Posted on 06/06/2012 3:20:37 PM PDT by moonshot925
I never said we were dependent on China. I said that some counterfit parts from China have managed to get into the supply chain.
When I was a submariner in the 1980’s. We would always hear rumors about the Soviets trying to sabotage us with counterfit parts. The rumors were not true. There were never any Soviet parts in our boats.
Like I said, the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2013 is going to fix the counterfit problem.
We make about 95% of our military hardware incuding parts.
Halon, or any other fire suppression system would be unworkable on a boat. There’s just too much stuff crammed inside for any kind of centralized system. You have to either stop a fire fast with a portable extinguisher or get at it with a fire hose.
And, BTW, any type of chemically based extinguishing agent requires a massive cleanup effort, especially on affected electrical components (of which there are many).
Thanks for the answer. Just plucking my thoughts since I know enough that fire is a great killer of subs and crews.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but surface ships can flood compartments to control fire, such as what could have happened with the Iowa main armament magazines, and obviously water in the sub is bad (except trim tanks and such) but could a sub close hatches in the affected area, and remove the oxygen thus snuffing the fire?
LOL. Nope of course there wasn’t counterfeit many parts in the 80’s. We made most of them here on our soil. The exodus to overseas manufacturing hadn’t fully gotten started and wiser leadership kept China out of places like Los Alamos and other DOD facilities.. Our leadership still had some USA national security comes first principles. After January 1989 however that policy and those principles dropped like a rock. Both sides of the two parties sold out. We had presidents in office who had close family with vested interest in doing business in China
The shipyards have been notorious since the beginning of time for being insufferable slobs who leave their messes behind for the Navy to clean up. This is their way of saying, “See what happens when you make us clean up our messes?”
I can’t speak with much authority on shipboard parts, but for aircraft, the big problem is DLA (Defense Logistics Agency). DoD organizations have typically managed parts on their own platforms. In recent years, the aircraft program offices have been accused of over-spending on parts and being in bed with the OEMs. The “solution”, as determined by the bean-counters, was to transfer logistics management to DLA.
The problem is that DLA will buy parts from anybody. Their QA is shoddy at best. Every decision they make is based on bottom-line price. To DLA, buying avionics and landing gear sets is no different than buying staplers and ballpoint pens. To them, it’s just a part number and NSN on a piece of paper.
To DLA, the conventional contracting process is inconvenient for them. The QA and contracting requirements are a lot more lax for surplus purchases. So DLA is buying all kinds of surplus that are older than dirt. In a lot of cases, they’re parts that were found bad on previous contracts. The suppliers didn’t throw them away, they sat on them for 10-15 years knowing that they could sell them to the govt. on surplus because record-keeping circa 1995 was not good at all. The govt. did nearly everything on paper up until about 2003, so finding evidence of bad quality and records of contracts that were terminated for default are nearly impossible, and DLA doesn’t care anyway. They’ll buy anybody’s garbage. The only thing they care about is getting the task off their desk. What’s going on is really a travesty. I’d be surprised if DLA WASN’T doing the same thing to the Navy.
Did you hear about this? The sub USS Miami caught fire in the shipyard and may very possibly be scrapped.
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