

Builder Blames Navy as Brand-New Warship Disintegrates (2011) - chrisbennet
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/shipbuilder-blames-navy-as-brand-new-warship-disintegrates/

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mjn
Side issue, but this bit in the article is not quite right:

 _There are technical terms for this kind of disintegration. Austal USA,
Independence‘s Alabama-based builder, calls it “galvanic corrosion.” Civilian
scientists know it as “electrolysis.” It’s what occurs when “two dissimilar
metals, after being in electrical contact with one another, corrode at
different rates,” Austal explained in a statement._

First, it's strange to distinguish what the "civilian" term is, because there
isn't any military/civilian terminology difference here that I know of. The
standard civilian term for this kind of corrosion is also "galvanic
corrosion". It's a common issue in water pipes, when there are joints between
different kinds of metals (commonly steel pipes with copper joints).

Secondly, electrolysis isn't the same thing as galvanic corrosion. Galvanic
corrosion requires only the dissimilar metals in contact, immersed in an
electrolyte (the situation here). Electrolysis is a more general process, but
in the context of corrosion, it refers to corrosion driven by an external
current, usually some kind of stray electrical contact. Brief summary should
be readable in this Google Books preview:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=Z3mTf1licJIC&pg=PA169](http://books.google.com/books?id=Z3mTf1licJIC&pg=PA169)

~~~
nickff
It should be (relatively) easy to find out which process has occurred here, as
it is possible to eliminate electrolysis by grounding all the systems which
make contact with the sea.

It is also worth noting that a large percentage of electronic device failures
(after they get wet,) are caused by electrolysis. You can see this for
yourself if you look at a circuit board after the device got wet and failed;
the large green (copper oxide) and white (lead oxide) splotches on the board
are symptoms of electrolysis.

~~~
pdonis
_It should be (relatively) easy to find out which process has occurred here_

The fact that the article mentions that cathodic protection was not installed
on the ship strongly indicates, to me (based on prior US Navy experience),
that it was galvanic corrosion. It looks to me like someone signed off on
eliminating cathodic protection to save money and didn't realize the technical
implications.

Not that that exonerates the manufacturer: cathodic protection is not just a
special thing for military ships, even small boats need it if they have metal
props (because the props are generally a dissimilar metal from the prop
shafts, so without cathodic protection the props just dissolve away over
time). So the manufacturer should have waved a red flag about removing it.

------
suprgeek
The "USS Independence" is slowly disintegrating... Somehow that statement
makes a lot of sense on many levels.

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nl
Not an expert on this in any way, but I did enough chemistry to know that
galvanic corrosion is _very_ well known, especially on ships.

I suspect that the protection system was cut from the ship in the
understanding that the Navy would instead do ongoing maintenance to stop it
(not exactly sure what that maintenance would look like - maybe sacrificial
anodes instead of some kind of electrical system? - but stay with me...)

Doing that would cut the capital cost of the ships (ie, what is reported as
"how much it cost") and move that cost to an ongoing operational budget.

I'm guessing the Navy was under pressure to squeeze the budget, so this looked
like a good way to do it.

But it sounds like the Navy also had their operational budget cut to the point
where they didn't do the ongoing maintenance? Or maybe they just forgot about
it..

Anyway, I suspect that's what the real story would look like.

~~~
pdonis
Sacrificial anodes are a type of cathodic protection system (the simplest and
most common type). They're not a substitute for it.

Anyway, you can't do "ongoing maintenance" to substitute for cathodic
protection. Galvanic corrosion is going to happen continuously as long as the
ship is in the water; the only question is what corrodes, the protection
system (the sacrificial anodes, in the simplest case) or the hull and other
parts of the ship. If there's no protection system, what does that leave to
corrode?

~~~
nl
I'm thinking the original plan was some non-sacrificial anode system, and that
was replaced by sacrificial anodes (requiring maintance, which was never
done).

If there is no protection then the hull corrodes, as this story shows...

~~~
pdonis
_I 'm thinking the original plan was some non-sacrificial anode system, and
that was replaced by sacrificial anodes (requiring maintance, which was never
done)._

This would be consistent with the manufacturer's claim that the Navy did not
properly maintain the ships. However, a sacrificial anode system is a type of
corrosion protection, so it wouldn't be correct to say that no corrosion
protection was installed on the ships. Of course, it's quite possible that the
journalists writing this story don't understand the technical details
themselves and so are not correctly describing the situation.

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gk1
Nothing new here. The blame game happens every time a new ship construction
issue is discovered. PR has nothing (or very little) to do with it. It's all
about who's going to foot the bill for repairs and design changes, so both
sides have a financial incentive--many millions of dollars--to blame the
other.

------
natch
The article seems to say that the anti-corrosion system was cut from the
project for cost-saving reasons. If accurate, that's pretty astounding.
Presumably this would be a decision up to the customer so it's no wonder the
contractor is blaming the Navy for the bad decision.

~~~
pdonis
I'm not so sure this exonerates the contractor. Yes, someone on the Navy side
certainly screwed up; but the contractor should have raised a red flag if they
were technically competent. (If this should ever come to court, I have no
doubt the government's lawyers will be able to point out multiple clauses in
the contract that require the contractor to bring to the government's
attention any technical issue that could impact the ship's performance.)

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Theodores
This small matter of corrosion seems to be the least of the problems with this
ship.

This article implies Austal are the primary contractors, they are the primary
sub-contractor. The program for the 'LTS' ships is split between Lockheed
Martin and General Dynamics, Austal are partnered up with General Dynamics
building a very different design of ship to what the other guys at Lockheed
Martin are doing.

This particular ship was supposed to cost $220 million dollars, it is now
costing more than $700 million. That is a lot of money. The program as a whole
is costing something like $80 billion, that really is a lot of money.

What I find amusing is that a contract for $300 million has been awarded for
some company to create the training materials for the LTS ships. That is one
very expensive operators manual.

Incidentally the Lockheed Martin LCS ships crack when going at speed, well,
that has been the problem so far. So you have half the fleet corroding and the
other half just cracking. Sure the concept of the ships is new
(interchangeable modules) but the programme as a whole has been rushed into
without proper testing.

Now there are tens of thousands of jobs depending on it in 43 states. It is
'too big to fail' yet it is doing a good job of failing as far as stated
objectives are concerned. It is always the way with military projects. Well,
not quite always. On September 12 2001 contracts went out for the rebuilding
of the Pentagon, as damaged a day earlier. That project was delivered a month
early with no cost overrun.

~~~
mjn
> It is always the way with military projects. Well, not quite always.

There were a few generations of military projects that, while very expensive
and subject to many of the same distributed-construction politics, did seem to
turn out well in the end. More recent ones (meaning the last 10-20 years) seem
not to be doing as well. The F-16 program, for example, was led by the U.S.
but pulled in several NATO allies from Europe as part of the program, and as
part of that deal the construction was also split up between the partners. But
all the partners were generally happy with the end result, and the F-16 is
well regarded. Something vaguely similar was tried with the Joint Strike
Fighter, but that one doesn't seem to be going as well, and a lot of the
non-U.S. partners are now starting to regret having signed up for it. I don't
know enough to explain why the F-16 process worked, though.

~~~
nknighthb
I'm nowhere near old enough to remember the F-16's development, but it sure
looks like recent programs have suffered a great deal from bikeshedding and
trying to be everything to everyone.

Look at some of the F-16's rough contemporaries: The F-14, F-15, F/A-18, A-6,
and A-10.

Despite a fair bit of flexibility and overlap in mission capabilities,
especially after post-debut tweaking, these are all different planes designed
with different goals in mind.

Now think about the F-35/JSF. It's one program that's basically trying to
replace everything leftover from the cold war. That seems like a big red flag.

It seems like something similar is going on in the LCS program. They're
explicitly supposed to be "flexible" and "modular" \-- aka "be ALL THE
THINGS!" \-- and "replace" a variety of more special-purpose ships.

Swiss army knives are handy, but I'm not going to try building a house with
one.

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epistasis
This is from June of 2011, anybody know of updates?

~~~
bane
It sounds like the whole class is having trouble.

[http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2013/03/uss-freedom-limping-
towar...](http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2013/03/uss-freedom-limping-toward-
singapore-the-us-navys-sorry-lcs-saga-continues/)

~~~
mpyne
Well LCS is at least two different types of ship at this point so problems
that affect one are not necessarily class-wide.

The Navy has certainly had a lot of trouble overseeing development of either
LCS type though, that's for sure.

------
chm
Nice Gen Chem pop quizz question.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_electrode_potential_(d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_electrode_potential_\(data_page\))

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danso
One of the factoids linked in the OP:

> The Defense Department estimates that it will spend $114.5 billion over the
> next five years on the nasty nuisance.

[http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/the-pentagon-
declare...](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/the-pentagon-declares-war-
on-rust/)

For perspective, that's about as much as Canada spends on its _entire_
military (over 5 years):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)

Five years of military rust is equal to 10 years of NASA's entire budget:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA)

~~~
sneak
It could also be argued that Canada doesn't need a military because its
neighbor spends so much on its military that it drops a hundred billion
fighting RUST.

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jeffdavis
"Littoral Combat Ships"

Does that mean lakes? Are we putting navy ships in lakes? If so, which ones?

~~~
ewoodrich
I don't know if we have any in lakes, but in this context, littoral means
"close to shore". So for use in coastal waters.

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jrockway
As an aside, why not use composite materials for ships?

~~~
gk1
It would be much, much more expensive. Composites are used for some smaller
structures, such as the stack enclosures on the San Antonio class LPD's.

~~~
jrockway
The military cares about cost? :)

~~~
mpyne
As it turns out, they do. Things built to MILSPEC through government
procurement are expensive enough as it is without the added expenses you could
start to introduce if you wanted. ;)

