A Broken Gear Hobbled the Navy's New Aircraft Carrier. And It's Going to Cost $30 Million to Fix

[jpak]

http://time.com/5348496/navy-aircraft-carrier-broken-gear/

(Bloomberg) — The Navy is asking Congress to shift $30 million from other accounts to start repairing a damaged gear on the service’s costliest warship, the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.

The request for funds to repair the $13 billion carrier is part of a Pentagon package asking congressional approval to shift $4.7 billion in previously approved Army, Air Force and Navy funding into new programs or higher-priority projects. The package must be approved by all four congressional defense committees, where it’s pending.

The $30 million is needed to pay for repairs to the propulsion-system gear while the carrier’s builder, Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., “seeks compensation from the original manufacturer for warranty defects,” Naval Sea Systems spokesman William Couch said in an email.

The Ford was forced to return to port after the failure in January of a “main thrust bearing” that’s a key propulsion system component. It returned to sea after the damage was contained. The defective gear was the result of “machining errors” by a General Electric Co. unit, according to Navy documents. Full repairs will take place during the vessel’s current yearlong shakeout period.

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[gratuitous]

1. Only $30 million?

Chump change for a military that spend $2 billion a day, every day. A quick check under the cushions at the Pentagon should rustle up enough dough for this. Certainly we shouldn't be tasking the star-spangled, all American companies that manufactured or supplied this defective gear with its replacement. That could cost jobs!

Or, maybe we need to cut entitlements for you lazy-ass citizens.

[Fred Sanders]

5. On a 13 billion dollar floating elephant 30 million is like an oil filter on a Chevy...sad to say.

[lpbk2713]

2. Park it under a shade tree and put it up on blocks.

Bubba and Billy Bob can fix it for a lot less.

[dameatball]

3. Is it too late to change the name on the ship? Maybe "Bumbling Boondoggle?"

[matt819]

4. Shit happens, but let's not get all that worked up

The carrier cost $13 billion.

The repair bill is $30 million.

You can argue that $13 billion is obscene. Maybe. But it cost what it cost, and, on big machines and small, shit happens. True, some companies fucked up, and they have to be held responsible. That will play out as things do in bureaucracies.

But in terms of percentage, that would be a $92 repair on a $40,000 car.

[MousePlayingDaffodil]

7. Shhh......

You’re, uh, interrupting a rather pointless stream of ignorant babble by talking sense.

[Aristus]

6. If I was able to effect Pentagon procurement reform, the overriding factor for all

contractors would be "Payment upon delivery; subject to revocation if item found to be substandard after independent field-testing."

For $13 billion, we should get at least three aircraft carriers...

[maxrandb]

8. It's kind of maddening

The contracts for the CVN's like the NIMITZ Class were written decades ago.

You've never lived until you served on a ship being commissioned, spend years and billions getting it in service, taking it out for Sea Trials, and then immediately taking it into the Shipyard to rip out equipment that was just installed because it's obsolete and replace it with new.

I Pre-Comm'd one Carrier in my career. The original plan called for a total of 10 LAN lines/drops for intranet. This was on a ship of over 3,700 when the Air Wing was aboard. We couldn't even add "splitters" for the LAN lines because that would have voided the contract warranty for the intranet drops.

We also had a perfectly good electrical outlet in the middle of the Mess Decks in case we wanted to set up the old "reel-to-reel" Movie Projector for "Movie Nights" like you saw in the TV show M*A*S*H