Public rationales for unanticipated shipbuilding costs
February 21st, 2012 | Carriers Gerald R. Ford Navy Newport News Shipbuilding Photos Ships Shipyard | Posted by Bill McMichael
A euphemism is “the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant,” according to Merriam-Webster. An example might be couching a near-$1 billion increase in the cost of the most expensive ship ever in the most innocuous terms possible.
My colleague Chris Cavas has a fine explainer story in the print version of this week’s Defense News on the soaring cost of CVN 78, the Gerald R. Ford. Chris notes that the Navy’s recently unveiled fiscal year 2013 budget request asks Congress for another $811 million atop a total price tag of more than $15 billion — the most expensive ship ever built.
A 945-ton superlift is lowered into place near the stern of PCU Gerald R. Ford, or CVN-78, on May 21, 2011, at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va. The superlift erected contained a diesel generator room, a pump room, an oily water waste pump room, 16 complete tanks and 18 partial tanks that was welded to the rest of the ship. It is one of 162 total superlifts that comprise the ship. // Photo courtesy of Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries.
Chris made sure to include the euphemism the Navy unwrapped to describe the rationale for the cost bump. The Navy is attributing the need for more money to “fact-of-life cost increases.”
I understand that the Ford is the first in a new class of ship and that the Navy was ordered to put nearly all of the technology improvements originally slated to be spread across the first three carriers of the Ford class into the first one, yada yada. It’s all a matter of scale, I suppose. But that’s some “fact of life.” $811 million would go a long toward, say, remodeling aging barracks for single sailors’ pockets. Put another way, it’s enough to pay for about a third of a new Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyer.
But from a writing standpoint, I just love that phrase! What’s next? “Lessons-in-life cost increases”? “Cost-of-doing-business cost increases”? If you were trying to spin this increase for Congress, how would you term it?
I’m thinkin’ that’s Lincoln
May 31st, 2011 | Navy Newport News Shipbuilding Photos Ships | Posted by Dave Brown
An eagle-eyed reader named “Mike” wrote us over the weekend to make an interesting point about the Navy’s photo illustration released the day the Navy announced that the second Gerald R. Ford-class carrier will be named in honor of John F. Kennedy. His point? That ain’t no Ford.
“There’s plenty of renderings of the Ford Class available for use, and with the differences between classes you might as well be showing a picture of the Forrestal.”
Right you are. The carrier below JFK’s head is actually the Abraham Lincoln. The image was shot March 2 as the ship made its way across the Pacific near the end of its most-recent deployment. You can see the photo in its natural habitat here.
Ford and its follow-ons will look more like this.
It still floats
May 23rd, 2011 | Carriers Navy Newport News Shipbuilding Photos Refueling and Complex Overhaul Ships | Posted by Bill McMichael
We’ll let the picture tell the story: The carrier Theodore Roosevelt got underway Saturday for the first time in nearly two years when it left its dry dock at Newport News Shipbuilding and entered James River in southeast Virginia.
USS Theodore Roosevelt, assisted by tug boats, transits via the James River as the ship relocates from dry dock 11 to pier 3 at Newport News Shipbuilding May 21. //U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Sean Hurt
The move comes in the midst of the carrier’s ongoing 39-month refueling complex overhaul, which began in August 2009 at Newport News, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries. The work aims to add another 25 years of life to the nuclear-powered carrier, which was commissioned in 1986.
The carrier was pushed by five tugs during the very short, yet very slow, evolution. “It’s like watching a cloud move,” said Lt. Cmdr. Karen Eifert, the carrier’s public affairs officer. The short trip, however, required a lot of planning; the carrier’s quartermaster team had been training for the movement since March, according to a Navy news release.
“Without teamwork there is no way this evolution could have been completed successfully,” said Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class (SW/AW) Jesus Lopez, Deck Department’s 2nd division assistant leading petty officer, quoted in the news release. “This is my second time taking a ship out of dry dock and I know first-hand what it takes. It takes every sailor onboard TR working together and having each other’s back and completing their jobs together.”
Back where it belongs … in the water
May 20th, 2011 | Carriers Navy Newport News Shipbuilding Photos Refueling and Complex Overhaul Ships Shipyard Video | Posted by Bill McMichael
Twenty months in dry dock will end Saturday, May 21, when the carrier Theodore Roosevelt checks out of Dry Dock 11 at Newport News Shipbuilding (so nice to be able to use the simple name again, though we should note that the yard is a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries …) to a pierside location for the remainder of its 39-month refueling complex overhaul.
The Theodore Roosevelt's XO, Capt. Douglas C. Verissimo (left) stands by the ship's commanding officer, Capt. Billy Hart, to watch the initial stage of flooding the dry dock. // Navy photo by Mass Communications Seaman John Kotara
The hull actually got wet again beginning on May 16, when the shipyard flooded the dock for testing.
When the ship actually becomes fully afloat Saturday, the short trip to the pier will be TR’s first “underway” since it entered the shipyard in August 2009.
Since then, the Navy says the ship’s shafts, propellers, rudders, anchors, catapults and arresting gear machinery have been replaced or refurbished.
“Team Theodore Roosevelt has shown exemplary dedication in preparingthis ship for its return to the water,” said Capt. Billy Hart, TR’s commanding officer. “As we rebuild TR space by space and restore function to every system, sailors will shape the ship to serve the nation for 25 more years to come.”
So far, TR sailors have put in a ton of work. They’ve completed more than4,500 individual refurbishing and rehabilitation tasks and expended more than 1.15 million man-hours of labor, according to TR Chief Engineer Cmdr. Gunter Braun.
The crew is scheduled to move back aboard next year.