Still Looking for Light at the End of the Tunnel

Tim Colton has the LPD-18 INSURV report, and it isn't pretty.

The Board of Inspection and Survey conducted the final contract trial of USS "New Orleans", (LPD 18), last week. This ship was "delivered" on December 22, 2006, 20 months ago, and its warranty has expired. Attached are the INSURV team's report - here - and a "Stoplight" summary - here. Note the opening sentence: "USS NEW ORLEANS WAS DEGRADED IN HER ABILITY TO CONDUCT SUSTAINED COMBAT OPERATIONS." Please read the whole thing. It's very depressing stuff. It's as if nothing on this ship works properly. The Marine Corps should raise hell.

This week the USS San Antonio (LPD 17) will be making its first deployment, and the expectation was the USS New Orleans (LPD 18) would be making her first deployment in the beginning of 2009, although this could change those plans. We have recently seen some positive news with USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19) and USS Green Bay (LPD 20), but we note these ships were built on budget and on scheduled, while the first two were not.

Just in case you think we are approaching the bottom and there is no where to go but up, lets take a quick review. LCS-1 and LCS-2 are both brand new classes of ships. DDG-1000 and DDG-1001 will be dual first classes of ships, so no lessons learned there, and GAO suggests lessons won't be learned by the time any DDG-1002 is built either (PDF). The MLPs for the Sea Base concept is a new class of ship. Both the Navy and the Army versions of the JHSV will be new classes of ship. The T-AKRs for the Sea Base will probably be a new class of ship.

There are also some new classes based on evolution, for example LHD-8 is an evolved version of LHD 1-7. LHA6 will be a new class based on an evolution from LHD-8, and there is talk LHA 7 will be different than LHA 6. CVN 78 will be an evolution from the Nimitz class. The T-AKEs for the Sea Base are supposedly evolutions of existing T-AKEs. Any new DDG-51s would be very slight evolutions of existing DDG-51 Flight IIAs.

Of all the ships in the current shipbuilding plan, only the Virginia class submarines and T-AKEs are the only programs that have reached maturity with a proven design.

If you think we have reached a low point in shipbuilding, your nuts. It is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, because even all those 'evolutionary' designs are relatively new.