Comments for More on ships and things Naval.

More on ships and things Naval.

2007-04-13T13:02:58Z

Having found another ship that looked odd to my taste, I thought I would continue with that meme for a bit, with this picture that tickled the historian in me.

The French gunboat Fusee. What's really interesting about it to me? Not so much the ship, which is from the transitional era, this photo being 1886, but because of all those obsolete leviathans in the upper left - the old wooden ships of the line, that not very long before, had been the epitome of naval power, now just sitting there being recycled into roof beams for dark smoky old taverns and such. For a better picture of the Fusee herself, click here.

In the previous discussion, we were gabbing about the not-so-vestigial masts, given the reliability of the rapid-developing steam propulsion technology of the time. Reader D. Hill sent us a link to this US vessel under sail - the Mahan-class USS Tucker (DD374)... in the 1930's.

Moving on to today's US Navy...

NEWS RELEASES from the United States Department of Defense
No. 422-07 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 12, 2007
Media Contact: (703) 697-5131/697-5132
Public/Industry(703) 428-0711

Navy Terminates Littoral Combat Ship 3

Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter announced today that the Department of the Navy is
terminating construction of the third Littoral Combat Ship (LCS 3) for convenience under the Termination clause of the contract because the Navy and Lockheed Martin could not reach agreement on the terms of a modified contract.

The Navy issued a stop-work order on construction on LCS 3 in January following a series of cost overruns on LCS 1 and projection of cost increases on LCS 3, which are being built by Lockheed Martin under a cost-plus contract.The Navy announced in March that it would consider lifting the stop-work order on LCS 3 if the Navy and Lockheed Martin could agree on the terms for a fixed price incentive agreement by mid-April.The Navy worked closely with Lockheed Martin to try to restructure the agreement for LCS-3 to more equitably balance cost and risk, but could not come to terms and conditions that were acceptable to both parties.

The Navy remains committed to completing construction on LCS 1 under the current contract with Lockheed Martin.LCS 2 and 4 are under contract with General Dynamics, and the Navy will monitor their cost performance closely.The Navy intends to continue with the plan to assess costs and capabilities of LCS 1 and LCS 2 and transition to a single seaframe configuration in fiscal year 10 after an operational assessment and considering all relevant factors.General Dynamics' ships will continue on a cost-plus basis as long as its costs remain defined and manageable.If the cost performance becomes unacceptable, then General Dynamics will be subject to similar restructuring requirements.

"LCS continues to be a critical warfighting requirement for our Navy to maintain dominance in the littorals and strategic choke points around the world," said Winter."While this is a difficult
decision, we recognize that active oversight and strict cost controls in the early years are
necessary to ensuring we can deliver these ships to the fleet over the long term."

What I find refreshing is that it's just unusual to see a DoD entity just terminate a contract on performance/cost issues. Believe me, I've watched, as a government employee and as a contractor, as the government just accepted poor performance and then rewarded it with new contracts. No, of course not the firm I work for, and I think I'll avoid the lawsuit by not naming the others, too!

]]> From reader DH.

Comment from Justthisguy on 2007-04-14

2007-04-14T07:22:20Z

Curiously, just about a hundred years ago the USN told GE and Westinghouse to go pound sand when they wouldn't meet cost and performance standards for turbines for Texas and New York. The Navy built vertical inverted triple expansion reciprocating engines for those ships, in their own shops. The contractors came around and were much nicer and more reasonable on the next class of BBs. I'm glad to see the Navy looking out for our national interest again.

Comment from CDR Salamander on 2007-04-13

2007-04-14T04:18:37Z

Much rather you post naval items that you find interesting then navel ones.... As for LCS CANX - good call by SECNAV. Very good call.

Comment from BillT on 2007-04-13

2007-04-13T17:05:03Z

What I find refreshing is that it's just unusual to see a DoD entity just terminate a contract on performance/cost issues. What I find curious is that DoD entities are still doing business under cost-plus, since the biggest killer of new items has usually been the unholy overruns associated with them. Take the late, sorta-kinda-unlamented Comanche, as a prime example. The original concept of a small, fast, agile, survivable, single-pilot killer scout that would (doctrinally) range the battlefield in flights of three to five morphed into a large (bigger than a Cobra), fast, agile, non-survivable, dual-pilot flying UHF radio. All the bells, whistles and pie-in-the-sky avionics added after the contract was awarded killed Comanche, and we didn't even get any proof-of-concept stuff for our bucks. Twenty years after project initiation, no software was written because no hardware was ever developed -- all the funding was spent developing the fragile-but-"stealthy" airframe. Putting a stealthy airframe on a helicopter is like putting a turbine engine in a jeep. Nobody has figured out how to make a main rotor system both efficient *and* invisible to a pulse-Doppler or synthetic-aperture radar system, and the biggest threat to a helicopter is still the bad guy on the ground who acquires it visually and has the firepower to knock it down: the French learned that in Algeria, we re-learned it in Vietnam, re-re-learned it again in Grenada, re-re-re-learned it again in Panama, re-re-re-re-learned it again in Gulf I, re-re-re-re-re-learned it again in Afghanistan and re-re-re-re-re-re-learned it again in Iraq.