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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.)
I was in the Nuclear Propulsion Program in the Navy. By necessity, quality control and training were at near-religious levels. But the systems themselves were designed above all for reliability. One aspect of that was simplicity.
The Zumwalt isn't a nuke, just an over-priced gas turbo-electric. The tech surrounding this project is an engineer's wet dream.However, they have built the flimsiest of paper tigers. It's supposed to be a combatant warship, not a science fair demonstration project, and not a contractor piggy-bank for taxpayer dollars.
The idea of propulsion plant automation as a labor-saving measure is laudable, but the concept is scalar, not linear. There is a tradeoff to be made here, and prudence seems to have gone overboard the garbage. More points of failure with fewer resources to respond to failures does not make for a reliable combat system. Automation gone wild might be OK commercial ships where the price of failure is less, but this is supposed to be a fighting ship, not a bulk freighter.
We have seen the same folly in the littoral combatants and the ridiculously moribund Ford-class carrier.
Who the hell is driving this reliability-be-damned design regime? Certainly not the war fighters.
"Zumwalt is the first of three in the $22-billion class."
It's refreshing to see the honesty - "$22-billion class" ship is much more descriptive than "Zumwalt class" ship.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It's like a diesel-electric locomotive: separate electricity generation and then propulsion using an electric motor.
Power for the entire ship is provided by a pair of Main Gas Turbines (MGTs) and a pair of Auxiliary Gas Turbines (AGTs). The AIMs are the electric motors that drive the propulsion shafts.
In the case of this failure, both propulsion shafts seized up. It's not entirely clear if it's the AIMs that failed, or if something else sized up the shafts first.
One of the ideas tried out in the Zumwalt-class is a high level of automation. As a result, the crew is ~140. Other US Destroyer classes (Spruance, Arleigh Burke) have crews of roughly 340.
The first article mentions seawater intrusion: I suspect that if there were more crew, this would have been detected before it caused the propulsion system to become an 'engineering casualty'.
Pro Tip: you man combat ships based on combat requirements, meaning sufficient hands for damage control and major emergency repairs. The Zumwalt-class manning apparently does not take that into account. . .
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.
The big problem for the Iraqis was that they couldn't fire at a moving target while moving. US tanks kept maneuvering and easily blew the T-62s away.
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.
It visited where? This city in the middle of South Carolina, 100 miles from the ocean? That IS impressive!
Oh! Some country in South America, you say? Then you must mean ColOmbia.
3 distressingly unreliable war ships that cost more than the entire NASA yearly budget... Yep, seems like taxpayer money well-spent to me!
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That and the fact that even when they managed to ding a US tank, it just dinged it while the US Tank guns, that could be shot while on the move and from nearly three times the range, even through sand berms, sent the Sov design tank turrets spinning into the air.
Hell we even tried to destroy in place a stuck in the sand M1 and were unable to do so. The first two shots just grooved the front armor, a third from the side, went into the ammo compartment, the blow out panels worked as designed and odds are the hit would have been survivable by the crew (though they would have had burn injuries). Before they could try to shoot again a couple more recovery vehicles showed up and they were able to pull it free and it was towed back and sent to a lab to be examined, but if needed a new turret could have been swapped in and the vehicle sent back into combat within a couple days.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Still a better aircraft than the F-35.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is what happens when Captain Kirk calls for more power and Scotty isn't there to deliver.... ...The captain's name really is James Kirk
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