Navy Finds 'Aggressive' Corrosion on Austal's Combat Ship (Littoral Combat Ship)

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | June 17, 2011 | Steven Komarow, Ann Hughey.

[Strategerist]

Why not build ten more Arleigh Burkes while we get the bugs worked out on the Clitorals?

We're already going to be buiilding Burkes till the end of time - the latest 30 year shipbuilding plan has "DDG-51 Flight IV" vessels starting construction in 2038.

Until then we're still building Flt IIAs, which will switch over to Flt IIIs (to replace the CGs) by the end of the decade.

[GourmetDan]

"In short, if you want a maintainable vehicle, you’ve got to buy it from a company run by engineers rather than company politicians."

Man, that's crazy talk! /s

[WellyP]

If you haul out in the Bahamas or most of the other Caribbean you can still get the “good stuff”.

[WellyP]

If you haul out in the Bahamas or most of the other Caribbean you can still get the “good stuff”.

[tanknetter]

See 28 please. Thoughts?

Are you talking about the Aussie SeaCat fast catamarans? IIRC the USN has been operating one (HSV-2 Swift) for years now, at least partly so its design features could be explored and incorporated into new and next generation vessels. Like the two LCS designs.

So while I agree completely with your points, I'd find it strange if the USN didn't share any engineering findings from operating Swift with the two LCS contractors ... let alone demand that those lessons be incorporated into the LCS designs.

[Travis McGee]

Sometimes very small, seemingly inconsequential factors can have tremendous consequences down the road. Such things as small alloy differences between weldments, weld wire etc. That’s just one example. You can try to copy a proven design or system, but “miss” some subtle factor. This is an extremely exotic and esoteric field, the construction of high speed jet-driven alloy ships. Tests performed on the bench don’t necessarily carry over into the real world where perfect metals isolation is rarely achieved.

I would have, for example, paid any price to bring over leading welders and welding supervisors from Australia, to benefit from the tricks and method they have been employing which might have been critical but unrecongnized.

You don’t want to “reinvent” any wheels here, when it comes to corrosion prevention. Re-inventions are likely to lead to mistakes which will cost dearly down the road.

Benefit from the experience of those who have been doing this work the longest. I have seen over and over in the large yacht field that when a new team tries to duplicate a piece of welded-up machinery, they miss some critical aspect and it leads to major and often nearly unsurmountable problems.

I speak specifically of world-leader Kamewa jet drives built up from scores of pieces of welded alloy. (Monohulls with MTU diesels driving 40 meter yachts at over 30 kts.) You can’t just hand this task to any welding crew. There is a lot of subtle magic involved in that fabrication if you want it to last.

Any team can make a jet drive that will work during sea trials. It’s what comes 5-10 years later that counts.

Only so much can be included in the blueprints (digital era version). The actual welding teams and “guru” experts in matching metals are critical to success. You can’t just “guess” your way to success. The teams who have been doing this for decades are the teams you must employ to benefit from their hard-won experience. Otherwise, you will discover the same mistakes they discovered and overcame years before. And you can’t just rip out a ship’s jet drives and install a new one. Not easily or quickly. You really need to get it right the first time.

[Oztrich Boy]

The engineers preferred the color “haze blue” for the F117 stealth fighter. But the AF said, “Nope, it’s got to be black.” Why, ‘cause black is sexy and haze blue made the plane so hard to see you couldn’t find the edges when they took publicity photos

I did not know that.

[FreedomPoster]

They used to have chromate based coatings and they lasted even longer than that.