The UK and Spain had to get help from Electric Boat on their subs as they no longer had the expertise to get the designs across the finish line. We may need the Finns to get us across the "Finnish Line" on this one. Might want to also just start over in a hurry. Of all items we may want to hand to a foreign yard, this might be the one.
The Navy ran the procurement under a joint office, and picked VT Halter, basically to give them work. The USCG is not totally innocent. Do a deep dive into OPC, which was awarded two years earlier and still doesn’t have the first ship. Also look at the Waterways Commerce Cutter, a Small Business set aside, was awarded to an Australian corporation that set up a sales office in Denver and got the award. Ugh!
I can't speak to the politics involved, it's beyond my experience and expertise. If indeed there were other considerations (like keeping VT Halter's shipyard open), I would hope (against experience) that someone clearly weighed the risk before putting their thumb on the scale.
> Note: I’m planning on covering the use of EQ-47 as its own topic.
I looked and didn't see anything that looked likely; Has this article come out yet? I'm kind of a materials nerd, so I'm interested. :D
As for the rest of it, sigh. The procurement and design process for US naval vessels is just broken. I presume the same is true of basically all other military equipment as well, but it's only the naval stuff I've brushed shoulders with.
It might help if anyone involved in any of these catastrophically unsuccessful programs faced any actual consequences for their utter failure to produce.
I still have a draft of the EQ-47 article. It started to get very detailed, and I wanted to be sure that I got the facts right. I reached a bit of a wall in my research in trying to find publicly available information about the alloys used in other modern icebreakers, so put it aside for a bit. Perhaps I'll re-work a bit on a more general basis in the coming weeks.
The UK and Spain had to get help from Electric Boat on their subs as they no longer had the expertise to get the designs across the finish line. We may need the Finns to get us across the "Finnish Line" on this one. Might want to also just start over in a hurry. Of all items we may want to hand to a foreign yard, this might be the one.
Stay tuned!
The Navy ran the procurement under a joint office, and picked VT Halter, basically to give them work. The USCG is not totally innocent. Do a deep dive into OPC, which was awarded two years earlier and still doesn’t have the first ship. Also look at the Waterways Commerce Cutter, a Small Business set aside, was awarded to an Australian corporation that set up a sales office in Denver and got the award. Ugh!
I can't speak to the politics involved, it's beyond my experience and expertise. If indeed there were other considerations (like keeping VT Halter's shipyard open), I would hope (against experience) that someone clearly weighed the risk before putting their thumb on the scale.
A perfect case study for the sequel to "How Big Things Get Done" by Bent Flyvbjerg. Great reporting!
If only there were ice in Israel or Ukraine.
> Note: I’m planning on covering the use of EQ-47 as its own topic.
I looked and didn't see anything that looked likely; Has this article come out yet? I'm kind of a materials nerd, so I'm interested. :D
As for the rest of it, sigh. The procurement and design process for US naval vessels is just broken. I presume the same is true of basically all other military equipment as well, but it's only the naval stuff I've brushed shoulders with.
It might help if anyone involved in any of these catastrophically unsuccessful programs faced any actual consequences for their utter failure to produce.
I still have a draft of the EQ-47 article. It started to get very detailed, and I wanted to be sure that I got the facts right. I reached a bit of a wall in my research in trying to find publicly available information about the alloys used in other modern icebreakers, so put it aside for a bit. Perhaps I'll re-work a bit on a more general basis in the coming weeks.
Sweet. Well, that sounds like it'll be pretty cool. :D