More Zumwalt fail

[nachtjaeger]

The Navy's newest warship suffered an "engineering problem" while transiting the Panama Canal enroute to its home port of San Diego. It had to be towed to the former naval base in Panama for repairs. This does not look good- she just broke down back in the end of September. The Mean Time Between Failures for her engineering plant seems really short, and the fact that whatever broke wasn't redundant is scary.
We could have built ten perfectly serviceable $440 million warships for her price tag, or four $1.1 billion dollar stealth battleships. Instead, we get this $4.4 billion monstrosity that can't make it from Maryland to California via the Canal without breaking down.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/22/most-expensive-destroyer-in-navy-history-breaks-down.html

[kham]

Hopefully, we'll have Sal pick up on this later on. gCaptain had the report up as headline, and still has it on page. They were doing a live episode on it today, but missed, maybe the video will be up later. But notice how they say about 20 or 30 words splaining' but say nothing? No specifics on what, precisely broke down. Which means, its not minor, and is likely embarrassing. Stay tuned

[nachtjaeger]

Kham, what would you do with that kind of money? You can do anything from rebuild anything still afloat to start with a clean sheet of paper. Pull tech from any branch of the service or any country that will sell it. Ship's mission is to go in harm's way, project power, and be able to survive a hit by anything short of a nuke.

Hopefully, we'll have Sal pick up on this later on. gCaptain had the report up as headline, and still has it on page. They were doing a live episode on it today, but missed, maybe the video will be up later. But notice how they say about 20 or 30 words splaining' but say nothing? No specifics on what, precisely broke down. Which means, its not minor, and is likely embarrassing. Stay tuned

[kham]

I'm not, "inside baseball" as it were , so a lot of stuff would for me, be speculation and pulling numbers out of my ass. But, when you compare the budgeted monies and those expended so far, and compare it to existing designs, plus other unit types, there sure could be a lot more stuff you could have. Four Billion dollars. With a B. Used to be, you could have a CV or a Boomer for a billion bucks, but inflation and stuff, well more. But you could easily have used that money for 4 Virginia-class SSNs, which are a known design, and pretty badass. At least 2 carriers, Nimitz-class (I am waiting for Sal or someone to really snap on the Fords, stay tuned there - its coming...) or 8 Late -model Burke DDGs which is again, a proven badass destroyer. You have a problem that's culture-driven; there are too many 'ooo shiny!' children working in or for the various directorates. Dave Hackworth, the late writer and former US Army colonel described that well; Boomers are sexy. Carriers are sexy. Uber-duper bad-as-an-xwing new toys are sexy. So they get the money. Boots aint sexy. Neither is rations. Or bullets. Or uniforms specific for climates. Or stuff that works damn good, but isn't ''new''. You know what I'm talking about; you see people all the time, when new stuff comes out, they JUST GOTTA HAVE IT!! So you have exploding phones. Or smartphones that cost more than my fucking car did in college. And all he starving little snowflakes MUST have them! With that sort of mentality, overspending is not difficult to understand. Also stupidspending. You can steal that one...

[Mynock]

4B isn't small change but it's not the end of the world either. Innovation costs money. The moral of this story is the same as with those damned LCS ships--R&D needs to stay in R&D until it's been R'd and D'd enough so that it actually works. It doesn't so much bother me that fancy new toys have bugs, it's that they didn''t fix the bugs before putting this thing in service.

[kham]

"Experimental" should stay that. No argument
The problem is , retard-wonks who think this fucking star trek bullshit is reality. And push ahead into trying to play lets-pretend with operational status. And the real world, is not a fucking set or cgi they can re-edit.
Someone on another board pointed out, that this latest breakdown on the Zum, is worse than we might think (Oh, that's a happy thought) since, she has 2 shafts, 2 screws, 2 plants with this electro-whatever drive system. And if they couldn't even make it on one shaft ( the whole point of twin screws) then this as they say, is 'bad' . There was also 'cosmetic' damage from the incident, which is retard-speak for "we dented or dinged something when we crashed into the lock wall" . No biggie. Except for one thing; since, again, they let airplane types design a ship... and for stealth, it needs its perfect shape unblemished. Did ANYONE at all in NavSea stop and raise their fucking hand, at ANY point in the program, and just say "Um...."
Jesus Q Christ on a pogo stick....

[nachtjaeger]

Updated at USNI- emphasis mine:

"The ship lost propulsion in its port shaft during the transit and the crew saw water intrusion in two of the four bearings that connect to Zumwalt’s port and starboard Advanced Induction Motors (AIMs) to the drive shafts, a defense official told USNI News on Tuesday. The AIMs are the massive electrical motors that are driven by the ship’s gas turbines and in turn electrically power the ship’s systems and drive the shafts.
Both of the shafts locked during the passage and the transit had to be completed with tugs. The ship made minor contact with lock walls in the canal resulting in minor cosmetic damage. Following the transit, the Navy determined the ship couldn’t continue to its new homeport at Naval Station San Diego without additional repairs."

[kham]

Holy shit
Um
Really, Holy Shit
So, they really DID , use Trek-TNG-RETARDO-ENGINEERING to build this thing then
So the uber-duper-awesome motors are both CONNECTED and not independent of each other? Did ANYONE at all, EVER, plan for this fucking thing to suffer battle damage? Never mind breakdowns that might require if at least not some redundancy, the ability for systems to function INDEPENDENTLY?? Short of standing the entire design team, and those fellating them, in front of sandbags and conducting a Nicky C-style firing squad, I just can't even....
Well that's that. Expect a repair bill around 8 or 9 figures. If not having to conduct a hysterectomy in drydock on the whole plant
I'll be in the bar

[Mynock]

Ya......I'm imagining the bearings on two huge prop shafts seizing and it's not pretty. When shit that big spinning that fast fails GTFO of the way.

[kham]

I'm still in the bar...

But the initial problems they were dealing with as "annoying" were seawater leaks in the shaft lube oil system, and several "engineering issues" right? So again, it's leaks causing the primary problem, cascading into worse and worse failures. Shafts all leak, that's a thing for ships, y'know? It just tends to be not catastrophic, unless something explodes there, like a torpedo or mine. Normal seepage should not get into one system and KILL the plant. This is the equivalent of TNG-Trek and their non-failsafe warp core-o-doom.

...
Time for another drink
Wish I had someone cooking turkey