It isn't sexy; I know. It isn't as "fun" as talking about how unbuilt and untested platforms integrated through a unfunded and nondeployed "network" will "transform" all war in to rainbows and unicorns; I know.
Imagine if even a small percentage of what the dreamers and social planners bleed off the main funding line was diverted to making sure we get just a little better, just a little, on the fundamentals. You know, stuff like rust.
The total cost of corrosion for DoD is $22.5 billion, with $20.9 billion derived from maintenance records from the military services’ various databases and $1.6 billion from sources outside normal reporting.Dig in to the report in detail. Most of this is not Navy and as a matter of fact it appears that the Navy shipbuilding data is incomplete vs. the other services and warfare areas. Who knows - maybe we have classified rust as well.
We estimated corrosion as a percentage of maintenance for DoD to be 23.0 percent. This includes both infrastructure and facilities (15.1 percent) and weapon systems/equipment (24.0 percent). The corrosion cost for infrastructure and facilities is $1.8 billion, while the corrosion cost for weapon systems and equipment is $20.7 billion.
BTW - that is 2009 data. Just due to rust - an amount right between the total defense budgets of Canada and Turkey.
As a 2-time 1st LT, the sight of rust makes my skin crawl. I couldn't tell you how many times I wished I could get my hands on the guy who designed a bracket or angle iron that was not accessible to a needle gun. I did find that Stop Rust works well if the coat of rust is VERY light, and you prime over it the same day. Don't even get me started about engineering spaces. After failing OPPE, I had 90 of my 120 man Deck Department working 3 shifts in the main spaces doing painting and preservation for over 2 months. About once per week we had water start seeping in where a sailor was needle-gunning in the bilge. Each time the HTs would weld in a bucket patch. When I left that ship (4 years older than me, BTW) it had at least a dozen buckets in the bilge.
ReplyDeleteI think they should have rounded up the last 10 CHENGs and put them all in the Brig.
Transiting the D&S (Destroyer and submarine, if you haven't been there) piers at Norfolk, most of the ships were in a worse state of preservation than ships I'd seen in INACSHIPS (mothballs, for the non-Navy folks). The base paper even had an article extolling the work of tiger Teams in routine maintenance of ships in port. For those not familiar, Tiger Teams are scratch groups of people assembled to assist with a problem. In the past one only used Tiger Teams in the event of sudden, unplanned deployments, major material casualties or some profound screw-up on the part of the ship. Routine maintenance and such pre-scheduled events as INSURVs were not, normally, a reason to invoke them. Right sizing has worked out about as well as usual.
ReplyDeleteI also found the move, in the last 20 years, of simultaneously disestablishing SIMAs and decomissioning the tenders biazarre at best. At least somebody finally saw the light on the SIMAs.
I've still got a pair of skivvies with a very nice rust band on them from needle-gunning in the bilge with my coveralls half-masted.
ReplyDeleteI also remember us zone managers going around with the shipyard bilge guy and hearing him declare our bilges were fine, only to have the rust blossom like mushrooms once we left the yard.
None of this is helped by the fact that some genius seemed to put the CVN68 bilge wells at goram high points.
Oh, and the NAVSEA instruction that we weren't allowed to use eductors when the OWS was working even outside 50nm. The OWS broke a lot after that one.
If you can't be bothered to do it right, it will be right bothersome to do it agin. Ancient flyovercountry proverb.
ReplyDeletethere was this old gal in hong kong that had a bunch of side cleaners. her name was Mary Sou. they would clean scrape and paint the entire hull and upper works in a week for the garbage.
ReplyDeleteyou had to provide the paint because if she provided the paint your ship would leave a grey wake behind it when you went to sea.
C
You get a BZ from me for actually worrying about the parts that can let the water space enter the people space!!! Just think how few hours your Deck Div would have spent doing this if the CHENG, MPA and AUXO had worried about what's really important.
ReplyDeleteAnd sorry about the shapes of structural members. You can either have a flatbar which is easy to get around that's 12" hight and an inch thick and weighs 20 pds a foot or a 4"X4" T beam that weighs 7 pds a foot. It's all about cross-section modulus and weight. What you have to keep foremost in your minds is that if you kept up with the preservation in the tight places to start off with, you wouldn't be in the position of trying to get a needle gun at it now...
Hey navig8r...
ReplyDeleteWhaddayah think about the condition of this hangar deck?
It was the integrity of the -then pretty much new- armored hangar deck that made the difference in this ship floating or sinking...
Don't believe me though...you can read about it here.
Bet those blue shirts had no idea they were sweeping up their rotted away chances at surviving an attack on their ship.
Oh. I forgot.
That won't happen to today's Global Force For Good.
Yeah. Sure it won't.....
Oops...wrong War Damage Report...
ReplyDeleteIn the one linked above, you can read how interior aluminum is NOT your friend though.
Here is the one for the March '45 damage.
Oh...And the physics of metallurgy circa 1945 hasn't changed in the last six plus decades.
And no. Your really kewl multi-billion dollar TSCE<span> will not save you</span>.
I have also seen a more widespread use of tiger teams used for what should be routine material preservation. Crews are forcing themselves to address this as an emergency of sorts so I hope people start to examine how we got here. This blog and the sage group of comments routinely hammers away at the failings of lean manning, low priority political social engineering projects and some of the shoddy leadership decisions made by people who should (and do) know better.
ReplyDelete(for those who won't deign to open the links...)
ReplyDelete3-39 Although the armored hangar deck (two courses of 1-1/4-inch STS from frame 26 to frame 166) was ruptured in four places and extensively scarred and warped, it was very effective in protecting spaces below from serious damage.
McCain was called bldg 3 in pearl for many years.
ReplyDelete(hull number was three and it was a pier queen infront of the machine shop for years at a time. )
C
What is the number one enemy of the United State’s navies? Since 1861, it is Rust and Corrosion.
ReplyDeleteCoulda swore Roughead said it was lack of diversity. But maybe corrosion is second.
ReplyDelete<span>LOL!
ReplyDeleteBack In The Day when we -otherwise fuzzy headed- sailors used to actually do maintenance on "our" ships...we'd get done chipping down our assigned spaces and be all kinds of different colors!!!!</span>
Boy howdy. If CNO had said that he looked around at a room full of Admirals, and didn't see enough paint chips, one could be inclined to agree with him!!
ReplyDeleteHaha!
ReplyDeleteSomeday people will look back and see a fleet driven into the ground, crew sizes cut, maintenance and material condition standards, and a myriad of other problems and wonder what the hell senior leadership was doing besides being 'diverse' and using business school process improvements gone overboard!
Byron,
ReplyDeleteWhat happened to Red Lead? Where is the rust preventer paint now? F150? Red was too damaging to the environment never mind that it mostly worked. Maintenance not done in the main space? Seriously? Well I shouldn't laugh out loud. On first ship the CHENG, an LDO ex BT1 had the bilges lit from below the deck plates and you could eat off the bottom. There was condensate but no seawater and the level was under a couple inches. When I was CHENG I did the same thing and had the bilges in the main spaces lit from below.
Shaft alleys were tough. We liberally painted with red lead and chipped away until we started to get serious seepage. In a couple of places we did weld cofferdams. I don't know if that's a bucket or not.
The 1st LT who sent 90 guys 3 shifts for 2 months to paint and preserve the main spaces.....seriously? We could only ever do patch work since we always had one boiler lit off and two SSTG rolling but it would take engineering main space snipes about a week, tops, to preserve and paint a main space since they could not mask and paint. In a RAV it took about a week to mask a cold space and then a few days more to paint and preserve. On diesel ships I never saw a main space that was not in perfect condition. Commercial or Navy. My time on GT ships was amazing. The ship had no rust inside that any of us were aware of. We had running rust all over the outside but the inside was in pretty good order. Including the voids, fuel and water tanks. 325 man ship though. Perhaps that made a difference.
I got the cooks tour of the Iowa and Missouri from their Boilers Officers and MPAs. Amazing old ships which used the amazing old rust preventing red stuff. Bilges were in extraordinarily good shape. Yeah, the paint/primer does matter. A lot. It's a great pity that the navy bowed to pressure and banned seriuos rust preventing primers.
Oh, those well lit engine room bilges, primed with red, painted white. Anyone could tell at a glance if there was a sheen or rust or whatever.
just a harmless old guest.
Yeah, they will ask "how did they go from picture 1 to picture 2 in just two generations?"
ReplyDeleteAnd it will be a good question.
Those Sprucans and MK26 Ticos had so much more left in the tank....but I guess they weren't cute enough for a ppt brief. I have a great pic somewhere at home I took from years ago of a Sprucan nested next to a Tico nested next to a Burke, got to go dig that out!
ReplyDeleteTICO was listed in the base phone directory for 'Goula as BLDG47 at one point.
ReplyDeleteSURFOR just released a message addressing this very issue (TYCOM designates all afloat units for the 'DESIGNATION OF SHIPBOARD CORROSION CONTROL PROGRAM MANAGER' MSG DTG R 041436Z AUG 11)
ReplyDeleteFirst step of any 12 step program is to address the problem
If it's UNCLAS, could you send that my way?
ReplyDeleteI'll out of office for a day then can shoot it to you, it's UNCLAS.
ReplyDeleteThat would be the XO.
ReplyDelete