I know how much Joel likes uniform stories, so I can't believe he hasn't seen this milestone.
The USS North Carolina (SSN-777) is one of the first boats on the Groton waterfront to be 100% NWU.
How's that for impressive???
end...
Showing posts with label navy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label navy. Show all posts
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
George H.W. Bush Commissioning
This weekend, in Newport News, the final Nimitz-class carrier, the George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) is being commissioned. It's a pretty big deal, with the namesake, the President, pretty much every other Bush alive, and Greta Van Susteren in town for it. It's hard to believe it's been over 30 years since the Nimitz was commissioned, but, alas, it has been.
If you're like me, and you think that naming vessels after living people is bad luck, go read how Bubblehead is lamenting the announcement that we're going to name a Virginia-class SSN after John Warner. Lots of good comments over there.
I'd like to get away from this practice, and I agree with Bubblehead that we could have honored Warner with a destroyer or something else...
At any rate, read about the H.W. Bush here.
If you're like me, and you think that naming vessels after living people is bad luck, go read how Bubblehead is lamenting the announcement that we're going to name a Virginia-class SSN after John Warner. Lots of good comments over there.
I'd like to get away from this practice, and I agree with Bubblehead that we could have honored Warner with a destroyer or something else...
At any rate, read about the H.W. Bush here.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Indians hard at work
The Indians look to finally be getting some of the military hardware they have been trying to buy from the Russians. First, it appears the deal to get an Akula SSN is going through, and perhaps the Indians can take delivery as soon as 2009.
While it looks to take a little longer still (2012), the deal for the Adm Gorshkov aircraft carrier (nominally) appears to at least be back in negotiations, with the Indians being asked to shell out an additional $2B to get it completed. While the Indians talk of purchasing the USS Kitty Hawk didn't get them a lower price on the Gorshkov, perhaps it motivated the Russians to at least get moving.
While it looks to take a little longer still (2012), the deal for the Adm Gorshkov aircraft carrier (nominally) appears to at least be back in negotiations, with the Indians being asked to shell out an additional $2B to get it completed. While the Indians talk of purchasing the USS Kitty Hawk didn't get them a lower price on the Gorshkov, perhaps it motivated the Russians to at least get moving.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
USS Jefferson City Returns
Navy video of the USS Jefferson City's return from deployment. Caution, adult content (hot submarine wives making out with pasty white, and probably stinky, submariners).
N/T.
N/T.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
USS Ohio Pictures
Via the subreport, we have a slideshow of the Ohio. I recommend the pictures, but, you all may find the captions on them funny, as did I. For example:
- ABC compares the Ohio to an underwater version of an aircraft carrier.
- Without the aircraft.
- They say she's a new class of submarines built from 1970's vessels.
- I guess they technically are a new class, and the Ohio was launched in mid-1979 and they were designed in the '70s, but, I always thought of them as '80s vessels.
- Crew members monitor displays in the "navigation room."
- Looks surprisingly like the control room, and the specific area in question the helm. Anyway, I guess you sort of "navigate" from here. Do Ohio's have a NavCenter??
- Finally, in a product from a major news organization, they managed to use the word "rejiggered." And here is the rest of it.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
It was not a test, trust me...
CNO ADM Gary Roughead was in New London today touring Electric Boat and hearing all about how our pals at EB are cutting costs to get us under $2B per Virginia class submarine.
He opened the valve on the graving dock to float the New Hampshire, then had a short Q&A, where he opined on the missile shot, saying it wasn't a test of the ballistic missile system:
“It was what we said it was, a failing satellite that had a significant quantity of toxic material on board, and it was in the best interest to remove that hazard,” he said.
He opened the valve on the graving dock to float the New Hampshire, then had a short Q&A, where he opined on the missile shot, saying it wasn't a test of the ballistic missile system:
“It was what we said it was, a failing satellite that had a significant quantity of toxic material on board, and it was in the best interest to remove that hazard,” he said.
He added, “We made the system do something that it wasn't supposed to do. We had to go in and modify the computer program, we had to take three missiles out of our ballistic missile defense inventory and modify those missiles to be able to hit the target, so it really was not a test.”
So, that's the official word. I guess we get to put 2 of those back into the BMD inventory, so that's good.
He had something to say about those faulty welds:
“I am confident that we're on the right path, and that the safety of our submarines and our sailors is not compromised."
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Thursday, November 22, 2007
DARPA Attempts to Reinvent the Submarine
You'll need a subscription to Janes International Defence Review to read the full text, but, DARPA is working to redefine the submarine to shave 30% off the cost of a Virginia class submarine...some highlights...
"Submarines are still characterised by an aft propeller; a rear compartment for machinery space and a propeller shaft; a central reactor compartment; and a forward compartment with sonar rooms, torpedo rooms and crew berthing.
However, Tango Bravo – for Technology Breakthrough – identified five key technology barriers that could be conquered in order to slash construction and maintenance costs. These included stripping away hydraulics and developing propulsion unconstrained by a centreline shaft; stowing and launching weapons outside the hull; alternatives to spherical sonar arrays; simplifying the hull, mechanical and electrical systems (HM&E); and reducing the size of the crew through automation.
With the latter largely considered an evolutionary process, serious money has so far only been thrown at shaftless propulsion, electrical actuation and external weapons.
In May 2005, General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) and DRS Technologies were granted 12-month contracts to develop shaftless propulsion technologies, while GDEB and Northrop Grumman Newport News were awarded 18-month contracts to develop and demonstrate firing an encapsulated Mk 48 heavyweight torpedo from outside the pressure hull.
The first part of the GDEB contract encompassed 18 months' work to develop a reduced ship infrastructure using electric actuation instead of hydraulic, and mechanical actuation of ship control surfaces, including the ship's rudder, stern and bow planes.
Phase 2 includes the development of the actuator's motor drive and energy storage systems, and packages the actuator for an external sea water environment, then cycles the immersed actuator under full-scale dynamic loads.
The main advantage of electrical X-planes actuation is the elimination of hydraulic system infrastructure and hydraulic-mechanical drive pressure hull penetrations.
Challenges include demonstrating high electric motor torque density to reduce size and weight, as well as ensuring control surface system reliability and emergency performance by developing an alternative to stored hydraulic accumulator energy.
Says DARPA's Jan Walker. "The challenges of having the propulsor's prime mover in the ocean environment vice inside the submarine pressure hull are a significant focus of the project."
In existing US submarines, there are two turbines for propulsion and two for power generation, but shaftless propulsion would necessitate only turbines for producing electricity, freeing up the rear compartment for other uses.
Electric motors would be placed on pods external to the hull, eliminating steam-propulsion turbines, reduction gears and propulsion shafts and providing design flexibility in the stern.
With an integrated power system - just two turbines of the propulsion scheme allowing power to be diverted to other uses - it is possible to have propulsion turbine generators and maintain the existing ship service turbine generators.
GDEB is planning to devise an integrated power system to free up energy for other uses such as futuristic weapons or recharging a large set of underwater vehicle batteries. "It is a shared resource, so there are areas where you would have to reduce the propulsion bell," explains Pete Schilke, programme manager for GDEB.
To mitigate this, the power could also be used to charge up a capacitor bank, which would discharge in a fraction of a second, reducing perturbation on the power system.
Even if an enormous amount of power was diverted for seconds to power a futuristic weapon, the amount of time power is diverted from the propulsor would not lead to a significant reduction in speed.
One concern about shaftless propulsion and external weapons is that appendages cause additional drag, so pods must be carefully designed to hydrodynamically encapsulate the machinery.
So far, breadboard testing of the motor/controller drive components and system have been completed, with water tunnel testing of the model-scale rotor assembly completed in April and the final design of the Integrated Motor Propulsor and Drive (IMPaD) signed off in June.
Actuator testing
The actuator is immersed and pressurised in the test-stand to simulate submarine test depth to see if there are any wear characteristics, and there will be some contamination in the sea water, as the actuator would experience as water quality degrades near port.
This constitutes the biggest hydraulic load on the submarine, so Schilke says "with the goal of eliminating hydraulics, we have done a nice job at addressing the holy grail and gone a long way to prove we can do this and it is within our grasp".
GDEB has addressed the external electrical actuators on the control surface and motors to retrieve different arrays, so once internal actuators have been addressed, the team is confident it will be able to eliminate hydraulics. "It just depends on how large the actuators are, how much they weigh and how expensive they are to maintain," says Schilke.
Weapons carriage
Another target of the Tango Bravo programme is to develop an external weapon launch system to stow, communicate with and deliver an unencapsulated Mk 48 Advanced Capability torpedo from outside the pressure hull at speed and depth.
Phase 1 involved concept development, a shallow water full-scale test, and modeling that validated hydrodynamic performance and concept design requirements.
Phase 2 aims to refine this concept and manufacture a full-scale launcher test unit to demonstrate launch dynamics, signature and operational requirements.
For its part, DARPA considers the principal advantage of externally stowed weapons to be the elimination of the largest driver of internal pressure hull volume - the torpedo room.
Additionally, putting weapons into external weapon 'clips' means there would be no need to carefully align the angled torpedo tubes, noisy torpedo tube doors would disappear, and complex underwater firing techniques would no longer be necessary.
The launch of full-size weapons at maximum operating depth sets the company the challenge of addressing integration problems, such as overcoming the lack of access to the weapon when it is on the outside of the pressure hull, and the logistics of loading and servicing the weapons.
Budget pressures
Bob Work from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments tells Jane's that "while I do not want to say Tango Bravo is unimportant, it is not as big as it used to be. The current priority is getting Virginia costs down".
Work believes that budget pressures and the high non-recurring engineering and design costs involved in developing a 70 per cent cheaper submarine have worked against Tango Bravo being transitioned to a full-blown design effort for a new, cheaper SSN. Instead, he believes that those holding the purse strings will be inclined to quit while they are ahead, and take lessons learned from Tango Bravo and plough them into ensuring a more flexible payload for a cheaper Virginia class.
Redesigning submarines demands a high premium up front, but giving the Virginia class more capability could be an attractive cheaper alternative, especially once shipbuilders have got to grips with the modifications. For example, GDEB has managed to cut one million man hours from the production cycle of the second Virginia-class submarine compared to the first.
"This translates into real savings, which can be taken and ploughed into making the Virginia even more capable with new modifications. They will be getting either a cheaper submarine or a much more capable submarine for the same amount of money," Work tells Jane's.
Walker stresses that Tango Bravo's focus is to facilitate the design of a reduced-size, reduced-cost submarine that would cut acquisition and life cycle costs of any future platform, without sacrificing capability.
She explains that DARPA never planned Tango Bravo to develop an overall submarine concept, but rather to fund industry to "give design options for consideration in future submarine designs".
For example, Work notes that the USN will soon replace the Virginia's spherical array with a conformal bow array, which was one of Tango Bravo's original goals. This and other improvements will bring the price of each boat down to USD2 billion and help the USN to afford to increase the production rate from one boat per year to two.
From a shipbuilding point of view, it seems that changing a Virginia class to accommodate external weapons or shaftless propulsion would require such major modifications that "it would probably be better to develop a whole new ship design", according to Schilke. "
How does all this tie into the earlier-released RAND study on the need to begin designing the next, post Virginia, SSN? I don't know, but check out the RAND study for yourself.
"Submarines are still characterised by an aft propeller; a rear compartment for machinery space and a propeller shaft; a central reactor compartment; and a forward compartment with sonar rooms, torpedo rooms and crew berthing.
However, Tango Bravo – for Technology Breakthrough – identified five key technology barriers that could be conquered in order to slash construction and maintenance costs. These included stripping away hydraulics and developing propulsion unconstrained by a centreline shaft; stowing and launching weapons outside the hull; alternatives to spherical sonar arrays; simplifying the hull, mechanical and electrical systems (HM&E); and reducing the size of the crew through automation.
With the latter largely considered an evolutionary process, serious money has so far only been thrown at shaftless propulsion, electrical actuation and external weapons.
In May 2005, General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) and DRS Technologies were granted 12-month contracts to develop shaftless propulsion technologies, while GDEB and Northrop Grumman Newport News were awarded 18-month contracts to develop and demonstrate firing an encapsulated Mk 48 heavyweight torpedo from outside the pressure hull.
The first part of the GDEB contract encompassed 18 months' work to develop a reduced ship infrastructure using electric actuation instead of hydraulic, and mechanical actuation of ship control surfaces, including the ship's rudder, stern and bow planes.
Phase 2 includes the development of the actuator's motor drive and energy storage systems, and packages the actuator for an external sea water environment, then cycles the immersed actuator under full-scale dynamic loads.
The main advantage of electrical X-planes actuation is the elimination of hydraulic system infrastructure and hydraulic-mechanical drive pressure hull penetrations.
Challenges include demonstrating high electric motor torque density to reduce size and weight, as well as ensuring control surface system reliability and emergency performance by developing an alternative to stored hydraulic accumulator energy.
Says DARPA's Jan Walker. "The challenges of having the propulsor's prime mover in the ocean environment vice inside the submarine pressure hull are a significant focus of the project."
In existing US submarines, there are two turbines for propulsion and two for power generation, but shaftless propulsion would necessitate only turbines for producing electricity, freeing up the rear compartment for other uses.
Electric motors would be placed on pods external to the hull, eliminating steam-propulsion turbines, reduction gears and propulsion shafts and providing design flexibility in the stern.
With an integrated power system - just two turbines of the propulsion scheme allowing power to be diverted to other uses - it is possible to have propulsion turbine generators and maintain the existing ship service turbine generators.
GDEB is planning to devise an integrated power system to free up energy for other uses such as futuristic weapons or recharging a large set of underwater vehicle batteries. "It is a shared resource, so there are areas where you would have to reduce the propulsion bell," explains Pete Schilke, programme manager for GDEB.
To mitigate this, the power could also be used to charge up a capacitor bank, which would discharge in a fraction of a second, reducing perturbation on the power system.
Even if an enormous amount of power was diverted for seconds to power a futuristic weapon, the amount of time power is diverted from the propulsor would not lead to a significant reduction in speed.
One concern about shaftless propulsion and external weapons is that appendages cause additional drag, so pods must be carefully designed to hydrodynamically encapsulate the machinery.
So far, breadboard testing of the motor/controller drive components and system have been completed, with water tunnel testing of the model-scale rotor assembly completed in April and the final design of the Integrated Motor Propulsor and Drive (IMPaD) signed off in June.
Actuator testing
The actuator is immersed and pressurised in the test-stand to simulate submarine test depth to see if there are any wear characteristics, and there will be some contamination in the sea water, as the actuator would experience as water quality degrades near port.
This constitutes the biggest hydraulic load on the submarine, so Schilke says "with the goal of eliminating hydraulics, we have done a nice job at addressing the holy grail and gone a long way to prove we can do this and it is within our grasp".
GDEB has addressed the external electrical actuators on the control surface and motors to retrieve different arrays, so once internal actuators have been addressed, the team is confident it will be able to eliminate hydraulics. "It just depends on how large the actuators are, how much they weigh and how expensive they are to maintain," says Schilke.
Weapons carriage
Another target of the Tango Bravo programme is to develop an external weapon launch system to stow, communicate with and deliver an unencapsulated Mk 48 Advanced Capability torpedo from outside the pressure hull at speed and depth.
Phase 1 involved concept development, a shallow water full-scale test, and modeling that validated hydrodynamic performance and concept design requirements.
Phase 2 aims to refine this concept and manufacture a full-scale launcher test unit to demonstrate launch dynamics, signature and operational requirements.
For its part, DARPA considers the principal advantage of externally stowed weapons to be the elimination of the largest driver of internal pressure hull volume - the torpedo room.
Additionally, putting weapons into external weapon 'clips' means there would be no need to carefully align the angled torpedo tubes, noisy torpedo tube doors would disappear, and complex underwater firing techniques would no longer be necessary.
The launch of full-size weapons at maximum operating depth sets the company the challenge of addressing integration problems, such as overcoming the lack of access to the weapon when it is on the outside of the pressure hull, and the logistics of loading and servicing the weapons.
Budget pressures
Bob Work from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments tells Jane's that "while I do not want to say Tango Bravo is unimportant, it is not as big as it used to be. The current priority is getting Virginia costs down".
Work believes that budget pressures and the high non-recurring engineering and design costs involved in developing a 70 per cent cheaper submarine have worked against Tango Bravo being transitioned to a full-blown design effort for a new, cheaper SSN. Instead, he believes that those holding the purse strings will be inclined to quit while they are ahead, and take lessons learned from Tango Bravo and plough them into ensuring a more flexible payload for a cheaper Virginia class.
Redesigning submarines demands a high premium up front, but giving the Virginia class more capability could be an attractive cheaper alternative, especially once shipbuilders have got to grips with the modifications. For example, GDEB has managed to cut one million man hours from the production cycle of the second Virginia-class submarine compared to the first.
"This translates into real savings, which can be taken and ploughed into making the Virginia even more capable with new modifications. They will be getting either a cheaper submarine or a much more capable submarine for the same amount of money," Work tells Jane's.
Walker stresses that Tango Bravo's focus is to facilitate the design of a reduced-size, reduced-cost submarine that would cut acquisition and life cycle costs of any future platform, without sacrificing capability.
She explains that DARPA never planned Tango Bravo to develop an overall submarine concept, but rather to fund industry to "give design options for consideration in future submarine designs".
For example, Work notes that the USN will soon replace the Virginia's spherical array with a conformal bow array, which was one of Tango Bravo's original goals. This and other improvements will bring the price of each boat down to USD2 billion and help the USN to afford to increase the production rate from one boat per year to two.
From a shipbuilding point of view, it seems that changing a Virginia class to accommodate external weapons or shaftless propulsion would require such major modifications that "it would probably be better to develop a whole new ship design", according to Schilke. "
How does all this tie into the earlier-released RAND study on the need to begin designing the next, post Virginia, SSN? I don't know, but check out the RAND study for yourself.
What do you think?
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