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Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

politico.com

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Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#41

Post by Gracana »

tw04 wrote: post #32
Solvency wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so why does the government/navy incentivize such bloated inefficiency, slop, and misuse of resources/time/money/energy?

They don't. Op fabricated the story, as pretty much anyone in the Navy would confirm for you. Source: several relatives in the navy working on ships, also have dealt with the contractors in question that run cable. Contractors absolutely do not get to determine the route cabling takes. There are endless reasons that would be insanity starting with basic security of the ship. Do you think random contractor X gets to l…

Yeah… I’ve heard a lot of stories about shipyard dysfunction from friends and relatives, but it’s nothing so exciting. It’s mostly poor planning that results in expensive waste and slowdowns.

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#42

Post by JellyBeanThief »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #38

I know what this. I just haven’t figured out to make money on it yet. Complexity crisis. It’s happening everywhere. Boeing didn’t turn into a bad engineering company, they put a noose on their own necks because they could. Navy is doing the same thing. Everyone is. That is the real reason we have toasters and teapots on the internet.

The thing about toasters and teapots on the internet is that they give the people working on them a job to do. Because absent being filthy rich, if you don't work then you don't don't eat and you don't sleep inside.

To oversimplify, as a society we have decided that a person shouldn't be able to earn a living doing less than ~35-40 hours of work a week. So if there isn't enough valuable work to go around filling up everyone's week, then some people are gonna have to make up performative work.

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#43

Post by pyuser583 »

maxglute wrote: post #40

Sometimes I wonder if US leadership, above the paygrade of naval leadership, assume that large surface combatants likely won't be survivable in a peer war. Then they'd do exactly what they're doing now... stall naval projects and pivot. There's a lot of motivated naval lobbying decrying the state of US ship building, but we can see in semi that US leadership fine with pouring 100s of billions in urgent industrial pol…

The smart people seem to agree that submarine will be the most important naval vessels in the next war.

Submarine operations, including production, are extremely hush-hush.

Last I heard the US had two submarine fleets: the ones the Navy openly discusses, and the useful ones which are discussed in whispers.

I like to think the hush-hush subs are being built and deployed en masse.

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#44

Post by appplication »

pyuser583 wrote: post #43
maxglute wrote: post #40

Sometimes I wonder if US leadership, above the paygrade of naval leadership, assume that large surface combatants likely won't be survivable in a peer war. Then they'd do exactly what they're doing now... stall naval projects and pivot. There's a lot of motivated naval lobbying decrying the state of US ship building, but we can see in semi that US leadership fine with pouring 100s of billions in urgent industrial pol…

The smart people seem to agree that submarine will be the most important naval vessels in the next war. Submarine operations, including production, are extremely hush-hush. Last I heard the US had two submarine fleets: the ones the Navy openly discusses, and the useful ones which are discussed in whispers. I like to think the hush-hush subs are being built and deployed en masse.

Surface drones like the ones used in Ukraine are also not to be underestimated. Russia is struggling to combat these effectively, and even the US navy doesn’t have any specific technological answer to them at present.

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#45

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Jtsummers wrote: post #35
nradov wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A war in Europe probably seemed equally ridiculous in 1914, and yet it happened. The concern is that Xi Jinping has purged all rivals and has assumed personal control of all key strategic decisions. We don't know what's really going on but he seems increasingly prone to miscalculations and unwise decisions. There are reasons to suspect that yes-men in the inner circle are telling him what he wants to hear and he is a…

> A war in Europe probably seemed equally ridiculous in 1914 Europe leading up to WWI was not exactly a land of peace and harmony. There were a number of hot wars in the years leading up to WWI.

> Europe leading up to WWI was not exactly a land of peace and harmony

As opposed to the South China Sea? (Keep in mind, we’re comparing pre- and post-nuclear strategy.)

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#47

Post by somat »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #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…

Some fun examples.

The F-15E, F-18E "It's just an upgraded version", don't get me wrong they are good planes, but they are 20 percent larger than previous models it is a different plane, with different jigs, parts, testing, performance.

The tu-22m, A least the f-15e is the same shape as the f-15. "Yes boss, I understand we don't have the money to design a new bomber, we are just going to upgrade the design of one of our existing models" Proceeds to design a completely new plane and gives it the same designation of an existing one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-22M

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#48

Post by istjohn »

alephnerd wrote: post #9
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wa…

It's called a peace dividend

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#49

Post by number6 »

morkalork wrote: post #21
SignalM wrote: post #8

Worked 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 i…

There's a BBC Nova episode about the soviet union with an apocryphal story about train schedulers being evaluated on the amount of cargo shipped by distance so of course, freight was sent on the least efficient route to its destination. Amazing to see the exact same metric get gamed again.

German trains are evaluated on their timelines. If a train is more then an hour delayed passengers get their money back. So every train that runs into a high delayed is marked as "Cancelled" and if followed by an "Ersatzzug" that is curiously similar to the canceled train, because if the train is cancelled, the passengers don't get their money back if a Ersatz is followed promptly

Re: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

#50

Post by rawgabbit »

ryandrake wrote: post #23
nradov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason is that the only way to get the acquisition of a major new weapons system approved by Congress is to drastically underestimate the cost. This gives Congresspeople political cover to vote aye. Everyone involved knows that costs will explode later, and by that time the program has become too big to fail. Everyone knows we need a new frigate and it's too late to start over from scratch without endange…

> The national security establishment is getting increasingly freaked out about the risk of a naval war with China. I guess military professionals might know things we don’t, but doesn’t a hot war with China strike everyone else as utterly ridiculous? China’s economy is so inextricably intertwined with those of the rest of the world, it would make no sense for either side. Mutually assured economic destruction. Yes,…

War is mutually assured EVERYTHING destruction. It is an anomaly that WW2 resulted in winners and losers. WW1 is more typical; everyone loses in a war.

But that didn’t stop Napoleon from invading Russia or Hitler from invading the USSR. If you peel back all the rhetoric, they did it because they thought it would be a pushover and a quick victory.

It is tempting to go to war if all your yes men tell you you will be at the enemy’s capitol before winter.

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