A Tale of Two Ships [pdf]
thorconpower.com
thorconpower.com
At one point I had to inventory every... single... weld... on the ship because we questioned their quality.
At another time (2007), a diesel engine en route to the ship fell off a truck and crushed a car, barely missing a woman who was sleeping in the back. Nothing to do with the ship's quality, but imagine getting that news while already putting out so many fires.
On the bright side, I got to be onboard one of these ships during a multi-day sea trial, which was a lot of fun.
With all that said... It is completely unhelpful to compare the cost of a military ship to a commercial ship. The commercial ships are very simple and cookie-cutter[1], unlike military ships that are almost always new designs and involve complex, integrated systems such as communication, defense, hospitals, refueling, etc, etc.
[1] I wrote about this just last week: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/simple-systems/
So, subsequent hull numbers for San Antonio class ended up being cheaper than 100% over budget? Likewise, is it customary for STX or Chantiers de l'Atlantique or Fincanterei to have to double-check the status of every single weld in ship they've delivered, or are the owners of cruise lines tolerant of massive cost overruns && late delivery?
Unfortunately the Navy doesn't have much choice in who builds their ships. They must be built in the US, and there are very few capable shipbuilders still left in this country. It's a terrible business to be in, so there's no incentive for companies to jump into the market because the margins are razor-thin. In fact, Northrop Grumman got out of the market a few years ago (http://investor.northropgrumman.com/news-releases/news-relea...).
(As an aside, cruise ships are still cookie-cutter compared to military ships.)
To borrow a quote from Churchill, "[the current ship procurement process] is the worst form of [procurement], except for all those others that have been tried."
They are still made of steel, are welded/riveted together in modules, and must be watertight. Is the knowledge of how to properly weld a hull-section for a commercial ship utterly nontransferable to military work?
The other is a floating hotel.
That said, most of the cost savings is probably just economies of scale. Civilian fleets are much larger than military fleets.
I learned a couple of afternoon's worth of welding (TIG and MIG, with a dash of spot) and looked at some books regarding it. I realized that I was staring into a piece of craft that would take years to actually master the nuances of, if I were even capable of it.
Very much, yes. Yes because of the probably different steels in a cruise ship versus a battleship, yes because of lifetime expectancies, yes because of stresses expected, yes because of inspection schedules. I probably don't have even a good enough sense of what is required to come up with half of where the differences would lie.
"If the mechanical linkage fails, hook a chain to both sides of the rudder and pull in the direction you want!"
How many people does that take? Can you really do it with a crew of 13?
As a first-order approximation, that holds true. (In the event of a black-out, there are redundant power supplies and mechanical fallback controls (think big, geared control wheel) - or also hand-crank pumps and hydraulic valves.
It is far more common for the rudder to fall off than for the steering machine to fail catastrophically.
(Or, as the C/E on a vessel I attended once put it - there are two machines on this vessel which CAN NOT FAIL. The steering gear and this one. (As he poured me a coffee from the engine control room Moccamaster...)
Also, I'm not saying government program offices are perfect. There are certainly lazy, incompetent, and ignorant people. However, these types of people are in every industry. For the most part, I've worked with several very talented folks who are patriots and vigorous stewards of tax payer dollars (because guess what - we are all tax payers). Not all great talents, but there is a fair amount.
The subject paper isn't worth the handful of photons that scorched my retinas when I read it.
VLCC's (an example of a commercial ship or "black hulls") are designed to minimize cost. They use the cheapest steel, burn the cheapest fuel - it's basically a metal bucket with a motor. LPD's (a military vessel (more specifically an amphib) or "grey hull") is constructed of higher end materials to protect itself and it's crew in peace time and it war.
Just to give you an example of where some of that cost comes from - LPD's have flight decks with night vision compatible visual landing aids so pilots can land at night concurrent with LCACs bing loaded into the well deck. The flight deck can handle the intense structural heat loading of V-22 aircraft. They have massive hangars to store and maintain aircraft, with precision gantry cranes to do delicate aircraft parts replacement aboard the ship. There is an ASSIST RAST track that does not deteriorate over time and jeopardize heavy weather aircraft landings. There is a state of the art help control station... ALL OF THIS is shock qualified to survive blasts.
The list goes on and on - combat systems, command and control, freshwater generation and sewage systems for a massive crew (compared to a ~20 person merchant ship), a propulsion and steering system with much higher installed power and power density than anything anyone would put on a commercial ship due to stringent speed and maneuvering requirements.
All of this is very difficult to integrate into a design and equally difficult to build.
If you think you're going to design and build a grey hull at the same displacement cost (steel weight) as a grey hull, you are grossly mistaken. You're comparing a custom Ferrari to a bare bones van and saying "hey, this can weighs more and costs way less. Gee, I need to write a paper to let everyone know that Ferraris are way over priced."
Ding dong.
When one is paying for a Ferarri that's a lot of money.. but at least when the vehicle arrives, it can move under its own power and does not break down 2 month after.
I only worked on the LPD platform for a brief period of time, but as anyone in industry knows, the LPD-17 Class does indeed "work" - far above and beyond the basic propulsion and maneuvering.
>I don't think anyone would complain if flight deck failed, or new combat systems failed to perform to spec.
Tell that to the family of the sailor who was crushed by a rotating gun turret while checking his phone because an audible alarm failed to sound.
Tell that to the crew of the adjacent ship during a training excersize when the gun barrel flips 180 degrees due to an erroneous sign-flip in the software.
Tell that to the tax payers who have to pay for new flight deck non-skid and deck repair after the V-22 exhaust burns the old non-skid off and warps the deck steel (hopefully the FOD from the nonskid didn't get ingested into the aircraft intakes and cause a crash killing the crew)
It's these kinds of uninformed statements that are dangerous to the very people trying to defend their country because average citizens don't take the time (and honestly don't have the time) to look into the true reason for defense costs. Instead they get their information from non-peer-reviewed papers by authors who make horrendous summations on topics they know nothing about.
Yes, spending needs to be monitored and checked thrice, but the truth is much more complex than can be summed up two pages (not that this write-up even scratched the surface of the truth).
This write-up is more than ignorant, it's dangerous because is spreads easy to digest and believe falsehoods that seep into the minds of the public. It may as well have been written by Trump himself (I'm a patriot and respect the POTUS office, but I still think the person in office is horrifying, even if he does want to increase the naval fleet size, which is needed to protect the country).
Attempting to repeatedly change the subject by talking about night-vision compatible this-or-that and various gun turret failures only makes your argument look weak. Don't assume that we're stupid just because we aren't actively serving in the military.
> This write-up is more than ignorant, it's dangerous because is spreads easy to digest and believe falsehoods that seep into the minds of the public.
Ok, I'm open to persuasion. Can you identify one or two falsehoods in the pdf that is the subject of this thread?
Thus far, I see a lot of accounts attempting to change the subject, a lot of complaining that the author is unfair, and insinuations that we civvies are too stupid to understand such complex military issues. But no actual "The author said X, and here's a link to show he's wrong."
That makes me think the author probably isn't wrong.
The outfitting on a LPD and any other Navy vessel is the majority of the cost. There is over 50m USD worth of radar processing equipment in a single space on an LPD. Chocks, non-skid, RAST, extensive welding well beyond a VLCC, and more. The alignment work alone on the combat systems equipment, i.e. directors, CIWS, nulka, SRBOC, slq-32, spq-9b, HGHS, DTS, etc., is over 500k USD. That's just ALIGNING the foundations and equipment. It's not the actual equipment or foundations. The NOMEX panels in every space is incredibly expensive. That's something you would never find on a VLCC. Even if you used non-mil-spec cables you'd have miles and miles and miles more cable on a LPD than a VLCC.
The article is correct. You could build a ship to carry 700 marines, helicopters, and support vehicles for much cheaper. You would never be able to have it move with the speed of a LPD, have the combat systems equipment outfitted, and you'd never have it with any level of defense.
I have been on this exact ship many, many times. I previously commented that it just left BAE NSR within the last 6 months. It just finished sea trials at NAVSTA NFK. The LPD-class has been riddled with problems, but it's a totally unfair to compare it to a basic "off-the-shelf" VLCC.
I'm surprised to see so many naval architects and engineers in this thread. You have to remember that none of us wake up every day to do a poor job. These ships are a miracle of modern engineering.
Yes, all of the crew member families who will die in the sinking. Did an LPD-17 class ship sink that I'm not aware of?
> Attempting to repeatedly change the subject by talking about night-vision compatible this-or-that and various gun turret failures only makes your argument look weak. Don't assume that we're stupid just because we aren't actively serving in the military.
I'm not pointing out these items to change the subject of the conversation, rather it IS the very point of the conversation. Every single function, system/equipment, certification/qualification that the author neglected to account for is a critical missing part of the author's alleged proof that warships are vastly overpriced based on acquisition costs of a commercial ship that has none of those features.
> Thus far, I see a lot of accounts attempting to change the subject, a lot of complaining that the author is unfair, and insinuations that we civvies are too stupid to understand such complex military issues. But no actual "The author said X, and here's a link to show he's wrong."
OK, I'll give an example. The MK46 gun weapon system costs $25.6M to buy [1]. The shipyard then needs to install and checkout the system, conservatively $300K (crane time, specialize labor, custom cables to be built and pulled, foundation prep and accurate alignment, power, etc.). A VLCC's cost for this, $0. Where was this accounted for in the author's "comparison"? Nowhere.
Now, it would take a long time to do a proper cost breakdown, but as I tried to state earlier, imaging adding up the costs of all the other mission essential features on LPD's that aren't on VLCC's including (just as a sampling of basic examples):
- much larger engines (much higher cost) for the ships displacement compared VLCCs. -much larger (more expensive) sewage treatment, HVAC, auxiliary electric power (again larger more expensive generators) for all those extra berthing spaces & C5ISR systems. -continue this list for ALL the hardware deltas between the ships, then factor in the cost of rigorous qualification (e.g. aviation certification, shock qualification, EMI qualification, etc.) to ensure the ship survives in war and peacetime that are drastically different from anything a VLCC would see.
I challenge the author to breakdown all of these and other special warship costs up, then do your comparison.
Again, the omission of these items IS the problem with the write-up.
I'm certainly not saying 'civies' are stupid. If that's how it came across, I apologise. I'm saying that the issue is much more complex than the treatment afforded by the author's 'bar napkin' math. I realize that most people have no idea about these details similar to those I cite above - why they exist and the associated costs of each. It's taken me a career to gain that insight.
That's why the paper incenses me so. Because the author is taking advantage of that lack of awareness of the public, and steep barrier to acquiring that knowledge, to make a generalization about ship acquisition costs based on incorrect (i.e. intentionally or unintentionally omitted) data. For what end, I have no idea, but I do know the misinformation driving public perception is harmful.
A peer review in a known industry journal (e.g. SNAME, ASME, ASNE) would have quickly dismissed this write-up as pure hogwash.
1. https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/425681/general-dynamics-win...
The disaster described in this essay is the proverbial good old days. DoD procurement has gotten worse since then.
... And that's the end of the article. I'm not saying the author is wrong or makes any dubious claims, but I really wish he would have explored his alternative more thoroughly. It's quite an easy assertion to make, that US military acquisitions are rife with inefficiencies, but solving that problem is much harder.
My favorite example of this was the US Army's decision to use the ACU design pattern. The only thing it blends in with is Gramma's floral couch.
In terms of ships and other equipment, having a commercial manufacturer step into the military space would be like asking Ford or GMC to make Bradley Fighting Vehicles; they don't have the know-how for combat ready manufacturing. The systems in any combat vehicle are an order of magnitude more complex than commercial offerings in terms of design, verification, and manufacturing.
Part of this is the military requirement for 3rd party integrations. The BFV is manufactured by BAE Systems, but the turret optics/electronics package is Raytheon.
An engineering firm I'm familiar with recently got the contract for part of the M1 Abrams tier 4 (?not sure?) upgrades and has to meet integration requirements of existing hardware/electronics and new hardware/electronics other bid winners are contributing.
I would argue that, aside from the run-of-the-mill pocket lining (see ACU design selection), the acquisition process for military equipment is necessarily inefficient.
Strangely enough, seventy years ago commercial manufacturers ...GM, Ford, Chrysler, Food Machinery Corp(!), General Mills(!!), Western Electric etc. had the know-how for combat-ready manufacturing...what changed?
Complexity and integration requirements. Tanks 70 years ago were not as complex as our current heavy armor by several orders of magnitude.
=== EDIT ===
To clarify: the complexity arises from electronics and electro-mechanical assemblies, the chemistry/metallurgy/materials science from armor/chassis, engine complexity (M1 has a jet turbine), and so on. We have a depth of advancement that is as complex at the knowledge end as it is at the application end.
No. But I do think military technology has outpaced modern consumer technology in terms of complexity.
Complexity in every sense, at every stage of the design, testing, fabrication, and delivery.
From discerning appropriate tactics for the coming century (which are used to produce design requirements that equipment is designed against) to writing the user's and maintainer's manuals, to the number of people required to get a particular sub-system into production, and so on.
The bottom line is that a modern tank requires more people, more knowledge, more complex (number of parts, functionality, materials selection, fabrication, testing, etc.) and interconnected sub-systems, more complex manufacturing techniques, tighter tolerances (sometimes) (which lead to more complex methods of measure), more exacting specifications, etc., than a modern consumer vehicle.
A standard automobile may have 20 to 50 microcontrollers that talk to each other on one CAN bus. A modern tank has at least 3 independent communication networks, an electrically isolated diagnostics system, distinct optics systems for the commander and pilot and gunner, a fire control sub-system, and so on. Each of these subsystems is immensely complex, designed and manufactured to exacting specifications for durability and maintainability.
The specifications for each are so exact, that any subsystem can be torn out and another designed to the same spec can be swapped in. This is no trivial feat. This isn't like a new set of rims onto your car. It isn't even akin to piggy-backing or changing out the ECU in your car. It is at a whole different level, because each sub-system has to integrate with at least two other sub-systems (power and communications). This is like being able to tear out the autopilot portion of your Tesla and swap in some other company's autopilot, while keeping the rest of the systems intact.
what about biological filters for the air? (telsa made waves a few years ago with its filtering, which is a lower standard).
What requirements does your Chevy have to survive IED's, gunfire, and mines?
What about real all wheel drive, and the ability to ford small ditches, etc (most of the wheeled military vehicles have very high ground clearance)
For our military since the 70s, we have not fought a major power, and the main incentives are to keep the contractor money flowing and the body bag count down. So, the system is working to deliver what it is optimized to deliver.
Were we to get into a war with Russia or China though, it's pretty clear we'd get our asses handed to us because we can only make N weapons for Y dollars while they make 10N weapons for the same price, and theirs are only 10% less effective than ours. As it is, ISIS and the Taliban can keep us spinning our wheels for a decade with nothing to show for it. Imagine a foe with an actual military budget…
Exactly, but was that lesson learned? No.
I'd just like to know why that happens less and less nowadays...
I believe that a fundamental problem is that the defense-industrial complex intentionally exploits the acquisition process to drive up the complexity of every system to tremendous levels. This looks defensible because it's always easy (e.g. for a politician) to say that the military needs the best cutting-edge equipment, but it also contributes enormously to the profitability of defense contractors. This was a pretty swell strategy for the defense contractors but has turned out bad now that (and 'now' here is like the last 30 years) the complexity of many military systems has been increased beyond the ability of the contractors to actually deliver, even at the enormous agreed-upon prices. But it actually still works out fine, because the DoD, congress, etc. have totally failed to put the brakes on well after the complexity trainwreck has begun.
During the Gulf War the Marine Corps went to war with Banyan VINES practically bought out of the local big-box store. Now the AMHS is a fantastically complicated acquisition program that still seems inferior to Isode's "Military XMPP" offering - and then in practice soldiers are using Telegram. DoD tries to push an integration system to relay IMs from one system to another because they can't manage to standardize on any one product anyway. An IRC gateway is still a critical feature because, who knows how many millions of dollars later, IRC is still one of the most usable options available to the warfighter.
How much of this complexity is actually necessary, how much of this complexity is just the contractor's salesmanship?
Are ships so much cheaper than cargo airplanes? The 747-8 is around $400 million unit cost.
https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the...
My favorite paragraph:
> Conversely, said defense analyst Loren B. Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a conservative Arlington, Va., think tank, the $2 billion-per-plane figure cited by opponents of the B-2 stealth bomber includes the program's high research and development expenses--which must be spread over only 21 planes--plus spare parts, maintenance and future inflation. Said Thompson: "What would it cost me to build one more bomber? . . . $700 million."
Gee, what a steal! Only $700 million for a “stealth” “bomber” that is neither stealthy nor able to carry a significant payload.
The B2 is considered the most stealthy of any of the fifth generation aircraft currently flying. And it carries a 40K payload. Yes, that's smaller than the B-52 and B-1, but it's fine for it's role.
Because we're not talking about generic widgets here. It's the difference between buying a bespoke Saville Row suit and a 3-for-1 Suit Warehouse suit.
There are all sorts of off-the-shelf (OTS) designs for general use vessels like tugboats:
* https://ral.ca/designs/tugboats/
And there are some 'generic' designs for combat vessels:
* https://products.damen.com/en/clusters/combatants
But if you purchase a generic design, then you don't have an advantage of your (potential) opponent because they may also have purchased a generic design.
The US military specifically does not want a generic design (at least in some areas) because they want (perceived) advantage with more (supposedly) advanced design. And someone has to pay for the R&D on that advanced design.
Given that the only market for these boats is the USN, why should the builder pay for the R&D? It's their (only?) customer that's asking for this, and they can't use what they learn for any other designs (because of ITAR export restrictions).
When Ford is doing research for a new F-150 they can spread the R&D over millions of units getting economies of scale, but (e.g.) Bath Iron Works can't exactly amortize the fixed costs of the Zumwalt-class destroyer if their only customer, the USN, says they'll buy 32 but then only builds 3. Why should BIW be the ones to pay?
It's the reason why the F-22 and F-35 have different costs: the Raptor is a US-only plane that no one else can touch, the Lightning II is cheaper because it's available for export and gets economies of scale.
Why do anything right the first time if you can get paid twice, thrice, or six times to fix your fuckups later?
P.S. if I buy a bespoke suit, I pay a fixed cost and it’s guaranteed correct — problems are paid for by the maker, not me.
Using materials that have been used for decades.
If you want to create a new nano-fibre fabric in a lab that's never been used before, and will not be purchased by anyone else, why should Henry Pool or Huntsman & Sons be the ones to pay for all the lab equipment?
If the USN wants cheap and cheerful there are OTS options:
* https://products.damen.com/en/clusters/combatants
It's kind of what the USN is doing for the FFG(X):
* https://news.usni.org/2018/02/16/navy-picks-five-contenders-...
Also the ffg/x “competitive” “bidding” process is a joke. They are paying five vendors to make PowerPoint presentations, then whoever made the prettiest slide deck gets billions of dollars.
The folks who run this are sensitive to criticism but also either unwilling or unable to enact any substantial change.
Otherwise, what's stopping a schmuck like me from creating a shell company and promise the navy state of the art ships? Shouldn't there be accountability here?
Btw, the pdf mentions that the military signed off on the purchase after the inspection, so my assumption was that they still could avoid paying.
Nothing is stopping you. But there will (hopefully) be a due diligence phase in which the bidders are evaluated beforehand. It's why there are such a thing as a approved / qualified bidder list:
* https://www.findrfp.com/Government-Contracting/Government-Bi...
During peace we can gamble on advanced systems while during conflict production and refitting is king.
1) There is (just like with any bespoke product) a real risk that it won't be completed (at all / on time / for a profit).
2) It's very capital-intensive (so even the biggest defense contractor is going to need to borrow). Even civilian ships cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
3) The capital is tied up for a minimum of 1-2 years (depending on the size of the ship).
Re 3: Even during WWII, with "all hands on deck" and less complex ships, the US wasn't able to build a fleet carrier in less than 24 months (authorization through commissioning). "Liberty ships" (mass-produced, unarmored transports) took about 2 months through commissioning.
So the Navy would probably have to arrange some sort of loan guarantee... and now we're back to the supplier not having a strong incentive to do things right.
Beurocrat A: "Company X really botched the contract, like to the point of near criminal, definitely civil, negligince, we should probably go after them in court so we don't set a precedent of allowing this sort of thing"
Bureaucrat B: "Don't be unrealistic, company X donated amount Y to <campaign of person who's party currently heads up the executive branch of the level of government in question>, there's no way that would stick."
And then bureaucrats A and B proceed to spend the rest of their day doing things that actually count toward whatever their performance metrics are.
I'm unsure if the drop is due to their scandal and poor management, something specific to Japan/Japanese steel, or if that's a larger issue in the steel market. Nippon also saw a ~55% drop on the same time period.
Why do they check every weld on a new Navy ship? So they can test it by trying to blow it up:
https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2016/06/16/lcs-survives...
Not part of the acceptance test for a VLCC.
>A 10,000-pound explosive charge was set off about a hundred yards from the Jackson – the Navy wouldn't say exactly how close, saying the actual distance is classified
and they provided the photo clearly allowing for the precise calculation :) - the explosion is about 12 widths of the helicopter deck from the ship and that means at least 200-250m which sounds more realistic as setting off a 5ton explosion 100m from a small aluminum ship - who is going to pay for all that damage :) If the test is officially declared for anything close to 100m then that may be another case of "Pentagon Wars" ...
:-)
While underway, commander/captain is judge, jury and executioner for disciplinary issues. They call it "Captain's mast" and the powers that come with it are wide and can be extreme, including demotions and docking pay.
The XO refused to receive the ship commander's punishment while on mission. Tantamount to a mutiny.
That's nothing to do with mutiny at sea, or mutiny at all.
"A sailor drowned after being thrown into the sea when an 11-meter rigid hull inflatable boat (RHIB) flipped while being lowered into the water from amphibious transport dock USS San Antonio (LPD-17) on the first-in-class ship’s initial deployment. At the time, San Antonio was operating in the Gulf of Aden.
Ship commander Cmdr. Eric Cash received a letter of reprimand. The amphib’s executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kearns, was found not guilty of negligence. Kearns had transferred from the ship when the Navy decided to levy a punishment. Instead of accepting non-judicial punishment, Kearns opted to fight a single charge of negligence in a military court. During the trial, according to news reports, his lawyers presented information detailing how, at the time of the incident, San Antonio remained an unfinished vessel with thousands of faulty welds, engine trouble and only a portion of the standard technical manuals typically found onboard. Kearns’ promotion to commander, which had been delayed pending the trial, took effect after the verdict."