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| Navy of Tomorrow, Mired in Yesterday's Politics |
| 2005-04-19 |
| More on the DDX. The politics will continue to be intense this year with BRAC base closing announcements soon. The Navy's new destroyer, the DD(X), is becoming so expensive that it may end up destroying itself. The Navy once wanted 24 of them. Now it thinks it can afford 5 - if that. The price of the Navy's new ships, driven upward by old-school politics and the rusty machinery of American shipbuilding, may scuttle the Pentagon's plans for a 21st-century armada of high-technology aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines. Shipbuilding costs "have spiraled out of control," the Navy's top admiral, Vern Clark, told Congress last week, rising so high that "we can't build the Navy that we believe that we need in the 21st century." The first two DD(X)'s are now supposed to total $6.3 billion, according to confidential budget documents, up $1.5 billion. A new aircraft carrier, the CVN-21, is estimated at $13.7 billion, up $2 billion. The new Virginia-class submarine now costs $2.5 billion each, up $400 million. All these increases have materialized in the last six months. The Navy says it can make do with fewer big ships patrolling the oceans. It wants more fast boats and aircraft to fight offshore and upriver, a speedier force to counter terror. But Congress, seeking to sustain America's shipyards, wants as many big ships as possible. Keep that in mind and consider writing a few letters. While DOD can waste money, nobody does it as well or on as large a scale as Congresscritters. Admiral Clark, who plans to retire later this year, says both strategies could be sunk by soaring costs. Philip A. Dur, president of Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, the company primarily in charge of building the first DD(X) destroyer, defends the effort. "No question, the cost of the ship is an issue," Mr. Dur said, though its costs would be justified by state-of-the-art weaponry. Its sophisticated systems would require crews of as few as 125, one-third the size of today's destroyers, and stealth technology would make the 14,000-ton ship appear no larger than a fishing boat on an enemy's radar. But the $3.3 billion to build the first ship "is a big number," he said. The number became big, fast, because it was kept small at first. John J. Young Jr., the assistant Navy secretary in charge of buying new weapons, said that until recently Navy officials had knowingly "underestimated the price" of the DD(X) destroyer program. "There's a motivation in this building to birth programs," he said, referring to Pentagon proposals to create big new weapons systems. "People tend to understate their costs." Political haggling may also add to the price. The Navy wants a winner-take-all competition to build the destroyers. But Congress wants to give one to Northrop Grumman's shipyard in Mississippi, the next to General Dynamics' yard in Maine, to share the wealth and ensure more money for the yards. The dispute drags on. The Navy says the two-shipyard approach will add $300 million or more to the cost of each DD(X). The Navy now hopes to build five DD(X) destroyers, one a year, at a total cost of $20.6 billion, including research and development. But those plans are shaky. "There is doubt right now among people in the Navy and industry about whether a significant number of DD(X) will be procured," said Ronald O'Rourke, a Congressional Research Service analyst, who obtained the previously undisclosed cost figures for the new destroyers from the Navy. Unless the costs are controlled, some in the Navy and the shipbuilding industry say, the better alternative may be to finish none of them and skip to the next-generation destroyer. "The bottom line," Admiral Clark told lawmakers, "is you can't have the Navy of your dreams with the mechanisms that we're using." Military shipbuilding is a closed mechanism run by two contractors, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. Only they can produce the ships the Navy needs. Mr. Dur of Northrop Grumman calls military shipbuilding "a unique economy." Unique it is. Between them, the two contracting giants own the six remaining yards that can build American warships, in Maine, Connecticut, Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana and California. They receive unstinting support from members of Congress representing those states; in turn, the contractors support thousands of smaller suppliers that are often the sole sources for what they make. RTWT |
| Posted by:too true |
| #14 First was "fly-by-wire" now its "sail-by-wire" - the crux of GMD > space- and high- atmospheric laser defense backed up by hi-tech BMD, which means that, in the long run, all the US armed services have to do is clean up the mess once GMD and "Metal Storm", etal. gets thru with 'em. The Commies know GMD means they and their nuke bully stick is history, finis, goners - 9-11 and WOT is not somuch about Radical Islam, but the Left's and Commie's "final conflict" and struggle to conquer America and Western DemCapitalism before GMD kills the Leftist-Socialist-Communist universe! Radical Islam are just PC, PDENIABLE, DIVERSIONARY PSEUDO-SPETZNATZ, A PRE-CONVENTIONAL "SAPPER-COMMANDO" SELECTIVE MIL STRIKE!? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2005-04-19 10:06:01 PM |
| #13 This is like spending 1.5 billion per aircraft which can only bomb at night, is a siting duck if spotted and a crew of 2 is forced to fly alone for 20 hours. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-04-19 1:04:01 PM |
| #12 I have to question the viability of spending 3.15 billion on what is essentially an expendable screening ship. Hell, the CVN Ronnie Regan only cost 4.5 billion... |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-04-19 1:00:43 PM |
| #11 Yes the high tech is great - and sorely needed to maintain our edge. But... Damage control is what worries me about the new ships. A crew of 125, after taking crew injuries, will be hard pressed for DC action to sustain the ship's in the event of a powerplant or other central system casualty. And God help them if they take water integrity hits - DC for that is a matter of lumber, patches, clamps and muscle; the latter of which they will be missing with all the "deck apes" (Bosun's Mates for you non-swabbees) that these new ships supposedly will not need. These new ships seem nice, but also seem very brittle. And with fewer of them, they bceome all that much more important and precious, like the "Big Carriers" of WW2. Color me doubtful on this whole thing. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-04-19 12:11:10 PM |
| #10 'Moose: not true about ship quality. Japan had the best-trained carrier pilots in the world in 1941, and cruisers and destroyers with the world's best surface ship torpedoes, and used them all quite effectively in the early months and years of the war. However: -- Japan's battleships were only fair to middling compared with ours because they lacked radar gun directors, advanced gyroscopic fire-control computers, and remote-powered gunlaying (I'd take an American Iowa or even a South Dakota against the much-vaunted Yamato in a straight-up fight any day); -- Japan never got an improved carrier-based fighter plane into production, and never produced trained pilots in sufficient numbers to replace their losses at midway; -- they never developed a decent medium AA gun like the 40mm Bofors or a dual-purpose secondary like the 5"/38, with the result that Japanese AA was not enough to protect their ships once the Zeroes got knocked out of the sky (by contrast, a US Sumner-class DD (1944) had more AA "throw-weight" than some prewar battleships!); -- Japan never organized a proper convoy system, and Japanese ASW was, to put it charitably, pathetic; -- the much-vaunted I-boat submarines were never properly used against Allied shipping; -- Japan never built enough carriers after the start of the war; and, -- in the Japanese Navy, damage control was considered a second-class specialty, and wasn't developed to the high art it became in the USN (see, e.g., USS Franklin)--with the result that Japanese ships sank from damage that would have been survivable for a US ship. (Don't forget, too, that Japan couldn't build replacements as fast as we could.) There's a lot of information on these points at this site, including a fascinating "world's baddest BB" comparison. |
| Posted by: Mike 2005-04-19 11:44:18 AM |
| #9 "Unless the costs are controlled, some in the Navy and the shipbuilding industry say, the better alternative may be to finish none of them and skip to the next-generation destroyer." Maybe I'm missing something, but how is that going to fix the problem long-term? Any next-generation whatever is going to cost even more than a current whatever. Somebody is going to have to pay for it. |
| Posted by: Xbalanke 2005-04-19 11:29:54 AM |
| #8 The US defeated Japan because they only had a few, high quality ships; whereas ours were mass-production hunks of junk, but a LOT of them Liberty ships were junk. Carriers were a mixed bag: there were escort carriers who were junk and then there were the big ones like Lexington or Enterprise. A thing to notice is that in the hard fought battles between Coral Sea and Guadalcanal American carriers ever seemed to be able to take more punishement than the Japanese ones before being disabled or sunk (could have been the effect of better damage control in American ships) and after suffering damage American carriers were returned to service much faster than Japanese ones (look at Yorktown versus Shokaku and Zuikaku after Coral Sea). This can be attributed to better shipyards and to the efforts of the people working in them but it is not impossible that the design of American carriers allowed for easier and faster repairs. About battleships the South Dakota class ships could make mincemeat of "normal" Japanese battleships (cf the sinking of the Hiei around Gauadalcanal). They would have probably been outclassed by the Yamato and Musashi but by then the Americans were no longer interested in the battleship arms race: they were building carriers so fast that if had the war lasted one year longer Americans could have invaded Japan just by walking on a bridge of carrier decks extending from California to Japan. |
| Posted by: JFM 2005-04-19 11:26:36 AM |
| #7 ZF the Fed's don't do capital budgets, too hard. |
| Posted by: CPA Barbie 2005-04-19 11:18:43 AM |
| #6 I think it was Adm. Raeder, in late 1943 or early 1944, who said something to the effect of 'I knew the war was lost because America was building ships faster than Germany could build torpedoes.' Not Rolls-Royces, but not junk - more like Model T Fords. Cheap, no frills, but got the job done. My father was an engineer on them in the North Atlantic during that time. |
| Posted by: glenmore 2005-04-19 10:42:31 AM |
| #5 Article: The Navy now hopes to build five DD(X) destroyers, one a year, at a total cost of $20.6 billion, including research and development. 25 units at $3.3b a pop totals $83b. Spread out over their 30-year life spans, that comes to about $3b a year of capital expense for the entire force. I think we can afford this. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-04-19 10:39:04 AM |
| #4 The Navy's new destroyer, the DD(X), is becoming so expensive that it may end up destroying itself. The Navy once wanted 24 of them. Now it thinks it can afford 5 - if that. Sounds like a variant of the "Bay Bridge Syndrome". |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-04-19 10:14:55 AM |
| #3 I disagree Anonymoose...I don't think the ships mass-produced in WWII were "hunks of junk". We gave Japan hell with the fleet we had then. And regardless if the DD(X) or the CVN-21 is built or not, we could zap any countries navy with what we have right now. |
| Posted by: shellback 2005-04-19 10:10:11 AM |
| #2 Ironically, with the proliferation of light anti-ship missiles, after the first sea disaster we will once again have to take our WWII battleships out of mothballs. It's a purely practical thing: you can't hide forever, so you have to just assume that you're going to take some lumps. Even if ships are invisible, *somebody* is going to figure out a way to find them, and then, without armor, bye-bye. Technology is all well and good, but sometimes you just have to bare knuckle fight. The US defeated Japan because they only had a few, high quality ships; whereas ours were mass-production hunks of junk, but a LOT of them. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-04-19 9:54:03 AM |
| #1 All of these cold hard facts and troubles aside, asthetically the DD(X) is one pug fugly boat. |
| Posted by: JerseyMike 2005-04-19 9:45:07 AM |