Posted on 12/12/2015 5:08:04 PM PST by cripplecreek
NORFOLK, Va. – The U.S. Navy's newest ship had to be towed to a base in Virginia after breaking down during its journey to its home port in California.
The USS Milwaukee, a littoral combat ship that was commissioned in November, was towed more than 40 nautical miles to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek after suffering an engineering casualty on Friday, The Navy Times reported (http://bit.ly/1UfolwL ).
The ship was on its way from Halifax, Canada to Mayport, Florida, where it was planning to stop before continuing on its trek to its port in San Diego.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Ever-increasing costs go hand-in-hand with more complexity and lower reliability
Just another Little Crappy Ship.... a pier Queen. It’ll more time at the pier to fix whatever ain’t working than on the high seas. Each LCS needs a tug assigned to it.
Was he a fudge packee/packer?
The fear of an Admiral’s Inspection by guys like ADM Hyman Rickover is no longer a threat. More corners are cut nowadays.
" While the ship has been criticized for insufficient armor and for sporting anemic offensive capabilities, a report from 2013 also found the fleet to be vulnerable to cyber attacks. That same year, the Defense Department's director of operational testing and evaluation said the LCS were "not expected to be survivable" in a "hostile combat environment."
Hmmm, combat vessel that can't survive a hostile environment.. Sounds perfect!
Nothing that slug Obama does is worth a crap, is it? Total fail, all the time.
For $15-20k, they could have installed a clarifier in the line to clean the LO before it went to the filters. The clarifier is standard equipment on ships that have to make a living.
Metal debris in the LO filter? That is normal on the shakedown cruise, as there is a bit of grinding, welding, and threading residues, along with some debris associated with the engine wear-in, in the system after building the power plant. The real world solution is to chuck the dirty LO filter into the dustbin, and replace it. Later, when alongside, the LO can be changed out.
Perhaps they cannot afford to carry spare LO filters.
The LCS/Frigates have no combat survivability. They have very little in the form of local defense. The only reason casualties will be relatively small is the small crew size.
The Milwaukee is long past sea trials.
She was on the way to her home port.
The Zumwalt started her first sea trials on Monday, it will (hopefully) be another 6-9 months before she is ready to go.
It is terrible that Army can’t field a better team. Year after year they get whooped by Navy and Air Force.
True story as far as new technology integration goes. The first generation of computer controlled diesel engines in firefighting equipment were set to shut themselves down if system voltage dropped 10 volts. Great for the engine, tough luck for the firefighters on the end if a working hose line.
It really depends on how much debris or sludge is in the filters (some is normal), and what exactly the debris is. It could be that there was enough stuff in the filter to cause concern about too much wear somewhere in the system, and they shut down propulsion as a precaution. Could be a wiped bearing—happens in new construction.
They will have to get a sample to a lab to determine the source of the contamination...something they can’t do at sea.
Don’t know about this ship’s propulsion....does it only have one screw? Spent MANY hours cleaning and inspecting propulsion plant lube oil filters on my boat (submarine for you civilians) many years ago. Filters were actually mesh bags with magnetic inserts to catch any ferrous particles....bags were reused after cleaning and only replaced periodically.
That re-usable cooking oil had too many chicken bones in it.
Only for Submarines.....
Don’t forget the huge mound of coffee grounds the will pile up under the ship while at the pier.
Suitability of the crew is a naval non-issue; spending big bucks for two ships that are “state of the art” is. After all it’s Pentagon prestige that makes the military so grand - all those metals and ribbons you know. Besides the Navy - the ocean going component - had to have some dubious equivalent to the USAF’s unbelievably expensive and poor performing dud, the F-35. Just loading their Navy’s carriers with F-35s was not good enough, they had to have a signature center piece to display their grandness and innate PC stupidity. The poor US Army, has no really expensive weapons systems planned, so they came up with a ‘relatively inexpensive’ idea that makes the Navy and AF decisions pale - admit women to all combat positions.
And so the table is set for the US to lose any future or present war.
And their is still another year to go for O’s plans - wonder what his finale will be?
Propulsion is through 4 X water jets powered by 36MW of gas turbines.
Shut down the defective unit, and make port at reduced speed. But that is not very dramatic.
That’s what I thought...there is redundancy in the propulsion plant....so for them to be completely dead in the water has to be something very serious.
Restrict them to friendly combat environments.
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