Posted on 06/06/2012 3:20:37 PM PDT by moonshot925
(Reuters) - A fire that caused an estimated $400 million in damage to a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine docked in Maine may have been caused by a vacuum cleaner, authorities said on Wednesday.
The fire in the forward compartment - which includes crew living, command and control spaces and the torpedo room - of the USS Miami on May 23 took about 12 hours to extinguish and injured seven firefighters.
"Preliminary findings indicate the fire started in a vacuum cleaner used to clean work sites at end of shift, and stored in an unoccupied space," the shipyard's public affairs office said in a release. Specific details are still being evaluated.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
In WW2 we had our own steel, sewed our own uniforms, made our own weapons and ammo, made our own vehicles, and processed our own chemicals. I think you can understand what I'm saying. If we rely on any foreign nation to supply for our defense production we are screwed.
Most steel mills are gone as are most Textile and chemical processing companies. These are National Security issues. If any nation can cut our supplies like our fuel then they control us. BTW you have to figure into the manufacturing equation such things as Mr Buffets mobile home manufacturing company. It's what we are manufacturing that also matters.
It seems we found a design flaw in the construction of the ship. The overflow vent for the contaminated AVGAS tank was in the main engine room. It was SUPPOSED to overflow into the bilges to be pumped overseas while underway. BUT it was over the main engine. On this day, it overflowed and rained AVGAS on to the main engine. Huge fire. Dead in the water for several hours. Smoke throughout the whole ship before the ventilation system was shut down. Very scary time. Had to go back to Sasebo for repairs when limited power was finally restored.
“Where liberty dwells, there is my country." –Benjamin Franklin
I know it's not going to happen. Putting all the eggs in one basket can be a huge mistake. Granted there are some smaller carriers LHA conventional that can carry vertical launch and landing aircraft.
Now war is war. In war targets get hit even carriers. We know this from WW2. We also know from the 1960's they can suffer mass causalities from events on the ship itself. It takes roughly a year and a half to get a Nuke Snipe from enlistment to first ship or boat. War doesn't wait for training nor does mass causalities.
Too many assets are being put at risk with poor planning like homeporting all East Coast Carriers CVN's out of one port. Worse the east coast maintenance yard is there as well. One lucky hit in war could take out our entire carrier building capabilities, a good chunk of the carriers possibly, the maintenance yard, and half of our sub building program. This remains uncorrected by the same clowns who believe we still need more downsizing.
I'm highly skeptical of EMALS. I got a question for you. How fast can electricity travel? 186,000 MPS right? The instant it is shut off it is not there. There is no in between. However 1200 PSI of steam on the other hand is there and you know it's there. It's a sure bet. That's something to ponder on. One of the things I recall on the ship was the blackouts from where a generator suddenly tripped off line.
Some design flaws never get corrected. We had one pump room back at the aft chow line that would take your head off the fumes were so bad at times. Chow line was 2nd deck the pump room was 6th deck. Sure enough sometime in late 1980 it blew up killing two ABF’s.
Most manufacturing companies in the USA are American. Exxon Mobil, Chevron, General Electric, Ford, Chrysler, Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, Apple, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, United Technologies, General Dynamics, Boeing, DuPont, Alcoa, Caterpillar, Coca-Cola, Et Cetera
You will find many more foreign owned companies in China than in the USA. We do not rely on other nations for defense production. In 2010 we exported 8,641 million of arms and imported 893 million. All US military hardware must be made in the USA with US materials.
China is MUCH more dependent on foreign defense production than the USA. The new Chinese CV, Shi Lang, was an incomplete Soviet hulk that was sold to China in 1998.
“I’m highly skeptical of EMALS”
EMALS has many advantages over steam catapults. It offers 29% greater launch energy, occupies less space, is easier to control, requires less maintenance and manpower, is more reliable, provides less ‘wear and tear’ on carrier-based aircraft and it can launch UAVs.
“They’ll likely be taking samples from suspect areas of pressure hull for testing. If necessary, it’s not too difficult to cut out and replace small sections of the hull. Of course they will be taking out large hull cuts on the top of the boat to facilitate clean out and rebuilding.”
Of course they will. I only mentioned it because no one else did.
BTW wasn't there a ruckus raised a few years back about Marine one? Where were the rotors & main fuselage sections to be made? What about the recent outing of China chips in our defense systems? http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2888925/posts Not a smart defense policy at all. China doesn't need to come over here and invade when we give them the means to knock us to our knees in technology espionage.
Just a question for sub folks.
Has anyone considered Halon dispensers, like the M1 Abrams have?
Over the past 7 years some counterfit elctronic parts have managed to get into the supply chain. I can explain the situation.
The contractors aren’t buying these chips to cut corners. They absolutely believe they are buying legitimate parts. So how does this happen?
Most of the time I’ve seen this, the contractor is dealing with obsolete part issues. With significantly longer design cycles and much longer field life than consumer electronics, it’s not uncommon to see ICs go obsolete during a products production. It then becomes a question of finding the parts from alternative sources rather than the mfr, or spending tons of money to redesign the product, and then spending likely 10X that re-qualifying it. Government agents usually authorize buying from distribution and as a last resort.....brokers. Legitimate brokers buy excess inventory from many companies and then sell it at inflated rates.
The NDAA for Fiscal Year 2013 has a requirement that all contractors must established a counterfeit avoidance/detection system approved by the DOD.
This should prevent counterfit parts from getting into the supply chain.
I never said we were dependent on China. I said that some counterfit parts from China have managed to get into the supply chain.
When I was a submariner in the 1980’s. We would always hear rumors about the Soviets trying to sabotage us with counterfit parts. The rumors were not true. There were never any Soviet parts in our boats.
Like I said, the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2013 is going to fix the counterfit problem.
We make about 95% of our military hardware incuding parts.
Halon, or any other fire suppression system would be unworkable on a boat. There’s just too much stuff crammed inside for any kind of centralized system. You have to either stop a fire fast with a portable extinguisher or get at it with a fire hose.
And, BTW, any type of chemically based extinguishing agent requires a massive cleanup effort, especially on affected electrical components (of which there are many).
Thanks for the answer. Just plucking my thoughts since I know enough that fire is a great killer of subs and crews.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but surface ships can flood compartments to control fire, such as what could have happened with the Iowa main armament magazines, and obviously water in the sub is bad (except trim tanks and such) but could a sub close hatches in the affected area, and remove the oxygen thus snuffing the fire?
LOL. Nope of course there wasn’t counterfeit many parts in the 80’s. We made most of them here on our soil. The exodus to overseas manufacturing hadn’t fully gotten started and wiser leadership kept China out of places like Los Alamos and other DOD facilities.. Our leadership still had some USA national security comes first principles. After January 1989 however that policy and those principles dropped like a rock. Both sides of the two parties sold out. We had presidents in office who had close family with vested interest in doing business in China
The shipyards have been notorious since the beginning of time for being insufferable slobs who leave their messes behind for the Navy to clean up. This is their way of saying, “See what happens when you make us clean up our messes?”
I can’t speak with much authority on shipboard parts, but for aircraft, the big problem is DLA (Defense Logistics Agency). DoD organizations have typically managed parts on their own platforms. In recent years, the aircraft program offices have been accused of over-spending on parts and being in bed with the OEMs. The “solution”, as determined by the bean-counters, was to transfer logistics management to DLA.
The problem is that DLA will buy parts from anybody. Their QA is shoddy at best. Every decision they make is based on bottom-line price. To DLA, buying avionics and landing gear sets is no different than buying staplers and ballpoint pens. To them, it’s just a part number and NSN on a piece of paper.
To DLA, the conventional contracting process is inconvenient for them. The QA and contracting requirements are a lot more lax for surplus purchases. So DLA is buying all kinds of surplus that are older than dirt. In a lot of cases, they’re parts that were found bad on previous contracts. The suppliers didn’t throw them away, they sat on them for 10-15 years knowing that they could sell them to the govt. on surplus because record-keeping circa 1995 was not good at all. The govt. did nearly everything on paper up until about 2003, so finding evidence of bad quality and records of contracts that were terminated for default are nearly impossible, and DLA doesn’t care anyway. They’ll buy anybody’s garbage. The only thing they care about is getting the task off their desk. What’s going on is really a travesty. I’d be surprised if DLA WASN’T doing the same thing to the Navy.
Did you hear about this? The sub USS Miami caught fire in the shipyard and may very possibly be scrapped.
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