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| Science & Technology |
| NavyÂ’s New Minehunter CanÂ’t See or Stop Mines |
| 2012-01-18 |
| It’s bad enough that the Navy’s newest ship has had wicked problems with corrosion, missed out on the latest naval wartime missions and is generally something of a Frankenstein’s monster. Now the Pentagon’s top weapons tester has found problems with its abilities to find and withstand mines — which is a big problem for a ship that’s supposed to be the Navy’s minehunter of the future. That’s the assessment of the director of the Operational Testing and Evaluation office, summing up a year’s worth of trials for the Littoral Combat Ship, the Navy’s cherished — and expensive — next-generation ship for warfare close to a shoreline. Little wonder that defense analysts think the ship is headed for the budgetary chopping block, even though the Navy wants 55 of the things and only has three. The report finds that the Littoral Combat Ship’s systems for spotting mines, the AN/AQS-20A Sonar Mine Detecting Set and the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System, are “deficient” for their primary task. That deficiency, if uncorrected, will “adversely affect the operational effectiveness” of a ship that’s already “not expected to be survivable in a hostile combat environment.” In other words, right now, the Littoral Combat Ship could stumble, Mr. Magoo-like, into a minefield — like, say, the narrow Strait of Hormuz or the coasts of China or North Korea — and then it’s lights out. If the Littoral Combat Ship is going to carry the sonar and laser systems that it’s currently scheduled to carry, then like Fat Joe and Raekwon, it must respect mines. Some necessary caveats apply. Just because the testers think there’s something wrong with a ship, truck, plane or gun doesn’t mean the program in question is doomed. Testing is how you discover flaws before they put someone in uniform at risk. And with the Littoral Combat Ship, those flaws might actually be less damaging than with some other ships, because everything the ship carries is designed to be modular — meaning you can swap out and substitute most everything on the hull. At the same time, the inability of the Littoral Combat Ship to withstand a sustained assault places a lot of stress on its minehunting systems. “As designed, it wouldn’t, ideally, go anywhere near a mine field,” explains Chris Johnson, a spokesman for Naval Sea System Command. “It’s not designed to take a mine strike. It’s designed to send off-board sensors and systems to find and then neutralize the mine.” Emphasis on ideally. “America has forgotten that mine hunting is hard,” says Craig Hooper, a vice president for Austal, one of the companies building the Littoral Combat Ship, “and if the work the Independence-variant [Littoral Combat Ship] is doing today re-energizes the mine warfare community and enables those specialists to acquire resources to defeat this threat, then America is better for it.” Johnson tells Danger Room that the report is just “one snapshot” in the life cycle of the ship’s mine-hunting packages. “We’re certainly not going to just put an unproved system” on the Littoral Combat Ship, he says. As it stands, both systems are scheduled to be ready by 2014. But it’s not like these are the first woes of the Littoral Combat Ship. The first two ships — the third was christened Saturday — have been hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, years behind schedule and without obvious uses in foreseeable naval scenarios. Its vulnerabilities have freaked out at least one blogger for the U.S. Naval Institute, who pronounced himself stunned that the Navy has moved forward with “a warship design that is not expected to fight and survive in the very environment in which it was produced to do so.” And now naval analysts are whispering that they expect the budgetary knives to come out for the ship when the Pentagon unveils its next budgetary blueprint in a few weeks. Johnson can’t comment on the budgetary fate of the ship. “I can say that, as of now, the Navy is very happy with the prices it’s getting on the LCS [Littoral Combat Ship] class,” he says. So, no budgetary mines in the waters — that is, if the Littoral Combat Ship could even tell. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #11 That's why there is an Engineering-In-Training requirement before sitting for an Engineering License exam. |
| Posted by: tipover 2012-01-18 23:49 |
| #10 However, IMHO, due to their dumbed-down curricula in many ways Mr. Wife disagrees, Bugs Glomoque3110, based in his own experience as a Chem.E. hiring and managing young engineers to do R&D and other things (the engineering training in problem solving is very useful far beyond the formal applications of the education). It's his opinion (I just asked him) that it's always been during the first five years of work experience that the kids come to understand how to apply what they learnt in school, and in every generation the old hands grumbled at the ignorance of the young whippersnappers. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2012-01-18 23:31 |
| #9 UW Mines per se in future could very well be Drones themselves Only if the target is submarines or other high vale targets. Mines are a poor country's naval weapon and a richer country's area denial weapon. They're cheap, plentiful, hide easily and in tiny amounts, drive your opponents nucking futz having to tie up assets to find and neutralize them. Mine hunting is slow, dangerous work. Think of walking through a dark warehouse in your stocking feet, with welding goggles on, a penlight in your hand, and you're trying to find a raw egg on the floor without stepping on it. The Navy got this brilliant idea that you can do stand-off mine countermeasures and not have to build a specialized ship. So instead you tie up a multimillion-dollar ship that can be better used doing other things. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2012-01-18 23:16 |
| #8 The USN trades/crafts skilled knowledge-base folks have done their bit, and are retiring. The new crop of engineers, of almost any discipline, obviously try very hard and get things done. However, IMHO, due to their dumbed-down curricula in many ways; they struggle to attain the "nuts "n bolts" gut intuition that their predecessors had. Our latest, technically advanced multi-function hand-held devices, are so astoundingly fast, integrated, powerful and open-ended, that many become self-satisfied; yet wary of the next giant tech leap forward. |
| Posted by: Bugs Glomoque3110 2012-01-18 22:50 |
| #7 USS Magoo? |
| Posted by: Muggsy Johnson7466 2012-01-18 22:23 |
| #6 UW Mines per se in future could very well be Drones themselves, or in the alternate serve as static or mobile carriers which can fire cheap VHE drones + torpedoes as well as be employed as dedicated mines. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-01-18 22:23 |
| #5 As I understand it, the LCS is also supposed to be relatively stealthy. Unfortunately,mines don't use radar. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2012-01-18 22:05 |
| #4 They spent everything on making the hull go 40 knots that they forgot to spend on the actual systems. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2012-01-18 21:50 |
| #3 That deficiency, if uncorrected, will "adversely affect the operational effectiveness" of a ship that's already "not expected to be survivable in a hostile combat environment." Hmmmmmm...I think I've found a possible problem here. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2012-01-18 21:43 |
| #2 Actually, it can. I remembered Murphy's laws of combat. Any ship can be a minesweeper... once. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2012-01-18 21:39 |
| #1 America has forgotten that mine hunting is hard... America has forgotten many things which have to be relearned by people dying. It does this every 20-30 years or so. Mine detectors of the future are just begging to be USDs (Unmanned Surface Drones). Perfect for cheaper and somewhat expendable robotic craft that patrol the sea lanes for mines and if they are sunk it isn't a huge loss for the Navy. Hell, they could even have mini-drones that peel off the USD and Kamikaze into the mine to destroy it. Seriously, why the fuck is the Navy still trying to make a modern version of the WWII mine sweeper that can't actually sweep mines? |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2012-01-18 21:37 |