Hey, isn't this the GA construction plan?

"In the Age of Transformationalism we turned “Build a Little, Test a Little, Learn a Lot” on its head in to “Build a Lot, Test Nothing, Pray a Lot.” That was the largest sin; we believed that we were so smart and our force of will so strong, that we could ignore decades of shipbuilding and program development lessons.

"Technology risk? That was for people with negative energy. We piled layers of unproven – or even unbuilt – weapons, manning concepts, personnel policy, engineering plants, sensors with cross-dependencies, on top of each other. Playing long odds that there wouldn’t be cascading technology failures and tempting the programmatic gods, we just assumed that those in the PCS cycles that followed would find the money and “make it work.”

"Budget risk? We assumed that, unlike all other programs, that these would stay on budget – and if they didn’t – that Congress would just find more money. Regardless, we assumed that the money unicorn would prance on by, and from the skiddles, a 300+ fleet would emerge. Of course, none of that happened – but it was predicted over a decade ago, but to deaf ears.

"Manning? People are expensive, so we will find people who will tell us that they know how habitability and damage control can be made anew – that one person can do 36 hrs of work in 18 hrs. How? Because we told them we wanted it, and the PPT said so.

"We decided that desire and personality would trump experience and engineering. Those who brought up problems were reassigned until the table was full of people who would make the approved vision flesh. Of course it would all work, no one told decision makers it wouldn’t.

"Most know this story, but it bears repeating as there is still an afterglow in the decay of what is left of the Age of Transformationalism. Part of that is that we suffer from a cadre that does not understand the basics of economics. One point; we still do not understand the economic concept of sunk cost."

http://blog.usni.org/2015/09/23/ddg-100 ... ationalism

What are you talking about, kzt?

Did you mean to put this into Honorverse,
or into Free Range Topics?

HTM

kzt wrote:"In the Age of Transformationalism we turned “Build a Little, Test a Little, Learn a Lot” on its head in to “Build a Lot, Test Nothing, Pray a Lot.” That was the largest sin; we believed that we were so smart and our force of will so strong, that we could ignore decades of shipbuilding and program development lessons.

"Technology risk? That was for people with negative energy. We piled layers of unproven – or even unbuilt – weapons, manning concepts, personnel policy, engineering plants, sensors with cross-dependencies, on top of each other. Playing long odds that there wouldn’t be cascading technology failures and tempting the programmatic gods, we just assumed that those in the PCS cycles that followed would find the money and “make it work.”

"Budget risk? We assumed that, unlike all other programs, that these would stay on budget – and if they didn’t – that Congress would just find more money. Regardless, we assumed that the money unicorn would prance on by, and from the skiddles, a 300+ fleet would emerge. Of course, none of that happened – but it was predicted over a decade ago, but to deaf ears.

"Manning? People are expensive, so we will find people who will tell us that they know how habitability and damage control can be made anew – that one person can do 36 hrs of work in 18 hrs. How? Because we told them we wanted it, and the PPT said so.

"We decided that desire and personality would trump experience and engineering. Those who brought up problems were reassigned until the table was full of people who would make the approved vision flesh. Of course it would all work, no one told decision makers it wouldn’t.

"Most know this story, but it bears repeating as there is still an afterglow in the decay of what is left of the Age of Transformationalism. Part of that is that we suffer from a cadre that does not understand the basics of economics. One point; we still do not understand the economic concept of sunk cost."

http://blog.usni.org/2015/09/23/ddg-100 ... ationalism

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:What are you talking about, kzt?

Did you mean to put this into Honorverse,
or into Free Range Topics?

HTM

I think kzt is commenting, as often, on the jarring ease with which things get built in the Honorverse - in particular, on the recovery of construction after the Janacek Admiralty and after Oyster Bay.

Yup. There never have any rushed programs where they cut out the boring slow testing part that, when the newly built factory is cranking out your products, you find that things don't quite work as the spec sheet says.

kzt wrote:Yup. There never have any rushed programs where they cut out the boring slow testing part that, when the newly built factory is cranking out your products, you find that things don't quite work as the spec sheet says.

Actually, I always thought the same thing. My first thought on the subject came when I was reading about working up trials of new ships. We never hear of a ship just catastrophically failing or completely being sent back. Although, Honor was late joining (was it Sarnow's order of battle) because of it? That CO commented on how frequent failures happened.

And there was the time when Paul Tankersley repaired something on Honor's ship (a missed hairline fracture in an engine component?) because of, what I thought, these crazy construction times.

But kzt, you're fussing about Manticoran build times. You should be questioning Grayson ships. Why do those things work?

It's like what my father called Japanese electronics in the early 70's - M&M devices. Melt in your hand not in the kilns.

cthia wrote:

kzt wrote:Yup. There never have any rushed programs where they cut out the boring slow testing part that, when the newly built factory is cranking out your products, you find that things don't quite work as the spec sheet says.

Actually, I always thought the same thing. My first thought on the subject came when I was reading about working up trials of new ships. We never hear of a ship just catastrophically failing or completely being sent back. Although, Honor was late joining (was it Sarnow's order of battle) because of it? That CO commented on how frequent failures happened.

And there was the time when Paul Tankersley repaired something on Honor's ship (a missed hairline fracture in an engine component?) because of, what I thought, these crazy construction times.

But kzt, you're fussing about Manticoran build times. You should be questioning Grayson ships. Why do those things work?

It's like what my father called Japanese electronics in the early 70's - M&M devices. Melt in your hand not in the kilns.

This type of developmental issues are mentioned in SITS and Jayne's, but not in the books (there is some mention in HoS) and such items were described as having taken place during the initial buildup (1850-1905).

Other than the Apollo hiccup, Everything in the 2nd war mass build doesn't seem to have all the little issues we would expect. I know David's had technicians on-ship to address issues when ships were rushed to the front lines, but most of the issue seem to be much more worked out. Either that or any issues like bad reactors are just glossed over in order to get more ships to the front.

I don't think the RMN has been taken over by the loonies quite yet.

Remember that White Haven's 'Traditionalists' had been raising the same objections you are about all the new technologies being pushed out by the 'Jeune Ecole' types.

The RMN does use test-bed platforms to see how new technology performs in practice before mass production as well.

3 examples (Honor had the 'pleasure' of skippering two of them)
1. Fearless (CL)
2. Wayfarer (Q)
3. Nike (BCL)

Fearless and Nikes were sort of 'one-off' units (until Nike was proven, at least).
Warfarer was one of four, but its shortcomings were recognised and it wasn't sent into a 'real' warzone.

I think the Graysons are a little bit keener at cranking out new untested designs, but so far it has worked out okay with the Courvoisier II's and Katanas.

When you are at war you will do things in building your war material that you would never do in peace time. Some of the things will be good ideas and some will be bad.

One thing we do not know is how much of a Honorverse warship is off the shelf well understood technologies. That would have a great effect on testing and construction times needed.

Manticore before the Yawata Strike had the best and most efficient ship construction crews in human space. I would suspect that design teams often included people experienced in the actual construction of ships to help prevent problems in the design before they started construction. This would also help shorten testing and construction times.

It should also be mentioned that none of the ships being crash built are new designs, all are well estabished with existing production lines which had the Janacek downtime to work out most of the design and component kinks.

Once you have built 5 in a year during war time you either are quite good at it or have been replaced with ruthless effeciency (just ask the brewster aircraft excs from WW2)

Also the volume of production makes them more like large aircraft today (C17s, Boeings, airbusses etc) rather than developmental designs such as the F35 or the LCS. Along with this is a greater degree of design focus. Most of the current crop of ships have a clear specific function and role and are built to that rather than being modular abortions which have to please every beurocratic infighting special interest group. We are not in the F35/Bradley/Littoral combat ship territory here.

I would add to pnakasone and silverwalls' congent comments that the computer modeling and testing has probably improved somewhat in the two millenia since the Diaspora. I mean, one reason we (and others) are doing without nuclear testing is that computer programs can model the systems and results without making the things go BOOM.

I suspect that any changes to the on-board systems have been modeled and run through literally hundreds of simulations, each more testing and data-producing than actual flight, using computer analysis of a depth that we can not yet aspire to.

Just my two cents...which may be devalued as discussion goes along.