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US Navy's High-Tech Ship Loses Power In Panama Canal (usni.org)
bsharma writes: USS Zumwalt suffered engine failure and collided with lock walls while transiting the Panama Canal. The ship lost propulsion in its port shaft during the transit and the crew saw water intrusion in two of the four bearings that connect to Zumwalt's port and starboard Advanced Induction Motors (AIMs) to the drive shafts, a defense official told USNI News on Tuesday. The AIMs are the massive electrical motors that are driven by the ship's gas turbines and, in turn, electrically power the ship's systems and drive the shafts. USNI News reports: "Zumwalt entered the Panama Canal following a successful port visit to Columbia last week -- a visit which the service intended to skip if it thought the engineering problems would continue, several defense officials told USNI News. The ship's engineering plant -- the Integrated Power System (IPS) -- is arguably the most complex and unique in the service. Installing and testing the system -- that provides ship additional power margins to power high energy weapons and sensors -- was a primary reason the ship delivered months late to the service. Before the casualty, the ship was set to arrive in San Diego by the end of the year and start weapon system activation period before joining the fleet as an operational warship sometime in 2018. (Zumwalt is the first of three in the $22-billion class.)
Who the hell is driving this reliability-be-damned design regime? Certainly not the war fighters.
The same jerks that design apps and the web 3.0 and the IOT.
Except in this case they get away with robbing the taxpayer several thousand milion dollars no questions asked.
"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." -Scotty
Meh, errors happen. The Nimitz class has a design flaw where it lists to the side under a full combat load. The Knox class took damage from heavy seas and were expensive to run. The Cyclone class suffered severe metal fatigue after just 15 years. Every class has some problem or another in development, testing, or active service. At least this problem can probably be fixed relatively easily.
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
$22B for three ships. That's not sustainable. It's time for the Pentagon to look for more reliable, less costly weapons systems.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I suspect that if there were more crew, this would have been detected before it caused the propulsion system to become an 'engineering casualty'.
They knew the problem existed and were monitoring it. This is a completely new propulsion system on a ship that's undergoing sea trials; finding problems is no surprise.
It's possible that they could limp home normally, but are unable to do the relatively fine maneuvering needed to navigate the canal.
What's crazy is that sealing propeller shafts against water ingress is a **solved problem** and regardless of how "hi tech" and "modern" this ship is, there is no excuse for it to have failed, absolutely none.
"Meh, errors happen."
Sure.
But when they cost billions of tax payer's dollars and are of questionable value to begin with, you really can't brush that aside so lightly!
3 distressingly unreliable war ships that cost more than the entire NASA yearly budget... Yep, seems like taxpayer money well-spent to me!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
You know why Commercial software is now better than military software? Security clearances. Citizens who cant cut it in the commercial space against H1Bs go to the defense space as there a security clearance and being a citizen is more important than being able to do the work.
**Life is too short to be serious**