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From: terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Fleet and Budget
Message-ID: <1990Jul3.031924.6952@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 3 Jul 90 03:19:24 GMT
References: <1990Jun30.053848.4400@cbnews.att.com> <1990Jul2.031011.8780@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR
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From: terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker)
In article <1990Jul2.031011.8780@cbnews.att.com> apctrc!crx34!zrra07@uunet.UU.NET (Randall R. Appleton) writes:
>
>
>This seems pretty odd to me.  I understand that the Seawolf SSN is a better
>ship than the SkipJack or Lipscomb class SSN's, yet if I were in a money-
>saving mood I would wonder if this were a good deal.
>
>I guess my thinking is something like the following.  Assuming I have
>a fixed amount of money, I could either....
>1) Scrap many older ships; buy a few newer ships
>2) Keep many older ships.
>
>It seems pretty clear to me that alothoug quality is important,
>quatitity is not, nor are industrial support programs for the Electric Boat
>people.
>
>It could very well be there are things here I don't know about...
>
There are other factors to consider.  The cost of keeping a vessel in
commission is more than the cost of the hull.  There are platform
specific maintenance and training requirements. As a class gets older,
there are fewer vessels with similar equipment.  This is caused by
newer equipment getting added to the navy inventory, and unique
modifications made to only a few vessels.  For example the Brooke and
Garcia class frigates had pressurized fireboxes on their boilers.
these ships were the only such ships in the navy.  These boilers
required special training programs.  The engineering evaluation
process had to maitain separate qualifications for these boilers.
About the time a BT became good at working with these boilers, they
were transferred to vessels that didn't have them.  They obviously has
very high platform specific costs.  

Old submarines have simliar problems.  In addition there is the
availablity of room for future growth.Many older ships and subs simply
cannot accomodate the newer equipment (yes I am aware of the argument
that the new equipment may not be [good, necessary, ...]).  The
Spruance class DD is almost twice as large as previous DD types,
mainly because of the increase in size of the new version of the
SQS-26 sonar system.

In the csae of older sub classes, and the Seawolf class, these factors
rule against keeping theolder boats in service.  If for no other
reason than the effective life of their reactors is almost over.  The
disscussion has been to continue building modified versions of the Los
Angeles class, or to start the Seawolf class.  Considering that the
Los Angeles class has pretty much reached the limits of it expansion
this is a difficult choice.  

-- 
Terry Rooker
terryr@cse.ogi.edu