a pathetic fail. 03-rotfl

Remember the good ole' days when only the dems followed the Alinsky model?

Kelly didnt say anything bad about Trump. He actually said something bad about himself. He is confused about the chain of command and who the boss is, just like IUD Vindman.

You never served?

Playing the service card. Plenty of idiots in the military. I'm glad Trump has democrats defending a few of them even if they are seditious. Maybe it will become a fad for democrats. They seem to favor whatever the hive mind dictates.

If they had done same thing under the previous President you all would be singing their praises. My point was every member is taught to follow orders unless they are unlawful. They were doing what they were trained to do it had nothing to do with D or R it was a question of lawful or unlawful.

Oh we got a saint obama butthurt poster here. Vindman is s secituous bastard. It's pretty simple. Obama was incompetent moron that surrounded himself with the same. So yeah, if it was done under that idiots admin you are probably right.

But so what, obama is gone and his legacy will ge one of incompetence and corruption.
02-16-2020 01:49 PM
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Post: #20
RE: For Those Who Think Great Men Like Gen Kelly Cant Be Wrong
(02-15-2020 09:25 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  
(02-14-2020 03:02 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  How wrong can admirals or generals be? Maybe 30 billion wrong? The Navy leadership recently came about as close to saying they made a huge mistake as you will ever see.
The US Navy has built 32 Littoral Combat Ships---with 3 more still to be built. The ships were to last 25-30 years. They were originally conceived as low cost small heavily armed high speed ships that could operate in shallow water--yet still duke it out in a deep water affair with larger vessels. During the design process they morphed into large fast ships with minimal armament featuring "mission bay modules" that could be easily swapped out to convert the ships quickly into submarine hunters, mine sweepers, or a surface combatant---depending on need.
Fast forward to today. Costs have ballooned. They arent cheap. They have built around 32 of them, with 3 more to come. The high speed engines are unreliable. A decade after ships began entering service, none can really fulfill any mission because none of the mission modules work. Last year none were sent on patrol because they couldnt really perform any mission reliably. Worse yet---the resurgence of modern Russian and Chinese blue water navies have made the ships seriously undergunned in any fight vs their Chinese/Russian peers.
So, the Navy has decided fixing the flaws in these 32 ships (soon to be 35 ships) is not worth the money and will decommission some of these near worthless vessels. Of the 4 ships the Navy proposes to retire, all theoretically have nearly 2 decades of life left--and one is only 6 years old. In all---the 30 billion spent on these vessels (about triple what they were supposed to cost) is likely a complete waste of treasure.
So admirals and generals can make mistakes. Sometimes our general and admirals are flat out wrong. In the case of the Littoral Combat Ship----this decision was right down the fat middle of these guys area of expertise. Imagine how wrong they can sometimes be when they are discussing the course a White House administration should take—-an area that is far afield of a general’s expertise. Im as big a supporter of those who serve as anyone---but we have to remember, anyone can be wrong.
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/1...ade-early/

OK, so their mission modules don't work. But it's really worse than that. The one advantage they have is speed, and the last thing you want to do in a minefield is go running around at 45 knots. And the engines that give those 45 knots--when they work--are so noisy that the prevent proper sonar performance for anti-submarine warfare (ASW). And for anti-surface warfare (ASuW) they have a 57 mm popgun that is roughly half the size of WWII destroyer guns. And they are so ill-suited to damage control/repair that the doctrine is that if they take a hit, you abandon ship. So they're basically worthless. The most common recommendation I see in naval discussion groups recently is to give them to the Coast Guard, which needs cutters. Only problem is the Coast Guard doesn't want them, either.

But that may not be the biggest mistake the Navy has made in procurement. The Nimitz class aircraft carriers are perfectly good ships, and they cost about $9 billion each. There is an alternative proposed by the RAND corporation called the CVN-LX that has a hybrid nuclear/gas turbine/electric propulsion system and updates in other areas that is about the same price. Instead of building more of either, the Navy has opted to build 3-4 Gerald Ford class carriers, that are coming in at about $15 billion each. And so far, everything on them works just fine--except the catapults, arresting (landing) gear, weapons lifts from magazines to flight deck, and main engines.

The Navy also built three Zumwalt class "destroyers" with 155mm guns. The only problem is that they have no bullets for the guns. The estimated cost for the three ships is $12 billion, or $4 billion each.

I'm more familiar with Navy foul-ups in procurement than I am with the other services, but I'm told that similar errors have been made in the other services. One problem I am aware of is that in a misguided effort to cut costs with a common design for a fighter/attack aircraft for Air Force, Navy, and Marine needs, which were different. So we ended up with the F-35 in three different versions, one for each service, and the tradeoffs made to meet each one's needs adversely impact the other two branches. Not to mention that it is coming in at something like $120 million a pop, when there are perfectly useful fighters at half that cost.

We have more people in the Pentagon today than it took to win WWII. A recent study by McKinsey broke down defense costs of various OECD (advanced) nations into combat, combat support, and other (administrative overhead) costs. The average for OECD countries was 14% combat, 23% combat support, and 63% admin/other/overhead, which is bad enough. The US numbers were 9% combat, 14% combat support, and 77% admin/other/overhead.

If you are getting the impression that we could cut defense spending by something probably on the order of $150 billion a year and end up with better national security, I think you're right. But the problem is that if you try to cut back on defense spending, the people determining where the cuts go are that overhead. And the idiots who made those procurement decisions are still in charge over there. This may be controversial, but what you have at the Pentagon is a whole bunch of paper shufflers like Vindman, who maybe had one combat tour, when the real war heroes have been pulling three or four, and they are making incredibly bad decisions because they don't have a clue what they are doing.

If I were president, I would hack the Pentagon staff back to no more than WWII levels, I would cut outside consultant fees in half, I would fire every officer who signed off on the LCS, Ford, and Zumwalt programs, I would tell the officer promotion boards that we want to promote warriors and not paper shufflers, I would put a stop to wars that we don't intend to win, and I would demand that the military come up with a viable grand strategy and concepts of operations (CONOPS) to implement that strategy.

You know---I get that these ships are basically worthless---but it seems to me we paid for 35 hulls and a relatively clever person would figure out a way to make them useful.

The first thing I'd do is fix the engine. Figure out whats wrong---be it maintenance or a weak part---and fix it. Auto manufactures do this all the time during a production run or as a result of a recall.

Second--make the dumb things useful. Redesign the mission modules to use off the shelf technology. The modules are worthless if they dont work. Furthermore, 10 of these ships can be refitted for basically permanent duty as mine sweepers.

The rest, stick 8-16 VLS cells on them and make then useful. Even 8 cells could give you a load out of 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles (giving the vessels a legitimate anti-aircraft capability) and 3 Tomahawks. They are already adding 8 bolt on Naval Strike Missile cells---so the lack of an over the horizon anti-ship missile has been addressed. The vessel is even more capable if you can put 16 VLS cells on board. That could give you 40 Evolved Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft missiles plus 6 Tomahawks. The vessel could carry as many as 64 anti-aircraft missiles for high threat missions--plus the 11 short range missiles in the Sea Ram battery for a total of 75 missiles available for self defense against air threats. Thats a reasonably robust anti-air capability--especially compared to the almost negligible anti air capability the LCS currently features.

Yes--they will still be pieces of crap, but at least they can be useful and can provide a threat to other peer warships. Furthermore, if you can get the TERN drones ready and operational on these vessels, then these vessels would become drone platforms capable of carrying a 1000 pound payload and delivering it 600 miles away. That would mean the craft could attack another ship with a NSM at range of 700 miles. That makes them a much more serious threat to any modern Russian or Chinese warship.

Like I said, they are still pieces of crap that should have never been built---but they are paid for and we are stuck with 35 of them. if we get the engines fixed, slapped some VLS cells on them, and get the TERN drone operational---we might at least make them reasonably functional as a warship. For the life of me----I still cant figure out why we built the last 3 when we already knew we wanted to go another direction.
(This post was last modified: 02-16-2020 02:09 PM by Attackcoog.)
02-16-2020 01:53 PM
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