Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: HankB on May 12, 2022, 01:55:20 PM
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. . . with the Littoral combat ships. Aside from the previous problems with the power train, it now seems the hulls were under-designed and are cracking.
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2022/05/10/the-littoral-combat-ships-latest-problem-class-wide-structural-defects-leading-to-hull-cracks/
These supposed "high speed" ships are now being limited to 15 knots to reduce hull cracking, with further restrictions in restless seas. Some repairs are being made with RTV. Under consideration is retiring all ships of the entire class after just a few years of service . . . a class that many said never should have been created in the first place, since the ships are so lightly armed by today's standards they couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag.
This is what we got for over $400,000,000.00 each. :facepalm:
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The article didn't say - are those aluminum hulls? Back at work, we went in partners with CA Fish&Game on a design and buy of a new class of enforcement vessels in the 65-90' range. Aluminum hull catamarans. All American Marine out of Bellingham, WA IIRC.
Every single one of them got hull cracks making the drive around Point Conception to Vandenberg AFB when the seas were 6'+. Just a terrible design flaw. IIRC, they were all rated for 10'+ seas. They weren't surviving short period uphills though.
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The article didn't say - are those aluminum hulls? Back at work, we went in partners with CA Fish&Game on a design and buy of a new class of enforcement vessels in the 65-90' range. Aluminum hull catamarans. All American Marine out of Bellingham, WA IIRC.
Every single one of them got hull cracks making the drive around Point Conception to Vandenberg AFB when the seas were 6'+. Just a terrible design flaw. IIRC, they were all rated for 10'+ seas. They weren't surviving short period uphills though.
The Independence that are cracking are aluminum hull. I weld aluminum, great metal don’t make it structural. The navy in particular was supposed to have learned about aluminum with disaster striking the Belknap and later the Stark. The DDG-51 class was specifically steel because of that experience. But the navy likes to kill a new generation of sailors to relearn stuff.
But wait there’s more! The Freedom class of LCS is steel hulled! Hooray! Oh wait, that’s the class with the broke ass foreign reduction gear...
This is what happens when congress gets paid. The LCS sounded like a great idea when I was reading about it in Naval Institute publications twenty years ago. When we were all wound up to fight with pissant countries in near shore environments. Not so hot now looking at near peer rivals with lots of missiles.
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Back when the Army was looking at a new High Speed Logistics Vessel we had several versions of what would end up as MSC's Expeditionary Fast Transport vessel. Aluminum hulled catamarans designed to go fast between theaters. We also had cracking issues that limited sea states and top speeds well below the program targets. For a variety of reasons the Army didn't buy any of those boats. Some of them were also built by Austal USA. (some were Incat hulls).