US Navy's $700 Million Mine-drone Won't Hunt (cnn.com) 92
New submitter ripvlan writes: CNN reports that a $700 million mine hunting system created by Lockheed Martin doesn't perform as expected. From the article: "The Remote Minehunting System, or RMS, was developed for the Navy's new littoral combat ship. But the Defense Department's Office of Operational Test & Evaluation says the drone hunting technology was unable to consistently identify and destroy underwater explosives during tests dating back to September 2014. ... In theory, the drone is deployed from the LCS towing sonar detection into suspected underwater minefields. The drone should then identify mines and communicate information about their whereabouts to the ship in real time so the explosives can be avoided or destroyed. But the program has come under fire from lawmakers after a series of testing failures, including continued performance issues and "RMS mission package integration challenges," according to the Defense Department's Office of Operational Test & Evaluation's 2014 annual report."
RMS (Score:5, Funny)
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If they'd done the development at Berkeley, it wouldn't have had such problems. But then anyone could come along, take the design, and add to it without backporting to the US Navy.
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Is backporting done in the US Navy, or is it still "don't ask, don't tell"...?
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I knew this article would have RMS supporters come out of the woodwork. Always remember, you get what you pay for. Except for when you got something for free. Or when you pay for something but don't get it.
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I always knew it: WW3's outcome will be determined by Emacs......or vi.
identify AND destroy (Score:2)
can't find mines? (Score:3)
It can't find mines for the LCS? That's littorally useless.
eh heh heh heh.
Anyway I wish I could charge $700e6 for a project that doesn't work.
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like a tungsten aerostat (Score:3)
. race to the bottom.
I see what you did there...
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I think they underestimated the task at hand by a long shot. Question is, do they have remaining R&D money?
I suspect the testing is what has turned out to be the most difficult and expensive part of the project.
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Military contracting 101:
You don't charge 700e6 for a project that doesn't work, you charge $700e6 for a project that just need $300e6-$700e6 more to actually work.
Re: can't find mines? (Score:1)
Question (Score:4, Interesting)
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But they have an army of lawyers who know how to blame it on post-contract customer changes, which probably has some truth to it, at least enough to tie it up in court long enough for short-term-focused politicians to forget about it and dump it on the next generation. Rinse, repeat...
Re:Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, I've ben a victim of Navy acquisitions (we foolishly bet that they could build a radar). Their entire program is post-contract customer changes, because their initial requirements docs and RFP were composed of science fiction, typographic errors, and a rejection of physics. They got particularly bent out of shape when (Northrop in this case) built a 90% solution of what they spec'ed, though it was obvious to everyone that what they spec'ed could not possibly fit in the airplane. I thought the contractors were slimy shitbags until I realized that it's really a "fuck you fee" for dealing with the financial fallout from the military's shenanigans. There's a reason that the "next generation bomber" is being built from "existing capability" but bid out of the "Rapid Capabilities Office" which has an exemption from acquisitions law so that it can buy and field high risk new technology.
Re:Post-Contract Customer Changes (Score:1)
The reason the initial requirements docs and RFP are inadequate is because the Government (not just the Navy; everybody's guilty of this) is trying to buy capabilities they don't already have and don't know how to completely describe. You should apply Hanlon's razor [wikipedia.org] to your opinion of "shenanigans".
As the system develops, the contractors will need to choose design details which weren't spelled out in the spec. The contractor preference is more-or-less technically reasonable (depending on the experience leve
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Is that 700 mil taxpayer money? If so, here is a solution: Don't pay the contractor a penny until they produce a working production sample. Then buy them for the original contacted price, not any additional "cost overruns"
Is that a quick and effective solution you have for a problem within our government?
If so, here is a solution:
Hold your breath. If you find you pass out before the solution comes along, then you'll realize "quick and effective" have no place in government.
Re:Question (Score:4, Funny)
Yes because we do so well in private industry...
Here's a hint:
'No results found for "on time and budget sap delivery"' :)
Min
Get a new batter already (Score:1)
Didn't Lockheed-Martin also make the F-35, another dud? They must be Too Big To Fail or something.
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And it will cost jillions to correct the problems.
Military and "security" projects are the only "big gov't jobs programs" supported by Republicans. (Except they still benefit mostly the 1%.) Both parties are socialists, but disguise it differently.
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Ah, but it keeps corporate profits up, which is the only thing which matters.
The 'military industrial complex' has made vast sums of money over promising and under delivering.
Why stop now?
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As much as I don't like how the F-35 program has been managed... Trying to build an aircraft that is all things to all of the services was a really bad idea, but having common parts and support equipment will be a big advantage eventually which will someday help make up for the botched development effort.
The F35 isn't really that bad, considering. Yes it's behind schedule and over budget by quite a margin, but I think it has real possibilities and is well on it's way to realize much of it's expected capabi
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But being "good enough" at any specific task could backfire if our military enemies play their cards right. Russia and China could, for example, agree to optimize their planes for specific types of roles and buy from each othe
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True.. However, the F35 isn't the only game in town for each of the roles it is designed for.
What the pentagon has done is to acquire purpose built, best in class, air superiority fighter in the F-22. These aircraft are what will take on the Chinese and Russian fighters and establish air superiority long before the F-35 starts doing it's business. So where the F-35 might not have a good ratio with the top of the line offerings from China or Russia, that's not a big issue, it can hold it's own with what's
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F22 is an "Air superiority" fighter, which means it's purpose is to clear the skies of hostile aircraft. This it can do in spades, before the hostiles even know they are targeted, they are dead. Doing this doesn't require having lots of missiles, it requires being effective in an engagement. and returning to do it again, over and over until the adversary cannot continue to sustain the losses. It takes time.
However, the F22 isn't the only asset we'd bring to a conflict over Taiwan. F18's, F16's, and even F
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> The F35 isn't really that bad, considering.
Considering what?
Considering it's not a jack of all trades (it's not even a master of one; it's a master of none); it cannot match the capabilities of any one single aircraft it was designed to replace. it does not meet the performance envelope, efficiency, or capacity of any of the older units that have been phased out or are slated to be phased out in favor of the F-35.
They really ought to fix the remaining issues with the F-22, put that into production an
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The F35 was INTENDED to be this way. It's good enough to do the jobs it's been handed. Does it improve on any purpose build platform? No, but it wasn't intended to. The F35 was INTENDED to be cheaper and advance some important needs as seen by the pentagon. It compares favorably to any of the platforms it's intended to replace, but it was not expected to always exceed the capabilities of any single platform. It was supposed to be the utility platform of choice, durable, flexible and less expensive to op
Sigh (Score:3)
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Funny)
Navy should use more low tech technology... (Score:2)
During the Reagan Administration, the Navy used oil tankers to protect their ships from Iranian mines in the Persian Gulf. Which was ironic considering that the Navy was supposed to be protecting the oil tankers. Minesweepers were hard to find back then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Will [wikipedia.org]
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Can we have a link to a credible site? I mean, CNN's one step above Fox News, but only barely in credibility.
Your liberal bias is showing....
If you carefully weed out commentary from hard news Fox News is no more credible than CNN. Both have their biased ax grinding opinions that often get confused as being facts. Both report the news they deem worthy of coverage and are beholden to their advertisers to attract the largest audience they can. Both report "news" accurately and both present content that is opinion and commentary about the news with their own brand of bias.
Where they *really* differ is in audience
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Especially if you measure by the pound.
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Where they *really* differ is in audience size and rate of change. CNN is in a long term down hill slide which has been going on for more than a decade. Fox is generally been able to attract a larger and larger audience in that same time frame. Fox is being successful, CNN is dying.
Meanwhile, in the Real World, where we can look at charts of actual numbers we see that this is nonsense [journalism.org]. Fox News viewership peaked in 2009 and has been dropping ever since. CNN has followed a similar downward trend (it peaked a year earlier in 2008) but has maintained a steady market share for several years, its drop merely paralleling Fox's decline.
It is interesting that the common liberal refrain is that Fox News is lying about stuff while CNN isn't. Or the alternate perspective that Fox News is unbiased and CNN is. Reality is BOTH are biased in their own ways, and if anything Fox is more creditable given that it's audience is growing while CNN's is in decline ...
If only we didn't have studies like this one [businessinsider.com] that shows that Fox "News" viewers score below those with no information while CNN viewers score above this infor
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it's not exactly nonsense to him; he just went into a weird trauma-induced dissociative fugue when the black muslim democrat got elected, and still thinks it's 2007.
Cheaper to use existing technology? (Score:2)
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Lets throw tons of explosives and carpet bomb an area that may or may not have mines. The MCLC works because it it creates narrow paths through minefields that can be followed by vehicles. These paths need to be about 20 feet wide. For a ship that path would need to be much wider. MCLC also works by over pressure triggering pressure sensitive mines. It would have no effect on acoustic or magnetic triggered mines.
No Surprise There (Score:2)
Actually, it performs EXACTLY as I would have expected. :)
Best way to fix this: (Score:1)
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Throw more money at it.
I'll fix it, throw the money at me... PLEASE!
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I worked on this pile of poo (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked on this project for a few years. It is the epitome of government waste
the hardware is 20+ years old and due to bureaucracy, upgrades are rare and expensive to initiate. There are a few alternatives that work! This project is not getting cancelled because I suspect someone is getting paid big money to keep this alive. All the LM team I worked for was/is incompetent.
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But what entity/company/person/planet builds large, complicated, cutting-edge contraptions without delay and drama? It's not just gov't and military contractors that have problems.
It does sometimes happen, but it's usually a lucky accident that cannot be repeated on command. The winners of this lottery brag and say they are geniuses, and the losers quietly slither off to a new project. We look at the winners and naively say, "see, it can be done!", not understanding the Vegas-ness of it all.
The Russians hav
Imrpove over time (Score:2, Interesting)
Experimental combat systems don't always work the first time. The big issue is more the massive fraud--you sell it all to Congress with one budget knowing it is going to cost at least three times as much if magical unicorn engineers don't show up from the future and tell you how to make it all work. With another few years of development it'll get better and better. This is still fairly important in terms of conventional engagements because mines are relatively cheap and easy to build.
Seems to barely work at all (Score:1)
Specifically, testing revealed that the vehicle "cannot be reliably controlled by the ship or communicate when it is operating out of the line-of-sight of the ship, and the towed sonar cannot detect mines consistently," according to the DOT&E. The memo, cited in a September Senate Armed Service Committee report, also said the drone could only reliably operate for up to 25 hours before it failed during testing, falling far short of its required 75 hours.
Can't control it or communicate with it unless you can see it and battery life is 1/3 of requirement. For $700 million, that's a pretty dramatic implementation miss for some pretty straightforward requirements.
damn contractors (Score:4, Informative)
Disclaimer: I am an R&D EE for the US NAVY, which is why I'm posting as an AC.
If I could only tell you all about how many projects fucking contractors screw up you would be amazed. Raytheon couldn't find their ass with both hands taped to it and Lockheed isn't any better. the last project I worked on with a contractor (Raytheon) had more than 15 engineers and 30 support personnel on it, and they STILL couldn't get it done right. 20 Million+ later the NAVY finally yanked it and we did it with 4 engineers and 1 Tech for less than 1 million. It's now being used by both the NAVY and the Coasties.. Contractors are leeches. contractors are clues (for the more part). Contractors just suck.
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It performs *exactly* as expected (Score:5, Insightful)
It transferred nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer public money into private hands.
But socialism is terrible if it's for medical care for everyone. Greasing up a slick billionaire's rectum, though, perfectly fine!
We are morons (Score:1)
700 million dollars for a remote controlled airplane that doesn't work. We are all morons for continuing to pay taxes to these fucking people.
Lockbleed (Score:5, Insightful)
Towed Sonar? (Score:2)
Now maybe there are a few things I don't understand about minesweeping. But it would seem to me that depending on a system which is towed behind a ship to detect things you don't want to run over with the ship isn't going to work very well. It's sort of like driving by looking in your rear view mirror [oblig. bad car analogy].
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Sonar emits sound in a spherical pattern, the area of that sphere blocked by the ship is minuscule (the further away from the ship the smaller it is) and only to a relatively shallow depth; the sonar buoy can submerge below that and have a completely clear forward field of view. Also, if the receiving hydrophones are on the ship rather than the buoy, the engines and sonar emitter are both in the same direction (behind), so they could be optimized for forward facing sensitivity without having to worry about
Mission accomplshed! (Score:1)
The money for this was spent in a state and in a Congressional district. Jobs were created/preserved, each with more than one voter attached or related to it, on average.
Quite apart from the financial appreciation expressed by the employers of those voters directly and indirectly to re-election campaigns, there's also the ability of those politicians to brag about keeping/adding jobs, which impresses even those not living under the same roof as the holders of those jobs.
An unsuccessful weapons system wou