As someone who has worked in both commercial ship and U.S. defense ship design and construction for over 20 years, this is one of the most absurd and uninformed write-ups I've ever seen.
VLCC's (an example of a commercial ship or "black hulls") are designed to minimize cost. They use the cheapest steel, burn the cheapest fuel - it's basically a metal bucket with a motor. LPD's (a military vessel (more specifically an amphib) or "grey hull") is constructed of higher end materials to protect itself and it's crew in peace time and it war.
Just to give you an example of where some of that cost comes from - LPD's have flight decks with night vision compatible visual landing aids so pilots can land at night concurrent with LCACs bing loaded into the well deck. The flight deck can handle the intense structural heat loading of V-22 aircraft. They have massive hangars to store and maintain aircraft, with precision gantry cranes to do delicate aircraft parts replacement aboard the ship. There is an ASSIST RAST track that does not deteriorate over time and jeopardize heavy weather aircraft landings. There is a state of the art help control station... ALL OF THIS is shock qualified to survive blasts.
The list goes on and on - combat systems, command and control, freshwater generation and sewage systems for a massive crew (compared to a ~20 person merchant ship), a propulsion and steering system with much higher installed power and power density than anything anyone would put on a commercial ship due to stringent speed and maneuvering requirements.
All of this is very difficult to integrate into a design and equally difficult to build.
If you think you're going to design and build a grey hull at the same displacement cost (steel weight) as a grey hull, you are grossly mistaken. You're comparing a custom Ferrari to a bare bones van and saying "hey, this can weighs more and costs way less. Gee, I need to write a paper to let everyone know that Ferraris are way over priced."
I don't think anyone expects price parity -- but I'd expect at least basic features to work?
I don't think anyone would complain if flight deck failed, or new combat systems failed to perform to spec. Instead, report mentions what looks like basic features -- "deficiencies [..] major enough [to] compromise watertight integrity"? "Could not move under own power"?
When one is paying for a Ferarri that's a lot of money.. but at least when the vehicle arrives, it can move under its own power and does not break down 2 month after.
> I don't think anyone expects price parity -- but I'd expect at least basic features to work?
I only worked on the LPD platform for a brief period of time, but as anyone in industry knows, the LPD-17 Class does indeed "work" - far above and beyond the basic propulsion and maneuvering.
>I don't think anyone would complain if flight deck failed, or new combat systems failed to perform to spec.
Tell that to the family of the sailor who was crushed by a rotating gun turret while checking his phone because an audible alarm failed to sound.
Tell that to the crew of the adjacent ship during a training excersize when the gun barrel flips 180 degrees due to an erroneous sign-flip in the software.
Tell that to the tax payers who have to pay for new flight deck non-skid and deck repair after the V-22 exhaust burns the old non-skid off and warps the deck steel (hopefully the FOD from the nonskid didn't get ingested into the aircraft intakes and cause a crash killing the crew)
It's these kinds of uninformed statements that are dangerous to the very people trying to defend their country because average citizens don't take the time (and honestly don't have the time) to look into the true reason for defense costs. Instead they get their information from non-peer-reviewed papers by authors who make horrendous summations on topics they know nothing about.
Yes, spending needs to be monitored and checked thrice, but the truth is much more complex than can be summed up two pages (not that this write-up even scratched the surface of the truth).
This write-up is more than ignorant, it's dangerous because is spreads easy to digest and believe falsehoods that seep into the minds of the public. It may as well have been written by Trump himself (I'm a patriot and respect the POTUS office, but I still think the person in office is horrifying, even if he does want to increase the naval fleet size, which is needed to protect the country).
And who should we tell when the hull fails its most basic function (to keep water outside the ship)?
Attempting to repeatedly change the subject by talking about night-vision compatible this-or-that and various gun turret failures only makes your argument look weak. Don't assume that we're stupid just because we aren't actively serving in the military.
> This write-up is more than ignorant, it's dangerous because is spreads easy to digest and believe falsehoods that seep into the minds of the public.
Ok, I'm open to persuasion. Can you identify one or two falsehoods in the pdf that is the subject of this thread?
Thus far, I see a lot of accounts attempting to change the subject, a lot of complaining that the author is unfair, and insinuations that we civvies are too stupid to understand such complex military issues. But no actual "The author said X, and here's a link to show he's wrong."
That makes me think the author probably isn't wrong.
"I am quite confident the price would come in under 50 million dollars, quite possibly well-under."
The outfitting on a LPD and any other Navy vessel is the majority of the cost. There is over 50m USD worth of radar processing equipment in a single space on an LPD. Chocks, non-skid, RAST, extensive welding well beyond a VLCC, and more. The alignment work alone on the combat systems equipment, i.e. directors, CIWS, nulka, SRBOC, slq-32, spq-9b, HGHS, DTS, etc., is over 500k USD. That's just ALIGNING the foundations and equipment. It's not the actual equipment or foundations. The NOMEX panels in every space is incredibly expensive. That's something you would never find on a VLCC. Even if you used non-mil-spec cables you'd have miles and miles and miles more cable on a LPD than a VLCC.
The article is correct. You could build a ship to carry 700 marines, helicopters, and support vehicles for much cheaper. You would never be able to have it move with the speed of a LPD, have the combat systems equipment outfitted, and you'd never have it with any level of defense.
I have been on this exact ship many, many times. I previously commented that it just left BAE NSR within the last 6 months. It just finished sea trials at NAVSTA NFK. The LPD-class has been riddled with problems, but it's a totally unfair to compare it to a basic "off-the-shelf" VLCC.
I'm surprised to see so many naval architects and engineers in this thread. You have to remember that none of us wake up every day to do a poor job. These ships are a miracle of modern engineering.
> And who should we tell when the hull fails its most basic function (to keep water outside the ship)?
Yes, all of the crew member families who will die in the sinking. Did an LPD-17 class ship sink that I'm not aware of?
> Attempting to repeatedly change the subject by talking about night-vision compatible this-or-that and various gun turret failures only makes your argument look weak. Don't assume that we're stupid just because we aren't actively serving in the military.
I'm not pointing out these items to change the subject of the conversation, rather it IS the very point of the conversation. Every single function, system/equipment, certification/qualification that the author neglected to account for is a critical missing part of the author's alleged proof that warships are vastly overpriced based on acquisition costs of a commercial ship that has none of those features.
> Thus far, I see a lot of accounts attempting to change the subject, a lot of complaining that the author is unfair, and insinuations that we civvies are too stupid to understand such complex military issues. But no actual "The author said X, and here's a link to show he's wrong."
OK, I'll give an example. The MK46 gun weapon system costs $25.6M to buy [1]. The shipyard then needs to install and checkout the system, conservatively $300K (crane time, specialize labor, custom cables to be built and pulled, foundation prep and accurate alignment, power, etc.). A VLCC's cost for this, $0. Where was this accounted for in the author's "comparison"? Nowhere.
Now, it would take a long time to do a proper cost breakdown, but as I tried to state earlier, imaging adding up the costs of all the other mission essential features on LPD's that aren't on VLCC's including (just as a sampling of basic examples):
- much larger engines (much higher cost) for the ships displacement compared VLCCs.
-much larger (more expensive) sewage treatment, HVAC, auxiliary electric power (again larger more expensive generators) for all those extra berthing spaces & C5ISR systems.
-continue this list for ALL the hardware deltas between the ships, then factor in the cost of rigorous qualification (e.g. aviation certification, shock qualification, EMI qualification, etc.) to ensure the ship survives in war and peacetime that are drastically different from anything a VLCC would see.
I challenge the author to breakdown all of these and other special warship costs up, then do your comparison.
Again, the omission of these items IS the problem with the write-up.
I'm certainly not saying 'civies' are stupid. If that's how it came across, I apologise. I'm saying that the issue is much more complex than the treatment afforded by the author's 'bar napkin' math. I realize that most people have no idea about these details similar to those I cite above - why they exist and the associated costs of each. It's taken me a career to gain that insight.
That's why the paper incenses me so. Because the author is taking advantage of that lack of awareness of the public, and steep barrier to acquiring that knowledge, to make a generalization about ship acquisition costs based on incorrect (i.e. intentionally or unintentionally omitted) data. For what end, I have no idea, but I do know the misinformation driving public perception is harmful.
A peer review in a known industry journal (e.g. SNAME, ASME, ASNE) would have quickly dismissed this write-up as pure hogwash.
VLCC's (an example of a commercial ship or "black hulls") are designed to minimize cost. They use the cheapest steel, burn the cheapest fuel - it's basically a metal bucket with a motor. LPD's (a military vessel (more specifically an amphib) or "grey hull") is constructed of higher end materials to protect itself and it's crew in peace time and it war.
Just to give you an example of where some of that cost comes from - LPD's have flight decks with night vision compatible visual landing aids so pilots can land at night concurrent with LCACs bing loaded into the well deck. The flight deck can handle the intense structural heat loading of V-22 aircraft. They have massive hangars to store and maintain aircraft, with precision gantry cranes to do delicate aircraft parts replacement aboard the ship. There is an ASSIST RAST track that does not deteriorate over time and jeopardize heavy weather aircraft landings. There is a state of the art help control station... ALL OF THIS is shock qualified to survive blasts.
The list goes on and on - combat systems, command and control, freshwater generation and sewage systems for a massive crew (compared to a ~20 person merchant ship), a propulsion and steering system with much higher installed power and power density than anything anyone would put on a commercial ship due to stringent speed and maneuvering requirements.
All of this is very difficult to integrate into a design and equally difficult to build.
If you think you're going to design and build a grey hull at the same displacement cost (steel weight) as a grey hull, you are grossly mistaken. You're comparing a custom Ferrari to a bare bones van and saying "hey, this can weighs more and costs way less. Gee, I need to write a paper to let everyone know that Ferraris are way over priced."
Ding dong.