Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report | Hacker News Reader

Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report

politico.com

71 pointsjseliger63 comments

Worked in one. They are safety nightmares. They give safety bonuses if “nothing is reported” so nothing gets reported. Working conditions suck.. you spend your time begging for AC in a metal can in 100 degree heat (outside) on top of that the craziest thing was how subcontractors made money. I was in test so we wondered why certain runs of cable were way out of spec. Turns out subcontractors are paid by the foot to install cable so it would take the longest route through. Nuts. Never work there.

so why does the government/navy incentivize such bloated inefficiency, slop, and misuse of resources/time/money/energy?

PPBE, though now that's changing with the new Defense Resourcing System [0]

[0] - https://ppbereform.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Com...

It’s really difficult to impose efficiency on outside contractors without them cutting corners.

Congress doesn’t want the government to do anything in house.

my job has me managing multiple contractors/vendors at a time. you employ checks and balances, contractual obligations, smart project plans and requirements, and regular oversight.

how is this any different.

You see, these contractors tend to hire retired admirals and generals directly out of acquisitions positions and onto their boards. The contracts are written in ways that make it hard to punish shoddy work in a way that doesn't make the government side look bad too, so they tend to let slide what is kept out of sight. After all, if someone makes enough noise, then your contract may end up on the news or even worse, on the hill. If that happens, contracts get yanked, people get reassigned or lose their chance at a kushy spot on a board in a few years. It varies by contract and organizations, some are much better run than others and tend to deliver good quality.

It's so much money that all the best scammers can't resist, and so much bureaucracy/regulation that all the honest folks reach their limit and move on.

Wouldn't requiring that "cable runs" "meet spec" impose efficiency?

(for the definition of efficiency that is worth caring about anyway)

Any single issue can be addressed, but this is a meta issue.

There’s overhead to a more detailed specification. Creating it takes time and people need to read and understand it, then you need someone to inspect the results to keep someone honest. It remove flexibility, and even tiny changes require large updates to the specification when then need to be reviewed etc.

So simply adding details to a specification inherently reduces efficiency.

They don't. Op fabricated the story, as pretty much anyone in the Navy would confirm for you.

Source: several relatives in the navy working on ships, also have dealt with the contractors in question that run cable. Contractors absolutely do not get to determine the route cabling takes. There are endless reasons that would be insanity starting with basic security of the ship. Do you think random contractor X gets to loop cable through the reactor room because it'll make him a bit more money?

Yeah… I’ve heard a lot of stories about shipyard dysfunction from friends and relatives, but it’s nothing so exciting. It’s mostly poor planning that results in expensive waste and slowdowns.

None of that is accurate other than the fact it might be hot if the AC isn't running, and there are a lot of perfectly legitimate reasons why the AC might not be running.

We actively encourage reporting of all incidents, and cable runs are not determined by subcontractors trying to find the longest route. Cable runs are determined by drawings done by the Navy and they're installed in accordance with the drawings or people don't get paid. That's definitely one of the most absurd things I've ever heard.

I spent nine years on CVNs and many of those years in the yards installing, deinstalling, and maintaining equipment.

So, you worked with them on the same projects, and that's how you know they are lying about their own firsthand experience?

The paid by the foot thing is why I am doubtful of OP's story. There are drawings of where cables go in every aircraft and ship and building owned by DOD. Their accuracy with respect to reality, of course, is not always spectacular but these drawings existed before construction began. The subs routing cables arbitrarily through the ship is not likely to go unnoticed, and is better described as "sabotage" as it makes future maintenance and repairs nearly impossible.

"We're paid by the foot" is exactly the kind of snarky answer I'd expect someone to give if asked, "Why are you doing it that way?" when "that way" is the way the drawings lay out and the person asking isn't a supervisor or monitor of your work.

I would not be surprised if "paid by the foot" is correct. But paid by the foot of the cable installed to an external spec, with no ability to choose routing.

I helped install the combat systems on a CVN, so I can speak pretty authoritatively on how that process works. It's not different on different ships, that contracting process is very cookie cutter. Contractors don't get to choose how they want to run cables. Everything is carefully specified and if it's not followed nobody gets paid and they have to rip it out at their own expense.

There's a BBC Nova episode about the soviet union with an apocryphal story about train schedulers being evaluated on the amount of cargo shipped by distance so of course, freight was sent on the least efficient route to its destination. Amazing to see the exact same metric get gamed again.

German trains are evaluated on their timelines. If a train is more then an hour delayed passengers get their money back. So every train that runs into a high delayed is marked as "Cancelled" and if followed by an "Ersatzzug" that is curiously similar to the canceled train, because if the train is cancelled, the passengers don't get their money back if a Ersatz is followed promptly

It doesn't work that way. Travellers are entitled to 25% restitution if they arrive at their destination station between 1 and 2 hours later than planned, 50% reduction if delayed by more than 2 hours. It does not matter how they arrive there, either using their originally scheduled services or some alternative ("ersatz"), it is the time of arrival that matters.

BYW, this is not just in Germany, the rule goes for many countries in the EU.

Source: been there, done that (too) many times.

it's also what we do in Age of Empires 2 with our merchant carts.

I don't know if it was actually the most efficient strategy, but the thing I always liked to do in Transport Tycoon was find a coal mine etc in one corner of the map and a power station etc in the other one and build a line delivering between them - you got paid by the mile so when the train finally arrived the fee would be massive. Didn't realise that was actually an accurate (modulo apocryphal) element of the simulation :)

>But today, the version being built at a shipyard in Wisconsin shares only 15 percent commonality with the original design

How is this in any way acceptable? The procurement strategy was to buy an existing design in order to speed up the process. I would bet tradeoffs were made doing it that way instead of a clean sheet design. Now, after the fact they throw away the design and make something new? The Navy is likely to get the worst of both approaches doing it the way they are.

I'm also wondering how incentives / leadership structure were setup to make this "scope creep" possible.

> how incentives / leadership structure were setup to make this "scope creep" possible

It’s partly a function of use it or lose it funding. If the Navy gets budget, it’s incentivised to start spending it aggressively. Planning only burns so much cash, so there is a built-in incentive to jumpstart production alongside design and then patch everything with costly retrofits.

If the DRS is adopted the "use-it-or-lose-it" dichotomy should shift away due to a faster budget cycle

DRS?

It's the new proposal by the PPBE Reform Commission in the senate [0]

[0] - https://ppbereform.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Com...

They won’t even accept a simple audit of the budget.

Part of the reason is that the only way to get the acquisition of a major new weapons system approved by Congress is to drastically underestimate the cost. This gives Congresspeople political cover to vote aye. Everyone involved knows that costs will explode later, and by that time the program has become too big to fail. Everyone knows we need a new frigate and it's too late to start over from scratch without endangering national security.

The other reason is that this program is constantly chasing a moving target. The national security establishment is getting increasingly freaked out about the risk of a naval war with China. The original inexpensive European frigate design was largely designed for lower threat environments, mainly European coastal defense against Russia plus gunboat diplomacy in Africa and the Middle East. Now the US Navy needs something that can fight and survive against a superior force in the Western Pacific, so many of the combat systems are getting upgraded. And even with those upgrades it's still dangerously short of VLS cells. If Navy leadership knew in 2018 what they know now then they might have chosen a different approach.

Arguably, the root cause is just that the marginal economics of antiship missile defense are now unfavorable (historically the idea was that you would shoot down the planes carrying them and deny targeting, but that's not very realistic now).

That's not a problem against traditional opponents, but against an economic peer, it means you have great pressure in your quantity of antiship defences. The problem is that for every VLS cell the US can float, the Chinese can build 4-5 more missiles, so the problem will remain.

> The national security establishment is getting increasingly freaked out about the risk of a naval war with China.

I guess military professionals might know things we don’t, but doesn’t a hot war with China strike everyone else as utterly ridiculous? China’s economy is so inextricably intertwined with those of the rest of the world, it would make no sense for either side. Mutually assured economic destruction.

Yes, I know there are US hawk politicians constantly banging on the “China war” drums, but it seems so silly.

The point isn’t the war. The point is the impossibility of war. If China gets a radical leader, they might start a hot war with the US over Taiwan or something. But not if the US has them clearly outgunned. It’s as much in China’s interest as the US’s.

This. Being on equal-or-better footing acts as a deterrent. Same reason countries don't keep all of their warfare technologies secret, e.g. the DoD makes press releases about new technologies and will publish just enough specs for an adversary to figure out that it defeats some advantage they had thought they had.

All China has to do is not invade Taiwan and there won’t be a war.

Or West to accept that sometimes countries claim things back.

A war in Europe probably seemed equally ridiculous in 1914, and yet it happened. The concern is that Xi Jinping has purged all rivals and has assumed personal control of all key strategic decisions. We don't know what's really going on but he seems increasingly prone to miscalculations and unwise decisions. There are reasons to suspect that yes-men in the inner circle are telling him what he wants to hear and he is acting based on faulty data. Thus there is a very real risk regardless of how silly the situation might seem to an unbiased observer.

> A war in Europe probably seemed equally ridiculous in 1914

Europe leading up to WWI was not exactly a land of peace and harmony. There were a number of hot wars in the years leading up to WWI.

> Europe leading up to WWI was not exactly a land of peace and harmony

As opposed to the South China Sea? (Keep in mind, we’re comparing pre- and post-nuclear strategy.)

Like Russia and Ukraine.

War is mutually assured EVERYTHING destruction. It is an anomaly that WW2 resulted in winners and losers. WW1 is more typical; everyone loses in a war.

But that didn’t stop Napoleon from invading Russia or Hitler from invading the USSR. If you peel back all the rhetoric, they did it because they thought it would be a pushover and a quick victory.

It is tempting to go to war if all your yes men tell you you will be at the enemy’s capitol before winter.

the world changes. The contracts are written, ten years later the equipment available to put on the ship when it's actually being built changed three times already and the original contractor for half of it went out of business.

The fig leaf of an "existing design" is often used for new procurement because Congress is less likely to interfere with political considerations if it is viewed as an upgrade instead of a new system, under the theory that working within the constraints of an existing system limit flexibility with respect to Congressional politicking. Upgrades are also assumed to be cheaper than new designs, whether they are or not. The boundaries are fuzzy but there are many examples of new systems packaged as upgraded old systems for the sake of procurement efficiency.

Some fun examples.

The F-15E, F-18E "It's just an upgraded version", don't get me wrong they are good planes, but they are 20 percent larger than previous models it is a different plane, with different jigs, parts, testing, performance.

The tu-22m, A least the f-15e is the same shape as the f-15. "Yes boss, I understand we don't have the money to design a new bomber, we are just going to upgrade the design of one of our existing models" Proceeds to design a completely new plane and gives it the same designation of an existing one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-22M

Sometimes I wonder if US leadership, above the paygrade of naval leadership, assume that large surface combatants likely won't be survivable in a peer war. Then they'd do exactly what they're doing now... stall naval projects and pivot.

There's a lot of motivated naval lobbying decrying the state of US ship building, but we can see in semi that US leadership fine with pouring 100s of billions in urgent industrial policy. Maybe US ship building is actually that broken, but IMO that wouldn't stop the spigot from flowing. At some point, it's hard to differentiate if current state of naval procurement is incompetent by malice/design. It's hard to explain how little is being done.

The smart people seem to agree that submarine will be the most important naval vessels in the next war.

Submarine operations, including production, are extremely hush-hush.

Last I heard the US had two submarine fleets: the ones the Navy openly discusses, and the useful ones which are discussed in whispers.

I like to think the hush-hush subs are being built and deployed en masse.

Surface drones like the ones used in Ukraine are also not to be underestimated. Russia is struggling to combat these effectively, and even the US navy doesn’t have any specific technological answer to them at present.

I believe they’re actively testing microwave on at least one ship.

The US Navy might have secret programs for some small underwater combat drones but there are no "hush-hush subs". A modern SSN/SSBN costs billions of dollars and takes thousands of workers years to build. There's just no way to keep them secret. Some of the internal systems and capabilities are secret but the number of hulls is public knowledge.

Submarines also suffering delays, but current USN subs still have enough lead enough that SSNX isn't urgent as updating surface combatants as long as current sub fleet is replaced at relative parity. I don't think there's secret fleet, dry docks are easy to monitor. Maybe some XLUUVs, that can be built in an enclosed plant and shuttled around.

I think more trying to figure out naval unmanned platforms, to see what future fleet composition will be, i.e. navy Force Design 2045 wants 370 manned ships, 150 unmanned, maybe better off with 300 manned and 200 unmanned.

IMO it's all about the money being the main motivating factor. With government contracts more money should mean you can do a better job - which is why these contracts are so large. But there's a conflicting motivation to 'generate value for shareholders.' And this is further confounded by conflicts of interest in oversight. Congress not only receives large donations from the military industrial complex, but is also literally invested in these companies, and also stands to work as 'consultants', lobbyists, and and the like after leaving office for 7+ figure salaries. So you get a system where so long as money's getting spent, everybody's pretty happy - and the more, the merrier.

It seems that in the past there was more ideologically (rather than financially) motivated leadership of many industries. One can see this today by comparing companies like SpaceX with Boeing. SpaceX is an ideologically driven company with a goal of colonizing Mars, headed by an eccentric engineer. Boeing is a financially driven company headed by an accountant. One has already revolutionized the entire space industry multiple times and is sending costs plummeting. The other has now spent tens of billions of dollars and well over a decade trying to rework Space Shuttle era tech into a new overpriced rocket that's already effectively obsolete before it's even finished. [1] And Boeing is also one of the largest military industrial complex contractors.

Of course in 40 or 50 years, SpaceX will just be another Boeing. Maybe there's an argument for not perpetuating massive companies. They all seem to go from ideologically driven to MBA driven, yet their inertia and size makes it quite difficult to compete against them, resulting in an overall stagnation in technology and efficiency.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

> They all seem to go from ideologically driven to MBA driven

OT but, is there a public database of how many MBAs (as a %-age of workforce) are employed by various public companies ? It would be a helpful guide to companies to avoid.

if i had to bet money, there would be a high enough proportion in most large companies that you have to avoid every publicly traded company.

plus proportions are deceptive. you just need one in an accounting dept. with enough empowerment to cut cut cut. a couple of em in CFO and COO roles, for example.

Right, I shoulda specified proportion of upper mgmt.

Seems like there are only ever 4 root causes to govt/contractor failures:

1. miscommunication (not seen here)

2. training issues (check)

3. not spending enough money (check)

4. decisions made by previous leadership (only hinted at)

I just hope the results are worth it.

Pretty easy to see the eventual outcome of a system where everyone’s siphoning dollars from the government through lucrative contracts, so no one stirs the pot by calling out a subcontractor for being crooked. The bloat is systemic.

I have confidence our new era of businesses can basically bleed the middle class dry without any issue at all via “inflation” but I don’t think they’ll get away with doing it to the military in the long term.

W.W.R.D.?

What Would Rickover Do?

Ah, for the Good Old Days, when the USN operated plenty of its very own shipyards, and was actually capable of Get Sh*t Done...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy_Yard

But you can't stand in the way of Progress. Especially not if you're a Congressman, and need some fat donations to help finance your next reelection campaign. Just another way in which Capitalism is superior a way of doing everything, I guess...

> you can't stand in the way of Progress

It looks like we closed them after the end of the Cold War [1]. This wasn’t an idealistic pursuit, just banal cost cutting to disarm the nation.

Given increased tensions, it would make sense to reverse and begin re-integrating Navy owned and operated shipyards. (I’m also noticing that most of the shipyards were on the Atlantic, with the Washington shipyard being one of the few that’s been maintained [2].)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Base_Realignment_and_Cl...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_Naval_Shipyard

> This wasn’t an idealistic pursuit, just banal cost cutting to disarm the nation

Specifically, it was Clinton's SecDef Perry's Last Supper meeting with defense contractors in 93 that destroyed the entire base we had in the US [0]

"I asked [former SecDef] Les [Aspen] to call a meeting of the senior defense industry officials where we had a simple message to them: The first was that the budget was not only down, it was going to go down further. They should not look at it as a little dip here but as a new low plateau and adjust their plans accordingly, and in particular, if that meant they had too much capacity for the amount of business they were going to have, they should understand that we were not going to support that unused overhead. They had to do a scaling down and a consolidation to do that"

It was this Last Supper that caused Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, etc to drastically deteriorate.

I banged my head trying to tell everyone about how our current PPBE system is crap a decadeish ago but no one listened. Now we're doing too little too late.

[0] - https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-hi...

It's called a peace dividend

By the politicians, yes, it is.

But if you look at the older history - the U.S. did not shut down & sell off its navel shipyards in response many previous outbreaks of peace - after the Revolutionary War, or the War of 1812, or the Civil War, or the Spanish-American War, or WWI, or WWII, or the Korean War, or ...

But sadly, Wall Street was ascendant in the 90's, the proud old tradition of leading American families sending their sons server in the military was pretty well faded, and the Clinton Administration was a hot mess of noobs - convinced that the world was brand shiny new, that they were geniuses, and that smooth-talking Capitalists were perfectly competent and trustworthy.

Edit: Okay, yes, some of the shipyards were closed (or effectively so) in the very late 1960's and 1970's.

I know what this. I just haven’t figured out to make money on it yet.

Complexity crisis. It’s happening everywhere. Boeing didn’t turn into a bad engineering company, they put a noose on their own necks because they could. Navy is doing the same thing.

Everyone is. That is the real reason we have toasters and teapots on the internet.

The thing about toasters and teapots on the internet is that they give the people working on them a job to do. Because absent being filthy rich, if you don't work then you don't don't eat and you don't sleep inside.

To oversimplify, as a society we have decided that a person shouldn't be able to earn a living doing less than ~35-40 hours of work a week. So if there isn't enough valuable work to go around filling up everyone's week, then some people are gonna have to make up performative work.

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