Comment by meric | Hacker News Reader

Comment by meric | Hacker News Reader

Zumwalt

F-35

USS Ford

It reminds me of Qing China in the 1890's.

"On paper, the Beiyang Fleet had the superior ships,[2] included two pre-dreadnought battleships, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, for which the Japanese had no counterparts. "....."Though well drilled, the Chinese had not engaged in sufficient gunnery practice beforehand. This lack of training was the direct result of a serious lack of ammunition. Corruption seems to have played a major role; many Chinese shells appear to have been filled with cement or porcelain, or were the wrong caliber and could not be fired."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yalu_River_(1894...

"Li wanted to delay the battle against the Japanese fleet, thus allowing the Chinese more time to equip their ships with additional ammunition. However, the imperial court called him a coward and his recommendation was turned down."

"Defense spending analyst Winslow Wheeler concluded from flight evaluation reports that the F-35A "is flawed beyond redemption";[196] in response, program manager Bogdan suggested that pilots worried about being shot down should fly cargo aircraft instead."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

I don't think U.S. is at the terminal stage yet, as Qing China was at that time - but it certainly rhymes.

The analogy seems poor.

Qing's warships are just good on paper, but the men in charge of them lack actual real-world experiences wielding them effectively.

While F35 Zumwalt Ford are all products driven by US military's real-world experiences, guided by their requirements, and addresses real issues. And I have no doubt that these weapons can be used effectively in their designated use cases.

Their failure is that the engineering work did not finish quick enough to land their impact in appropriate time frame.

Prompted by the November 22, 2016, break-down of Zumwalt in the Panama Canal with both propellers seized, Mike Fredenburg analyzed the program for the National Review and concluded that the ship's problems "are emblematic of a defense procurement system that is rapidly losing its ability to meet our national security needs."[93] After detailing problems relating to the skyrocketing costs, lack of accountability, unrealistic goals, a flawed concept of operations, the perils of designing a warship around stealth, as well as the failure of the Advanced Gun System, Fredenburg concludes:

The Zumwalt is an unmitigated disaster. Clearly it is not a good fit as a frontline warship. With its guns neutered, its role as a primary anti-submarine-warfare asset in question, its anti-air-warfare capabilities inferior to those of our current workhorse, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and its stealth not nearly as advantageous as advertised, the Zumwalt seems to be a ship without a mission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer

Would make a nice super yacht though, all those fancy angles.

The analogy seems perfect. http://www.defensenews.com/articles/new-warships-big-guns-ha...

Even down to the serious opioid problem we are having.

The F35 was a Lockheed bureaucratic coup: they got buy in from the Marine Corps, which has very little organic technical prowess compared to the Air Force and Navy, by pitching the VSTOL version up front. Once they had buy-in from the Marines, DoD released a short-fused competition announcement, which gave the Boeing team very little lead time to produce a competent competitive airframe, the X-32, which looks like an obese guppy (1).

As for airworthiness, it should be noted Lockheed has no, no commercial airframe business. Boeing's commercial business exceeds all military programs in production scale. Observers of the competition generally agreed (1) Boeing could have produced better airframes given a more reasonable timeframe, (2) separate airframes (as Boeing proposed and eventually happened in the F35 anyway) would provide better performance per dollar.

As for the Zumwalt, I'll just leave Robert Work's paper (2) as an exercise for the reader.

The Ford is too big to say much of anything about "the Ford". Carriers are huge investments. On investment scale, it's equivalent to building a city from scratch. If you haven't been on one, you probably can't wrap your head around the scale of the thing. Nuclear reactors, an airport, 5-6000 people, enough munitions to level a small city. And it's own flotilla of warships.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program

(2) http://awin.aviationweek.com/Portals/AWeek/Ares/work%20white...

On another failed warship note, the Vasa, built in Sweden in the 1620's barely made it off the dock before sinking but was amazingly well preserved. Worth seeing if you are in Stockholm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)

The story of the Vasa is a great lesson on the dangers of changing specifications while a project is underway. Not exactly the lesson of the apparent debacle of the Ford, which is more a lesson on the dangers of using a lot of new unproven technology in a major project.

In fact... Pete Cheslock just gave a talk regarding the Vasa and how it applies to engineering anything, but software especially:

https://www.slideshare.net/petecheslock/the-vasa-redux

And he actually did a quick lightning talk (5 minutes) on it the year prior at Monitorama:

https://pete.wtf/vasa/

It was a very funny and well done presentation. Definitely worth watching.

Don't forget the LCS.

Yeah, I don't know why the littoral combat ship was such a big problem. It's for near-shore patrol, which has to be the easiest job any navy has to do. Even the really piddly ones have to deal with that, and they do so with a wide variety of patrol boats, corvettes, and frigates. The USN could have picked any one of dozens of designs in current operation, made a few tweaks for taste, and put them in service.

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