-WiscoDave
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
The littoral combat ship’s latest problem: Class-wide structural defects leading to hull cracks
Half of the Navy’s littoral combat ship fleet is suffering from structural defects that have led to hull cracks on several vessels, limiting the speed and sea states in which some ships can operate, according to internal records obtained by Navy Times and confirmed by sea service officials.
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They are made of aluminum, aluminum is for beer cans not combat ship's.
ReplyDeleteAluminum hulled ships are great, if they're purpose-built and the design follows the function. I've had a few of them on long-term hire for specific reasons (fast delivery offshore). I suspect the littoral original design became swamped with add-ons and a plethora of everyone's bright ideas to make it better. In other words, the function changed after the design was locked in. They're too over-equipped, and that's why they're falling apart.
DeleteAluminum and seawater do not mix. Thousands of shipbuilders would testify. The Navy paints well above the water line. Historically speaking not so well below.
DeleteFraud Waste and Abuse!
ReplyDeleteCavguy
You only get gov contracts if you can guarAntee fraud, waste, and abuse.
DeleteDid somebody finally notice the
ReplyDeleteMade in China labels ❓
Little Crappy Ships - seem to be very accurate name.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that since the liberty ships of World War II, the Navy and its contractors have gotten their act together with respect to designing ships without overstressing the hull in all foreseeable sea conditions.
ReplyDeleteThe main problem with the Liberty ships was the hull metal - a high-strength steel alloy invented during WWI or earlier, which allowed using thinner metal, to save a lot of steel and let a ship of the same size carry more cargo. It was used for the cargo ships mass-produced in both WWI and WWII. Sometimes a ship would just disappear, but no one thought much of it, until in the middle of WWII Liberty ships were seen breaking right in half! The alloy was great as long as it didn't get too cold, but when it cooled to near the freezing point of water, it became brittle and could crack catastrophically. Because the Liberty ships were welded, instead of one plate cracking between the rows of rivets, the crack could run right through from side to side. But they couldn't change the Liberty ship design at that point, so they kept using that alloy and welded reinforcements around the corners of hatches and other points that were more likely to crack... A better alloy was developed after the war, so no ships built after about 1950 should sink _this_ way.
DeleteThe last ship to fall victim to this was a Great Lakes freighter in the 1960's. It was one of two sister ships built in 1916, and both of them were running north in Lake Huron towards the Soo Locks and Duluth when a storm hit near Alpena. One captain decided it was too much and took shelter in the nearest port, but the other one kept going. In a couple of days, Duluth reported the ship was overdue. It hadn't reached the Soo either. Eventually they found a lifeboat with a single survivor - most of the crew had got off safely, but all but one froze to death before the boat was found. (Unlike the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank suddenly a decade later with no survivors to tell what went wrong.) He reported seeing the ship cracking right in half, starting at the hatch corners. Then the other captain inspected his ship after the storm, and found a big crack starting in the same place. This ship was condemned and auctioned for scrap; a British company bought it and went to tow it to their salvage yard, but it broke up and sank once it reached the Atlantic.
Weigh it down, slow it down, potentially change it's stability characteristics....
ReplyDeleteOn three year old ships. Ships that have no mission.
Junk from the get go.
ReplyDeleteLittle Crappy Ships -- the gift that keeps giving.
ReplyDeleteA bit more information (and discussion) over at CDR Salamander:
http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2022/05/lcs-just-cracks-me-up.html
You get what you deserve when you go with the lowest bidder....
ReplyDeleteMost every federal contract has been performed by the lowest bidder? Clearly not everthing is of such low quality as you intimate. Clearly then, that is not the answer. Try again.
DeleteWhat would be an example of an exception to low quality from the low bidder from government contracting?
Deletedestined to become some of the world's most expensive gunnery/bombing practice targets
DeleteTime Baugh
DeleteHow about the Abrams tank? The A-10 Warthog? The Nimitz class supercarrier? (Gerald R Ford [gag. What a garbage name] class isn't doing quite as well) There are many examples. Heck, the F22 works a treat, and it's from that process too! Cost overruns are irrelevant, it was still a "lowest bidder" type thing, as required. It's not the bidding process. It's the people managing it. It's the diversity. The offshoring. The systemic destruction of America's viability as a nation. That's the problem.
We used ‘best value’ instead of lowest bid. Slit the tech eval from cost and only the decider saw both.
DeleteJust in case anyone was wondering here are the specs and pass/fail test data for both designs.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/lcs-specs.htm
Nemo
here is info on sea state conditions that the LCS's were supposed to pass.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/weather.htm
Nemo
Quality control? Engineering design? Engineering specs for material? I've worked aircraft and shipbuilding as an employee of mil contractors. We built whatever was ordered. This is not the first class of boats with serious issues. Navy got aluminum superstructures that wouldn't stay attached to the mild steel hull. The C-17 transport's skin change added so much weight that we held our breath as the first tried to lift off the runway in Long Beach.
ReplyDeleteMississloppigarro
like we are trying to keep up the Chinese and build shit.
ReplyDeleteAustal seem to have no problem with their high speed big ferries.
ReplyDeleteBut aluminum seems a poor choice for a warship.
Good for thermite. Not so good for sailors.
I toured one in the Mobile, AL Austal yard years ago. I was not impressed, especially when they told me the size of the crew. It sounded to me like they were cutting to close to the bone.
ReplyDelete