Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
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Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
#2>But today, the version being built at a shipyard in Wisconsin shares only 15 percent commonality with the original design
How is this in any way acceptable? The procurement strategy was to buy an existing design in order to speed up the process. I would bet tradeoffs were made doing it that way instead of a clean sheet design. Now, after the fact they throw away the design and make something new? The Navy is likely to get the worst of both approaches doing it the way they are.
Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
#3Ah, for the Good Old Days, when the USN operated plenty of its very own shipyards, and was actually capable of Get Sh*t Done...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Yard
But you can't stand in the way of Progress. Especially not if you're a Congressman, and need some fat donations to help finance your next reelection campaign. Just another way in which Capitalism is superior a way of doing everything, I guess...
Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
#4Ah, for the Good Old Days, when the USN operated plenty of its very own shipyards, and was actually capable of Get Sh*t Done... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Yard But you can't stand in the way of Progress. Especially not if you're a Congressman, and need some fat donations to help finance your next reelection campaign. Just another way in which Capitalism is superior a way of doing everything, I guess...
> you can't stand in the way of Progress
It looks like we closed them after the end of the Cold War [1]. This wasn’t an idealistic pursuit, just banal cost cutting to disarm the nation.
Given increased tensions, it would make sense to reverse and begin re-integrating Navy owned and operated shipyards. (I’m also noticing that most of the shipyards were on the Atlantic, with the Washington shipyard being one of the few that’s been maintained [2].)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Base_Realignment_and_Cl...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_Naval_Shipyard
Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
#5Ah, for the Good Old Days, when the USN operated plenty of its very own shipyards, and was actually capable of Get Sh*t Done... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Yard But you can't stand in the way of Progress. Especially not if you're a Congressman, and need some fat donations to help finance your next reelection campaign. Just another way in which Capitalism is superior a way of doing everything, I guess...
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Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
#6>But today, the version being built at a shipyard in Wisconsin shares only 15 percent commonality with the original design How is this in any way acceptable? The procurement strategy was to buy an existing design in order to speed up the process. I would bet tradeoffs were made doing it that way instead of a clean sheet design. Now, after the fact they throw away the design and make something new? The Navy is likely…
I'm also wondering how incentives / leadership structure were setup to make this "scope creep" possible.
Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
#7>But today, the version being built at a shipyard in Wisconsin shares only 15 percent commonality with the original design How is this in any way acceptable? The procurement strategy was to buy an existing design in order to speed up the process. I would bet tradeoffs were made doing it that way instead of a clean sheet design. Now, after the fact they throw away the design and make something new? The Navy is likely…
I'm also wondering how incentives / leadership structure were setup to make this "scope creep" possible.
> how incentives / leadership structure were setup to make this "scope creep" possible
It’s partly a function of use it or lose it funding. If the Navy gets budget, it’s incentivised to start spending it aggressively. Planning only burns so much cash, so there is a built-in incentive to jumpstart production alongside design and then patch everything with costly retrofits.
Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
#8Worked in one. They are safety nightmares. They give safety bonuses if “nothing is reported” so nothing gets reported. Working conditions suck.. you spend your time begging for AC in a metal can in 100 degree heat (outside) on top of that the craziest thing was how subcontractors made money. I was in test so we wondered why certain runs of cable were way out of spec. Turns out subcontractors are paid by the foot to install cable so it would take the longest route through. Nuts. Never work there.
Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
#9Ah, for the Good Old Days, when the USN operated plenty of its very own shipyards, and was actually capable of Get Sh*t Done... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Yard But you can't stand in the way of Progress. Especially not if you're a Congressman, and need some fat donations to help finance your next reelection campaign. Just another way in which Capitalism is superior a way of doing everything, I guess...
> you can't stand in the way of Progress It looks like we closed them after the end of the Cold War [1]. This wasn’t an idealistic pursuit, just banal cost cutting to disarm the nation. Given increased tensions, it would make sense to reverse and begin re-integrating Navy owned and operated shipyards. (I’m also noticing that most of the shipyards were on the Atlantic, with the Washington shipyard being one of the few…
> This wasn’t an idealistic pursuit, just banal cost cutting to disarm the nation
Specifically, it was Clinton's SecDef Perry's Last Supper meeting with defense contractors in 93 that destroyed the entire base we had in the US [0]
"I asked [former SecDef] Les [Aspen] to call a meeting of the senior defense industry officials where we had a simple message to them: The first was that the budget was not only down, it was going to go down further. They should not look at it as a little dip here but as a new low plateau and adjust their plans accordingly, and in particular, if that meant they had too much capacity for the amount of business they were going to have, they should understand that we were not going to support that unused overhead. They had to do a scaling down and a consolidation to do that"
It was this Last Supper that caused Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, etc to drastically deteriorate.
I banged my head trying to tell everyone about how our current PPBE system is crap a decadeish ago but no one listened. Now we're doing too little too late.
[0] - https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-hi...
Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report
#10>But today, the version being built at a shipyard in Wisconsin shares only 15 percent commonality with the original design How is this in any way acceptable? The procurement strategy was to buy an existing design in order to speed up the process. I would bet tradeoffs were made doing it that way instead of a clean sheet design. Now, after the fact they throw away the design and make something new? The Navy is likely…
I'm also wondering how incentives / leadership structure were setup to make this "scope creep" possible.
They won’t even accept a simple audit of the budget.