What is going on with the Navy? Their procurement/construction system seems to be an even worse wreck than the Air Force’s. Read:
The U.S. Navy has yet another ship building disaster on its hands. This time it involves quality control, or, rather, that lack of same. A weld inspector at the Newport News shipyard was recently found to be falsifying the inspection of welding jobs on four Virginia class submarines and a Nimitz class carrier. Some 10,000 welds have to be re-inspected, as these are how many the now dismissed inspector handled in four years on the job. Each Virginia class sub has about 300,000 welds that have to be inspected.
This comes on the heels of all kinds of problems (and ultimate cancelation) of the LCS, and cost overruns on pretty much everything else.
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11 Comments
1. smitty1e:These United States are reverting to historical form, and permitting the Navy to rot away at the pier inter-bello.
Jun 1, 2009 - 7:15 pm 2. McGehee:Did this weld inspector previously work on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline?
Jun 1, 2009 - 8:11 pm 3. jon:I don’t get the feeling this weld inspector worked, period.
Jun 2, 2009 - 6:14 am 4. rbj:Put that inspector on the nearest sub he didn’t inspect, pronto.
Jun 2, 2009 - 6:19 am 5. McGehee:Point taken, Jon. Re-edit:
Did this weld inspector previously draw a paycheck on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline?
Jun 2, 2009 - 7:48 am 6. NukemHill:I’m with rbj. Put him on one of the subs he falsified and have him re-inspect.
During its first trial run.
Keel-hauling is too good for people like this.
Jun 2, 2009 - 8:05 am 7. tim maguire:What’s the crew of these subs and the carrier? It should be that many counts of attempted murder. Keel hauling may be more appropriate for his supervisors.
Jun 2, 2009 - 8:12 am 8. arhooley:Publish the bastard’s name. A finding was made.
Jun 2, 2009 - 9:16 am 9. Brad:Skipped weld inspections were the villians in “The China Syndrome”–where’re Jack Lemmon and Jane Fonda?
Jun 2, 2009 - 10:27 am 10. Jeff:Whatever. The brilliant job Uncle Sam is going to do at Godforsaken Motors will convince us once and for all that bureaucrats know the business of building things better than anyone else.
By the way, wonder if Michael Moore will ever make Barack and Me?
Jeff
Jun 2, 2009 - 2:55 pm 11. Casey:http://www.cerebellumblues.com
Just to inject some reality here, one of the reasons the Navy has been having these problems is the elimination of Navy-owned shipyards. Back in the day, the Navy could build several instances of a certain class and compare time of construction, cost, and quality to the civilian product. Frequently the Navy version came in cheaper, faster, and was better built.
Alas, the combination of unions and defense-spending politics destroyed the Navy shipyard system.
Mind you, there are a fair number of other reasons, but the above isn’t frequently mentioned.
Jun 3, 2009 - 9:06 pmSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.