Quotulatiousness

August 21, 2012

Royal Navy faces shortage of trained submariners

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:56

Thomas Harding in the Telegraph:

Internal documents warn that a lack of recruits for the Submarine Service may leave attack submarines and boats carrying the Trident nuclear missile stranded in port.

A separate threat comes from a predicted 15 per cent shortfall in engineers by 2015.

One in seven posts for weapons officers at the rank of lieutenant will also be vacant, raising operational questions over the boats equipped with nuclear and cruise missiles.

Many submariners are being poached by the civilian nuclear sector and those who remain are being forced to go to sea for longer and more frequently.

Adml Lord West, the former First Sea Lord, said the situation was “very worrying” and he hoped the Navy had mechanisms in place to make up for the shortfall.

[. . .]

The Navy has a fleet of six attack submarines and four Vanguard boats that carry the Trident nuclear missile, but the personnel issues could mean they cannot be deployed.

The report found that the recruiting and retention of submariners was also threatening operations. “Inability to recruit, retain and develop sufficient nuclear and submarine design qualified personnel will result in an inability to support the Defence Nuclear Programme,” the document said.

August 20, 2012

Royal Navy announces design of new “Type 26 Global Combat Ship”

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:46

Britain’s Royal Navy revealed the design of the Type 26 today:

The announcement on the Type 26 Global Combat Ship has been described by officials as a “significant milestone” in a programme which will support “thousands of UK shipbuilding jobs”.

Basic specification images show sleek stealth features, familiar to modern warships, making them harder to detect.

The ship will be 148 metres long with a displacement of 5,400 tonnes.

The MoD has been working with BAE Systems since 2010 to determine the basic design for the ship. Detailed specifications of the vessel will now be examined.

Vertical missile silos for a range of weapons, such as cruise missiles, will be housed on board along with a medium calibre gun.

The hangar on board will house a Merlin or Wildcat helicopter and there will be extra space for unmanned drones, underwater vehicles or other specialist equipment.

[. . .]

The current plan is to build 13 of the ships, which are due to start coming into service after 2020.

The Type 26 will replace the 13 Type 23 frigates but the MoD is not giving a precise commitment on numbers until they know the unit cost.

The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, says the ship will be used “across the full spectrum of warfare”.

He added: “The T26 GCS will be a multi-mission warship designed for joint and multinational operations… including complex combat operations, maritime security operations such as counter piracy, as well as humanitarian and disaster relief work around the world.”

The US Navy’s still-experimental Littoral Combat Ship

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:29

New ship designs are highly complex and often take years to debug. The US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program surprised most observers by settling on two different designs and splitting the intended order quantity between the two design firms. One of each design is in service now, the more traditional USS Freedom (LCS-1), and the trimaran-hull USS Independence (LCS-2). Each has had its own set of teething problems:

The LCS has long been a good source of bad news and potentially explosive revelations. In the last year the LCS design has been found to have structural and other flaws. The first LCS, the monohull USS Freedom, has suffered four major problems since it entered service four years ago. The latest one is a leak in a propeller shaft seal, which caused some minor flooding. Despite this Freedom was able to get back to port under its own power. Last year cracks in the hull as long as 17 cm (6.5 inches) were discovered, and the water-jet propulsion system broke down as well. Two years ago one of the gas turbine engines broke down.

The most serious problem is in the USS Independence, a radical trimaran design. It seems that a “dissimilar metals” situation arose when salt water, the aluminum hull, and some other metals got into close proximity with each other and extensive corrosion resulted. Aluminum hulls tend to corrode more than steel, but the problem became so bad with the USS Independence that, 18 months after entering service, it was sent into dry dock for corrosion repairs and design changes to eliminate the problem.

Cracks, corrosion, and equipment breakdowns are common in new warship designs especially designs that are radically different (like the broad trimaran shape of the USS Independence). Usually, these problems can be fixed but there’s always the risk that the new design will be seriously flawed, requiring extensive rework and a halt in building more ships of that class. So far, the U.S. Navy has not wavered in the face of potential design and construction flaws.

This is all part of the expected years of uncertainty and experimentation as this radical new combat ship design seeks to find out what works, to what degree, and what doesn’t. There is some nervousness about all this. The U.S. Navy has not introduced a radical new design for nearly a century. The last such new design was the aircraft carrier, which required two decades of experimentation and a major war to nail down what worked. Even the nuclear submarines of the late 1950s and early 60s were evolutionary compared to what the LCS is trying to do.


USS Freedom at sea. Click for full-sized image at Wikipedia


USS Independence at pier side. Click for full-sized image at Wikipedia.

August 18, 2012

Warships are not like books or DVDs

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Economics, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:23

“Sir Humphrey” explains why adding another two Type 45 destroyers to the Royal Navy’s current construction plans won’t fly, even though it would be popular with many key constituencies: “it would win votes, it would keep supporters of the Navy happy, and the RN would be delighted”.

From the outset, let’s be extremely clear. This article is not saying that the UK could not build two more Type 45s – if the will is there, and the budget exists to do so, then anything is possible. As will be seen though, the challenge is trying to do so in a manner which makes rational sense.

[. . .]

In terms of support and manning, providing two additional Type 45s would raise a significant cost and manpower burden on the fleet. The RN has scaled itself to provide spares for six hulls. An additional two hulls means increasing spares by 33% above the existing fleet, which in turn would mean extra funding for parts, supplies, maintenance and munitions. Even basic issues like Sea Viper war shots, helicopter fleets, ammunition for 4.5” guns and the like would need to be increased. The funding for this is not in place at present. It’s not that the RN can’t find this funding, but that it will cost more to fund it than previously expected — this money has to be found from commensurate savings elsewhere.

[. . .]

The final point is perhaps the best reason why it would be near impossible to achieve this. There is simply no room in the construction yards to build two additional Type 45s. As was seen in the award of the MARS tanker project to Korea, the current UK shipbuilding industry is operating at peak capacity – the CVF programme is in pure tonnage terms providing the equivalent of 20 Type 45 destroyers worth of construction. The yards are full with CVF work now, and in a few years’ time will be ramping up to construct Type 26. To inject two additional Type 45s now would throw that programme into disarray as the yards struggle to work out how they can actually build the vessels. It’s not just a case of laying some steel down and a new ship popping up. T45s are built across multiple yards in parts, so it would need all the component yards to work together to fit it into their programme. They’d also need to work out how to take on the extra staff, who would then need to be made redundant later on as the workflow dropped off again. One of the key successes of the terms of business agreement is that the shipyards can plan for an agreed level of work. Adding ships in to this actually throws the plan into confusion as the yards have to resource to a higher level than before, incurring additional costs, and probably delaying both CVF and T26.

It is not impossible to build extra ships. That much is clear — if the willpower is there, then it can be done. But the days of shipyards existing in a short term environment, dependent on the next RN order, whatever it may be, are all but gone. The issue is the preservation of key skills, such as ship design and also high end manufacture of critical components, and doing so in a manner which makes the industry sustainable for the long term, and not the ‘boom and bust’ approach of the last century.

Regular readers of the blog may remember that the Type 45 destroyer design in particular came in for a hammering from other sources.

August 17, 2012

The plight of Russian submariners

Filed under: History, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:36

An update from Strategy Page on how far the Russian nuclear submarine threat has diminished from its peak during the cold war:

Three years ago two Akulas were detected (by the U.S. Navy) off the east coast of the United States, in international waters. Russia admitted two of its Akula class boats were out there. This was the first time Russian subs had been off the North American coast in over a decade. This spotlights something the Russian admirals would rather not dwell on. The Russian Navy has not only shrunk since the end of the Cold War in 1991, but it has also become much less active. In the previous three years, only ten of their nuclear subs had gone to sea, on a combat patrol, each year. Most of the boats going to sea were SSNs, the minority were SSBNs (ballistic missile boats). There were often short range training missions, which often lasted a few days, or just a few hours.

The true measure of a fleet’s combat ability is the number of “combat patrols” or “deployments” in makes in a year and how long they are. In the U.S. Navy, most of these last from 2-6 months. Currently U.S. nuclear subs have carry out ten times as many patrols as their Russian counterparts. Russia is trying to catch up, but has a long way to go.

Russia has only 14 SSNs (nuclear attack subs) in service and eight of them are 7,000 ton, Akulas. These began building in the late 1980s and are roughly comparable to the American Los Angeles class. All of the earlier Russian SSNs are trash, and most have been decommissioned. There are also eight SSGN (nuclear subs carrying cruise missiles) and 20 diesel electric boats. There is a new class of SSGNs under construction, but progress has been slow.

[. . .]

The peak year for Russian nuclear sub patrols was 1984, when there were 230. That number rapidly declined until, in 2002, there were none. Since the late 1990s, the Russian navy has been hustling to try and reverse this decline. But the navy budget, despite recent increases, is not large enough to build new ships to replace the current Cold War era fleet that is falling apart. The rapid decline of Russia’s nuclear submarine fleet needed international help to safely decommission over a hundred obsolete, worn out, defective or broken down nuclear subs. This effort has been going on for over a decade, and was driven by the Russian threat to just sink their older nuclear subs in the Arctic Ocean. That might work with conventional ships, but there was an international uproar over what would happen with all those nuclear reactors sitting on the ocean floor forever. Russia generously offered to accept donations to fund a dismantling program that included safe disposal of the nuclear reactors.

August 15, 2012

India’s next aircraft carrier delayed (again)

Filed under: India, Military, Russia — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:02

The Indian navy will have to carry on with an ancient aircraft carrier for a few more years because the INS Vikrant is being further delayed:

India announced that its first locally designed and built aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant will be at least three years late. This was not unexpected. The latest delay was caused, in large part, because the Indian firm hired to build a complex portion of the engine, the gearbox, proved incapable of the task and a foreign company had to be brought in.

There have been many other problems. While construction began three years ago, it was soon delayed because Russia was late in supplying the high-grade steel needed for the hull. Last December 30, the Vikrant was floated out its dry dock. Vikrant was not supposed to leave dry dock yet but the dock was needed for another project. Construction will go on, with pipes, conduits, and other fittings installed. Later this year, Vikrant will return to another dry dock to have its engines and other major equipment installed, although some of that equipment will be late because of problems with suppliers.

While waiting for the Vikrant to be ready, India will have to extend the service life of the already aged INS Viraat, which began life as HMS Hermes in the Royal Navy before being transferred to Indian service in 1987. She is the oldest aircraft carrier in active service in any navy.

Image from Wikipedia.

August 6, 2012

Admiral Fisher: an excitable sort of man

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Humour, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:41

Admiral “Jackie” Fisher was a major historical figure in the Royal Navy, advocate of the modern dreadnought battleship and a tad high-strung (“…and on one occasion, the king asked him to stop shaking his fist in his face”). His relationship with Winston Churchill at the Admiralty must have been something to observe, as two of the most influential men in London worked together (for a while). After leaving the Admiralty for the last time, he still kept in touch with Churchill. Here is an example of his communication style:

This is believed to be the first documented use of the now familiar “OMG”.

H/T to Shaun Usher.

August 2, 2012

US military faces recruiting nightmare

Filed under: Health, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

Strategy Page outlines the most recent major problem the US military is facing: the bloat of potential recruits (not in numbers, but in individual mass). While the number of new recruits needed is declining, the pool of potential recruits to draw from has been declining even faster:

The problem is that Americans have, in the last two decades, become very fat and out-of-shape. There are 32 million male Americans of prime military age (17-24). But because of bad lifestyle choices, only 13 percent of them (4.2 million) are physically eligible for service. Each year, the armed forces have to recruit 150,000 new troops. The military is allowed to waive some physical or mental standards, and this means that only about 20 percent of those 32 million potential recruits qualify. Each year, recruiters have to convince about two percent of those eligible that they should join up. It’s a tough job, made worse by a generation that eats too much, exercises too little and doesn’t pay enough attention in school. You not only have to be physically fit enough to join, you also have to be smart enough and have no criminal record.

The enormous growth in computer entertainment, and subsequent massive reduction in exercise teenage boys get is the major reason for the body fat percentage crisis. As a result, one of the biggest problems American military recruiters have is unfit young Americans trying to enlist. Some 57 percent of potential recruits are not eligible because they do not score high enough on the aptitude test the military uses to see if people have enough education and mental skills to handle military life. Many of those who score too low do so because they did not do well at school. A lot of these folks have high IQs, but low motivation. Most of the remainder are not eligible for physical reasons. But get this; the most common physical disqualifier is being overweight. Nearly a third of the people of military age are considered obese. Many of these big folks are eager to join, and are told how much weight they have to lose before they can enlist. Few return light enough to sign up.

Computer gaming and other forms of indoor entertainment certainly bear some of the blame for the obesity problem, but other issues should also be included: helicopter parents who don’t dare let their kids go outside to play without full-time parental supervision, schools that have reduced or eliminated physical education for budget or liability reasons, and the huge increase in availability of low-priced, high-calorie fast foods.

July 29, 2012

US Navy’s surge to the Persian Gulf

Filed under: Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

Strategy Page has the details:

The U.S. is sending another carrier task force to the Persian Gulf, and the ships are heading out four months early and will stay at sea for eight months instead of four. There are already two carrier task forces in the Gulf area, and for a short while there will be three when the third task force arrives in five months.

This is what the U.S. Navy describes as “surge capability” (getting the maximum number of ships to a war or hot sport in the shortest possible time). It’s a new policy, getting a workout here because of rising tensions in the Persian Gulf.

It all began eight years ago, after a massive surge for the invasion of Iraq. This caused several problems, one of them being a dip in morale. So the navy decided it had to keep ships at sea less often. That’s because the ships need more time in port for maintenance, and the more you keep the ships at sea (especially for more than four months at a time), the more sailors decide to leave the navy.

For the 2003 Iraq campaign the navy sent 72 percent of the combat fleet (221 of 306 warships, including seven of twelve carriers, 75 percent of the amphibious ships and 33 of 54 attack submarines). There were 600 navy (and marine) warplanes involved, and over 100,000 sailors and marines. But this was done in the midst of the navy’s usual (for several decades) routine of six month cruises followed by six months in port. The navy got so many ships and aircraft into the Iraqi campaign by skipping scheduled maintenance, keeping sailors at sea for very long periods and basically improvising. This meant that when the Iraq operation was over, the navy had more than half its ships out of action for months as maintenance for ships and rest for crews was caught up on.

July 27, 2012

US admiral calls for more “trucks” and fewer “limousines”

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

The Economist reports on a recent article in the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings by Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations:

The “luxury-car” platforms designed in the last days of the cold war (and which still dominate much military procurement) have not adapted well to changes in security and technology, he says. Such platforms must always carry the sophisticated equipment to defeat a sophisticated foe. Yet much of this may be irrelevant to the navy’s typical missions in the past 20 years: counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, mine-clearing, maritime patrolling and carrier operations in support of counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given the cost of building new platforms and the need to keep them in service for 30 to 50 years or even longer, Admiral Greenert wants them to be more like “trucks”: with plenty of space and power to accommodate different payloads. Some of the Pentagon’s oldest platforms have turned out to be much better trucks than their successors.

Because of its sheer size, its reserve electrical power and its small number of integral systems, at least compared with newer aircraft-carriers, the 50-year-old USS Enterprise has proved more adaptable than modern, densely packed designs. Unlike them, it has the space, storage and power-generating capacity to carry new aircraft types and new systems.

The same is true of the stalwart B-52 bomber. It first flew 60 years ago. It is now expected to stay in service until 2045. Conceived as a strategic bomber after the second world war, it has been recast many times. It is now proving to be a cost-effective platform for the latest precision-guided “stand-off” weapons (meaning those fired from afar). It is also more dependable than any of its more advanced successors.

Another advantage of high-tech payloads over platforms stems from Moore’s law: the doubling of computer-chip speed every two years or less. This embarrasses military planners. Even their latest and fabulously expensive equipment often lacks the processing power of cheap consumer gadgets. It takes at least 15 years to bring a new ship or aircraft from design to completion. That can be eight or more cycles of Moore’s law.

July 26, 2012

Wreck of WWII U-boat may be 100km up the Churchill River

Filed under: Cancon, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

CBC News on the possible discovery of remains of a German WW2 submarine in Labrador:

The German government says it is possible, but added that it would be “sensational and unusual,” that a submarine could have ended up so far inland.

“We do know that German U-boats did operate in that region,” said Georg Juergens, the deputy head of mission for the German Embassy in Ottawa.

He notes that a Second World War-era, battery-operated weather station was found decades after being left in Labrador by a U-boat. It is now on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

“We must brace ourselves for surprises,” Juergens told CBC News, while stressing that the submarine has yet to be positively identified.

More than a dozen U-boats may still be unaccounted for, he said.

If the mystery find is proven to be a submarine wreck, the German government does not favour bringing it to the surface.

“That would be against our tradition and our naval customs,” Juergens said. “This site then would be declared a war grave at sea.”

He said Canadian policy dovetails with German policy on such matters.

According to Juergens, the Newfoundland and Labrador government is now involved in efforts to authenticate the possible wreck.

July 23, 2012

China’s latest ploy in the South China Sea

Filed under: China, Military, Pacific — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:29

To cement Chinese claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea, a garrison is being established in the Paracel Islands:

China’s powerful Central Military Commission has approved the formal establishment of a military garrison for the disputed South China Sea, state media said, in a move which could further boost tensions in already fractious region.

The Sansha garrison would be responsible for “national defence mobilisation … guarding the city and supporting local emergency rescue and disaster relief” and “carrying out military missions”, the Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

China has a substantial military presence in the South China Sea and the move is a further assertion of its sovereignty claims after it last month upped the administrative status of the seas to the level of a city, which it calls Sansha.

Sansha city is based on what is known in English as Woody Island, part of the Paracel Islands also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.

July 22, 2012

HMCS Victoria torpedoes and sinks US Navy ship!

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:09

The word “decommissioned” should appear in that headline. Details here: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c51_1342677437

July 9, 2012

The F-35 is “unaffordable and simply unacceptable”

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:46

Winslow Wheeler on the near-doubling of the F-35 price (so far):

On June 14 — Flag Day, of all days — the Government Accountability Office released a new oversight report on the F-35: Joint Strike Fighter: DOD Actions Needed to Further Enhance Restructuring and Address Affordability Risks. As usual, it contained some important information on growing costs and other problems. Also as usual, the press covered the new report, albeit a bit sparsely.

Fresh bad news on the F-35 has apparently become so routine that the fundamental problems in the program are plowed right over. One gets the impression, especially from GAO’s own title to its report, that we should expect the bad news, make some minor adjustments, and then move on. But a deeper dive into the report offers more profound, and disturbing, bottom line.

Notorious for burying its more important findings in the body of a report — I know; I worked there for nearly a decade — GAO understates its own results on acquisition cost growth in its one-page summary, which — sadly — is probably what most read to get what they think is the bottom line.

[. . .]

Set in 2001, the total acquisition cost of the F-35 was to be $233.0 billion. Compare that to the current estimate of $395.7 billion: cost growth has been $162.7 billion, or 70%: a lot more than what GAO stated in its summary.

However, the original $233 billion was supposed to buy 2,866 aircraft, not the 2,457 currently planned: making it $162 billion, or 70%, more for 409, or 14%, fewer aircraft. Adjusting for the shrinkage in the fleet, I calculate the cost growth for a fleet of 2,457 aircraft to be $190.8 billion, or 93%.

The cost of the program has almost doubled over the original baseline; it is not an increase of 42%.

July 6, 2012

US Navy re-thinks their Pacific strategy options

Filed under: China, Military, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:07

Strategy Page discusses the historical uses of the submarine in the Pacific and why things would not be the same in the case of a Chinese war:

The U.S. Navy is rethinking how it will use its submarines in a future Pacific War. The problem is that a campaign against Chinese shipping is unlikely, in part because of what actually happened during the last great anti-shipping campaign, which occurred during World War II (1939-45). After the war, the U.S. analyzed its operations against Japanese shipping and found that submarines were important, but not the only weapon effective against shipping. Some 8.9 million tons of Japanese shipping was sunk or so seriously damaged (disabled) at the end of the war. Submarines accounted for 54.7 percent of this. But 16.3 percent was attributable to carrier-based aircraft, 14.5 percent to land- based planes and 9.3 percent to mines (most dropped by B-29s). Less than one percent was due to surface gunfire, and the balance of 4 percent was caused by accidents.

[. . .]

Meanwhile, the U.S. has adopted a new approach to any potential war with China. The U.S. Department of Defense has been told that, for the foreseeable future, there will be no more large-scale land campaigns. The air force, navy, and marines responded with a plan (AirSea Battle) that has been in the work for years. The new strategy is designed to cope with the rising power of China in the Pacific. AirSea Battle involves tighter planning and coordination of navy, marine, and navy forces, plus the development of some new weapons and tactics and cooperation with allies.

[. . .]

AirSea battle concentrates on military operations. But these will be heavily influenced by economic factors. For example, during World War II the United States was a largely self-sufficient “continental power.” We exported much (more than any other nation on the planet), but did not have to import much. That has changed. Now the U.S. has to import a lot of its oil, special raw materials (like “rare earths” from China) and a lot of manufactured goods. The U.S. is now like much of the rest of the world, China included. If there were a maritime blockade of China, the U.S. and many other Chinese trading partners would suffer severe economic disruptions. There would be massive unemployment for all concerned and that would happen despite energetic efforts by everyone to find alternative sources to goods no longer available because of the disruption of the China trade.

[. . .]

Meanwhile, the nuclear submarine community has done the math and found that their greatest contribution these days is not attacking enemy warships, but land bombardment with cruise missiles and intelligence collecting. Since the first nuclear subs showed up in the 1950s, only one, a British boat, has used a torpedo to sink a hostile warship. But hundreds of cruise missiles have been launched at land targets and uncounted (because they are highly classified) intelligence missions have been, and continue to be, carried out. All that is the recent past for subs, and is likely to be the future as well. World War II in the Pacific is not likely to be rerun. The U.S. Navy still expects its subs to go after enemy warships, and its surface and air forces to battle enemy subs. But a major war on shipping is much less likely.

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