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USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78) - $14 billion wasted
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Owl 69/70/75 Online
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USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78) - $14 billion wasted
From http://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2017/06...mment-form

“The Navy accepted delivery of the first-in-class aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) on May 31, following the completion of acceptance trials on May 26 …” (USNI News website, “Carrier Ford Delivers To Navy After 15 Months of Delays”, Megan Eckstein, 1-Jun-2017,
https://news.usni.org/2017/06/01/25931)

...

Here’s a list of known incomplete or damaged items that the Navy just accepted. ...

EMALS – cannot safely launch Hornets and Growlers with wing mounted external fuel tanks; system cannot be electrically isolated for repairs; induces unsafe oscillations of the F-35 during launch; reliability is poor with Mean Cycles Between Critical Failure (MCBCF) – a cycle is one launch – of 340 versus the target of 4,166 – every 340 launches, you’re tossin’ a plane in the drink!

Main Turbine Generator - Ford has suffered major main turbine generator (MTG) failures (an explosion of the No. 2 MTG and a similar event with the No 1 MTG) which have crippled half the the ship’s main generators. The No. 2 MTG is non-functional and will be repaired sometime after the ship is commissioned.

Advanced Arresting Gear – The Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) is essentially non-functional, having had to undergo recent fundamental redesigns due to equipment failures. Further, the most recent reliability data indicates the AAG is non-functional. The MCBCF requirement for the arresting gear is one every 16,500. The actual MCBCF is 20. That’s a critical failure every 20 recoveries!

Weapon Elevators – cited in 2016 DOT&E Annual Report

Berthing – insufficient berthing for the CVN-78 Service Lilfe Allowance

Dual Band Radar - testing has uncovered tracking, clutter/false track, track continuity, and engagement support problems, according to the 2016 DOT&E Annual Report

Joint Precision Approach and Landing System (JPALS) – system has been indefinitely deferred for budgetary reasons

...

Basically, it can't launch aircraft, land aircraft, generate enough electricity reliably, track incoming contacts--friend or foe, or sleep its full crew.

What makes this even worse is that for roughly half the cost, we were building perfectly good aircraft carriers before.
06-07-2017 10:25 PM
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RiceLad15 Offline
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RE: USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78) - $14 billion wasted
That's pretty absurd, and based on your article par for course. What gives? Why are contractors not being held to high standards?
06-07-2017 11:08 PM
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Owl 69/70/75 Online
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RE: USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78) - $14 billion wasted
(06-07-2017 11:08 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  That's pretty absurd, and based on your article par for course. What gives? Why are contractors not being held to high standards?

These are actually mostly design flaws. This is the first time for EMALS and AAG in an actual ship, and they've never actually worked in testing.

The whole procurement process is a disaster, in all branches. Each one has its own horror stories as bad as or worse than this one.

It starts with nobody having a real concept of mission and operations, so they become enamored with the first shiny object that passes by. And it gets worse from there. When you talk about cutting defense spending, procurement would be a place to start. Unfortunately, a lot of these bad purchasing decisions are made because they need congressman Smith's vote on something else, and awarding a defense contract to a big donor of his is a way to get it.
(This post was last modified: 06-07-2017 11:17 PM by Owl 69/70/75.)
06-07-2017 11:15 PM
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picrig Offline
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Post: #4
RE: USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78) - $14 billion wasted
Ever watched "Pentagon Wars"? If not, go look it up on youtube. If you want a clip, just search "Pentagon Wars Bradley."

I speak as an Army civilian who is involved at some level in the acquisition process (mainly weapons & missile systems). I've taken plenty of classes on DoD's acquisition process. It is a mess. I will say (and I say this as a libertarian leaning small-government person) that one big plus of the Obama admin was stability at the top of the acquisition segments of DoD which led to some improvements in the processes. Got us from an F- to an F;-) But yes, I generally agree, the process, although well intentioned, is frought with way too many spots that are susceptible to inefficiencies, ill-planning, and delivering a product that doesn't necessarily meet the warfighters' needs.
06-08-2017 12:07 AM
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RiceLad15 Offline
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RE: USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78) - $14 billion wasted
(06-07-2017 11:15 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  
(06-07-2017 11:08 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  That's pretty absurd, and based on your article par for course. What gives? Why are contractors not being held to high standards?

These are actually mostly design flaws. This is the first time for EMALS and AAG in an actual ship, and they've never actually worked in testing.

The whole procurement process is a disaster, in all branches. Each one has its own horror stories as bad as or worse than this one.

It starts with nobody having a real concept of mission and operations, so they become enamored with the first shiny object that passes by. And it gets worse from there. When you talk about cutting defense spending, procurement would be a place to start. Unfortunately, a lot of these bad purchasing decisions are made because they need congressman Smith's vote on something else, and awarding a defense contract to a big donor of his is a way to get it.

It's pretty surprising in my eyes that these things happen. I'm involved with some federal projects for my firm, and the level of scrutiny our relatively small budgets receive (individual contracts for projects too out at maybe $3M per year) is intense. We provide very specific and detailed scopes of work, an intense level of backup for expenses, and competitively bid our subcontracts.

Are these projects just so large that significant vetting is too cumbersome, so the issues you mention just compound the negative effects that allow costs to spiral out of control? How are we letting flawed designs get out of a contractor's shop and into the real world?
06-08-2017 06:49 AM
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Owl 69/70/75 Online
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RE: USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78) - $14 billion wasted
(06-08-2017 06:49 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  It's pretty surprising in my eyes that these things happen. I'm involved with some federal projects for my firm, and the level of scrutiny our relatively small budgets receive (individual contracts for projects too out at maybe $3M per year) is intense. We provide very specific and detailed scopes of work, an intense level of backup for expenses, and competitively bid our subcontracts.
Are these projects just so large that significant vetting is too cumbersome, so the issues you mention just compound the negative effects that allow costs to spiral out of control? How are we letting flawed designs get out of a contractor's shop and into the real world?

To start with, we have more armed services personnel in the Pentagon today than it took to win WWII. Add to that more civilians, and more contractors, and you have this legion of people sitting around with absolutely nothing to do. The contractors stay employed as long as they are generating new ideas, the civilians stay employed as long as they have ideas to study, and the military people are trying either to build their own little career empires in the service, or to line up some cushy job when they get out. And by the way, nobody has really gotten around to figuring out what any service's true mission is, so the first shiny object that shows up gets all the attention, regardless of its utility. So you have a climate that is absolutely ripe for the care and nurturing of all sorts of idiotic ideas.

Some consultant says, "Gee, wouldn't it be great to replace steam catapults with electromagnetic, and reduce the need for so many maintenance people?" Some civilian employee thinks, "Gee, I could feed my family for years, and pay off my McMansion in Falls Church, on what I'd make developing that idea." Some military guy thinks, "Gee whiz, I could look like a hero, and by the way, the company that makes the EMALS will pay me $150K a year once I retire." Now at some point, you can't just have an idea, you need a ship or aircraft or tank that incorporates that idea in order to keep it moving. So here come the Fords, and they will use the idea. Now the problem is that the ship gets built before the idea is ready.

There are two stages in the life of a defense project. One, "We don't know yet," and two, "We've spent too much money to abandon it now."

BTW, the Ford is a veritable success story compared to the LCSs. At least some parts of it work. The idea with the LCSs was a 45-knot ship. Why, who knows, nobody else has anything larger than a small patrol boat that makes that kind of speed, and there is no known military objective which would require that speed. So you end up with something that costs $750 million and is capable of performing no military mission, and at least at the start, we were going to build 52 of them, since cut back, the closest thing to an intelligent decision ever made with regard to that program (the truly intelligent decision would have been to cancel it altogether). It was going to be a mine countermeasures platform, except the MCM module has never worked, and I believe has now been abandoned. It was going to be an antisubmarine platform, except that the engines make so much noise that they drown out the sonar. It was going to be a gun platform, but the gun is only a 57 mm popgun and the fire control system is not stable when the ship is moving at speed. It was going to be a helicopter platform, but in order to get the speed, they saved weight by making the helo deck too thin and fragile to land anything but the smallest helos. The construction is so light, to save weight, that they have essentially no armor; the doctrine is that if you take a hit, you abandon ship. They've been around 10 years and I don't think any of them have yet actually hit the 45 knot speed target. I believe it is still correct that during that 10 years, not one has deployed overseas without being towed home. But they look ferocious parked at the pier (at least the LSC-2 class does) and it's really cool to have a ship that in theory will do 45 knots.
06-08-2017 07:55 AM
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