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| Science & Technology |
| On the problems of modernization of the Ticonderoga-class missile cruisers |
| 2024-12-25 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. Text taken from the Telegram channel of kramnikcat Not sure about the terminology used here, so I will replace the most obscure ones with my interpretations, Can't be helped. [ColonelCassad] The US problem with the Ticonderogas modernization can be divided into 3 parts. 1. The state of the industry. Naval ship repair in the US has generally degraded to the level we are used to here against the backdrop of the post-Soviet Achtung: delays in deadlines (sometimes several times), fires on units under repair, low quality of repairs as such, sometimes with the impossibility of sending a repaired steamer to the BS, a shortage of personnel and other delights greatly complicate the maintenance of combat readiness of the fleet. 2. The state of the ships themselves. Before the Ticonderogas, the US only once solved the problem of returning non-aircraft-carrying combat surface ships to service at the age of ~40 years: these were the Iowa-class battleships under Reagan. They met the modernization of the 1980s with a much less exhausted resource (mostly since the mid-1950s they were mothballed) and at a completely different level of industry. At the same time, the modernization of the Iowas was not simple and the forty-year-old steamships did not show miracles of reliability. 3. The most important thing. The same line is ahead for the "Burkes", which were introduced in the successful years in the 1990s and early 2000s at 3-4 units per year. Neither Flight III "Burkes" nor, especially, DDG (X) will be built at this rate, while no ship can be in more than one place at a time. Will the volume of DDG (X) in combination with FFG-62 be enough? Let's see. Ship repair in the States does not show any trends for improvement yet. Drones in the framework of Distributed Lethality will not help much: if the current war proves anything, it is the fact that a drone lives until serious electronic warfare. (c) Ilya Kramnik |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #4 34 years I spent in a shipyard we had up and down years but mostly up building Navy supply ships and commercial oil tankers. good mix plus repair on Navy ships, and had an effective trainee program for maintaining labor needs. |
| Posted by: crazyhorse 2024-12-25 18:40 |
| #3 They also had a berserk union Time well past when 30% of the union pension funds must be made up of the company they are employed by. You sink the company, you sink your pension fund. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-12-25 11:40 |
| #2 /\ Yes, ship building, shoes, clothing, electronics, and many others. A total betrayal. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-12-25 10:54 |
| #1 ....Part of the problem is that we knowingly destroyed the US shipbuilding industry decades ago. My dad worked for the old American Ship Building company in Lorain, OH (they had a second smaller yard in Toledo). In 1983, they had three drydocks, all big enough to handle anything that could get through the St Lawrence Seaway. They also had a berserk union demanding more money for far less work (their last demand was a 20% raise and a 4-day week). They did NOT have USN contracts, because the Navy wouldn't give them to yards that didn't have 4 year contracts with their unions - the union said anything past 3 years was completely off the table. And so AmShip went under, and they weren't alone. The only major building yards left are the ones with nonstop USN contracts, and they're overwhelmed by needed maintenance, much less any new construction. The surviving yards know they have the USN by the shorts, and they have zero incentive to fix it. Mike |
| Posted by: MikeKozlowski 2024-12-25 10:36 |