New Fast-Attack Nuclear Submarines to be Named Arizona and Oklahoma

[Wookie]

What are you smoking.

We used to call all three the never sails they were always broke. When they did manage to go out extremely noisy.

Why do you think only 3 were made then the Virginia class came out.

You mean like the Zumwalts?

 

[Jared0425]

What are you smoking.

We used to call all three the never sails they were always broke. When they did manage to go out extremely noisy.

Why do you think only 3 were made then the Virginia class came out.

Unclassified literature suggests that the Seawolf class is a much more capable attack boat than the Virginia's. The reactor systems and hull design is superior.

 

[AfterDark]

I am not surprised with the lack of detail, but I am curious what happened and more importantly, is the submarine repairable?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/craigh...ces-new-perils-investigators-and-a-dithering-

http://

Most recent report I've seen - This Is Our First Look At The USS Connecticut After Its Underwater Collision

Doesn't appear to be any visible damage, but hard to say for certain from a grainy sat pic. Certainly doesn't look nearly as bad as USS San Francisco (SSN-711) did back in 2005 after plowing into a seamount at high speed; the fact that the boat is in the water as opposed to drydock would seem to be a positive sign.

We'll probably never know but I recall a 688 sub that hit a bottom feature and ripped the lower stabilizer fin right off the sub! Broke the 4' diameter stock inside the fin!!! The fin is probably still on the ocean bottom. EB made a new, I was one of many that inspected various parts, during different stages of construction.

 

[AfterDark]

What are you smoking.

We used to call all three the never sails they were always broke. When they did manage to go out extremely noisy.

Why do you think only 3 were made then the Virginia class came out.

I know why. Because EB along with the Navy changed every major new construction method in sub building for the Seawolf class. F'd it up so bad the cost was outrageously expensive. The second one almost didn't get built because so much went wrong with the 1st one's construction.

However when the 1st one did go out for Alpha sea trials I was told it exceeded every design parameter including speed, it went so fast some hydrophones were ripped from the outside of the sub!

IMO that's why a Seawolf class was near China spying, not a Virginia class. The Virginia was designed as a littoral sub for costal defense. It is not as capable as a Seawolf but it is less costly.

 

[Wookie]

I know why. Because EB along with the Navy changed every major new construction method in sub building for the Seawolf class. F'd it up so bad the cost was outrageously expensive. The second one almost didn't get built because so much went wrong with the 1st one's construction.

However when the 1st one did go out for Alpha sea trials I was told is exceeded every design parameter including speed, it went so fast some hydrophones were ripped from the outside of the sub!

IMO that's why a Seawolf class was near China spying not a Virginia class. The Virginia was designed as a littoral sub for costal defense. It is not as capable as a Seawolf but it is less costly.

Again, like the Zumwalts. Outrageously expensive and a bitch to maintain. But exceed their specifications in every way as warfighters.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

You mean like the Zumwalts?

The decision to limit the class to three boats was made before the first hull even hit the water (some suggest the reason Connecticut "broke class" and went with a state name was that during the 1992 election Bill Clinton managed to secure the state's votes by promising to continue production of the class past Seawolf; at the time between the "Peace Dividend" and the initial overruns it was looking like it would be a one-off). The original plan in 1989 was to order 12 boats at a total cost of $33.6 billion in FY89 dollars; suffice to say that like the B-2 Spirit (over 130 aircraft originally planned, 21 built) and F-22 Raptor (~750 aircraft originally planned, 187 built) the Berlin Wall fell on it. Seawolf had a lot of hiccups during her 7-year build period which ran up the cost; among other things moving from HY80 steel in the earlier SSN classes to HY100 on Seawolf proved to be a pain. That said, part of the process of fixing the issues was developing a lot of the production techniques that would be used on the Virginia-class and made them (relatively) economical to produce. By every account I've seen the three subs in the class are considered the fleet's most capable boats.

Secretive Seawolf Submarine Appears In Europe For The Second Time In Two Months

Secretive Seawolf Submarine Makes Port Call In Europe For The Second Time In Two Months

www.thedrive.com

The Navy's Next Attack Submarine Will Be An “Apex Predator” According To Undersea Warfare Chief

The Navy’s future attack submarine will be more like the Seawolf class than the Virginia class, but it won’t come cheap.

www.thedrive.com

I have no current insight into modern sub ops aside from public sources and friends of friends, but from what I gather the Virginia-class is as quiet as the Seawolf-class and probably has similarly capable (or possibly better in certain environments) sonar, but is not a match in speed, payload, or diving depth. The USN in the 1990s was really casting around trying to justify itself; the Soviet Navy had just fallen apart, the PLAN was still in a fairly primitive state, and it seemed like the only way they were going to get procurement dollars was going to be focusing on shallow-water and land attack operations against Third World opposition. The Zumwalt-class and Littoral Combat Ships were born out of the same period, except as surface ships they were built with even less mind to open-ocean fights against a peer adversary.

 

[Wookie]

The decision to limit the class to three boats was made before the first hull even hit the water (some suggest the reason Connecticut "broke class" and went with a state name was that during the 1992 election Bill Clinton managed to secure the state's votes by promising to continue production of the class past Seawolf; at the time between the "Peace Dividend" and the initial overruns it was looking like it would be a one-off). The original plan in 1989 was to order 12 boats at a total cost of $33.6 billion in FY89 dollars; suffice to say that like the B-2 Spirit (over 130 aircraft originally planned, 21 built) and F-22 Raptor (~750 aircraft originally planned, 187 built) the Berlin Wall fell on it. Seawolf had a lot of hiccups during her 7-year build period which ran up the cost; among other things moving from HY80 steel in the earlier SSN classes to HY100 on Seawolf proved to be a pain. That said, part of the process of fixing the issues was developing a lot of the production techniques that would be used on the Virginia-class and made them (relatively) economical to produce. By every account I've seen the three subs in the class are considered the fleet's most capable boats.

Secretive Seawolf Submarine Appears In Europe For The Second Time In Two Months

Secretive Seawolf Submarine Makes Port Call In Europe For The Second Time In Two Months

www.thedrive.com

The Navy's Next Attack Submarine Will Be An “Apex Predator” According To Undersea Warfare Chief

The Navy’s future attack submarine will be more like the Seawolf class than the Virginia class, but it won’t come cheap.

www.thedrive.com

I have no current insight into modern sub ops aside from public sources and friends of friends, but from what I gather the Virginia-class is as quiet as the Seawolf-class and probably has similarly capable (or possibly better in certain environments) sonar, but is not a match in speed, payload, or diving depth. The USN in the 1990s was really casting around trying to justify itself; the Soviet Navy had just fallen apart, the PLAN was still in a fairly primitive state, and it seemed like the only way they were going to get procurement dollars was going to be focusing on shallow-water and land attack operations against Third World opposition. The Zumwalt-class and Littoral Combat Ships were born out of the same period, except as surface ships they were built with even less mind to open-ocean fights against a peer adversary.

Indeed, the LCS class seems to be a failed experiment for cost of maintenance and survivability. BIW and General Dynamics will build 5 more Arleigh Burke Gen 3 and then general dynamics will start the frigates, BIW will start building DDG (X).

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Indeed, the LCS class seems to be a failed experiment for cost of maintenance and survivability. BIW and General Dynamics will build 5 more Arleigh Burke Gen 3 and then general dynamics will start the frigates, BIW will start building DDG (X).

LCS definitely is a mess in terms of maintenance, but again I think that comes out of the era it was conceived in - they wanted it to do insane speeds (40+ knots) while having a shallow draft and at the time the Navy was really looking at paring down the crew numbers on warships (the idea being that if you can cut 15% of the crew requirement, on an aircraft carrier that's 1,000 sailors you don't have to pay career/retirement salary, benefits, room, and board for). The result was a complex engineering plant (the monohull Freedom-class seems to have gotten the worst of this, with several ships suffering combining gear casualties that the Navy would rather junk than fix) that depends on contractor maintenance rather than having enough bodies in the crew. Coupled with the mission module concept that looked really good on paper back in the late 90s/early 2000s but hasn't panned out (big problem being that if you buy multiple mission-specific modules for each ship, you get specialist equipment and crew that sits idle most of the time), they haven't lived up to their promise. That said, when the smoke clears the Navy is supposed to have somewhere around 30 of the things and they may as well get some use out of the hulls; the trimaran Independence-class ships as I recall have more helo deck space than a DDG and the Marines are looking at using them as mini-assault ships in the Pacific. Like a WWII destroyer escort or patrol frigate, you wouldn't put it on the front line but it can free up destroyers or frigates for frontline duty.

The new Constellation-class FFG class looks decent, but but we'll see where it shakes out in terms of price; last I saw they were targeting $554 millon per after the first hull which is a heck of a lot better than the billion-dollar figure I saw being thrown around a few years ago. Last I checked a new DDG class after the Flight III Arleigh Burke is still a notional design; they want to get hulls in the water in the 2030s but we'll see how that goes. The most recent keel-laying for the Flight III variant was DDG-128 and BIW and Ingalls are authorized up to DDG-139.

 

[formernuke]

Unless they totally tore up and rebuilt the seawolf's total junk. I'm surprised the Connecticut actually made it that far to begin with.

Most of the repairs we did were on two of three, the third is were we got the parts for the other two.

No sure about the Virginia class there was only one and it was very new when I left.

 

[Jared0425]

Indeed, the LCS class seems to be a failed experiment for cost of maintenance and survivability. BIW and General Dynamics will build 5 more Arleigh Burke Gen 3 and then general dynamics will start the frigates, BIW will start building DDG (X).

I was present at the commissioning ceremony for the USS Detroit and USS Little Rock about a year later. We were given private tours and I can say that the Chief Engineer on the Detroit was not happy with her performance. In fact, she did not make it out of the St Lawrence before the ice came in.

Here she is passing through Marine City 30 miles north of her namesake city.