Boff,

Disturbing post. I was under the impression that design was far more advanced. A couple of years back Alan West told the Defence Committee that CVF detailed design was (if memory serves) around 80% complete. Then at xmas last year we had the announcements that a further £300m was being spent getting the design ready for the manufacturing stage. This made me wonder what Westy was talking about!

I can understand, given the sorry story with Astute and the Bays that prior to order the MoD would want to nail down costs, ie achieve a high degree of cost certainty- and the best way to do this is to price up a detailed design (the old seperation of design from build that DK Brown seems to favour).

Are we anywhere near a detailed design thats ready for the builders to price?

cheers

If brown cuts the boats next year as the rumours suggest, then it will be academic either way.

Suspect 1SL was referring to the level of defined compartmentation and/or elements of the requirement that had equipment defined against it - either that or that 80% of the "weight" had been allocated to specific kit (initial weight estimates are undertaken using regression analysis and indicative sections).

For example you would expect the equipment required in Flyco to be identified by now (and I'm sure it has), but whether the individual equipment cabinets, switches etc have been positioned on an arrangement drawing, the requisite services (power, cooling, comms, DTS) arranged and included on the system drawings and a material procurement list for the compartment produced is another matter. I would suspect that the £300M referred to includes these activities.

I haven't seen any of what I would describe as detailed design drawings / info - but then again I'm not working directly on the project. It is progressing, but I don't believe they're in a position to flash up a whole lot of CADDS5 info for Tx to purchasing or production facilities yet.

In the old days, ship designers sat at big angled desks and used pencil and paper to design compartments. In those days we built plenty of ships and had plenty of people wanting to be ship designers (because it gave them something to do).

Nowadays we don't build many ships, we have few ship designers and everything is designed by CAD/CAM. Resources who know how to use this technology are in limited supply and of those, only a small fraction know how to design ships.

Based on what happened to Astute (and the Kipperbomber) MoD is understandably nervous of something horribly expensive being found half way through the build process.

What Adm West talked about last years was raising the maturity level of the design and reducing risk. This is why it is taking so long for anything to happen.

Gib

"If brown cuts the boats next year as the rumours suggest, then it will be academic either way"

Not heard that rumour- got a source? I'd be mightily surprised however. Brown committed to the carriers way back in 2001 whilst visiting Illustrious (if memory serves), not to mention that they'll be built next door to his constituency in the lead up to the next election. They also form a central plank to the recent well thought out DIS, which a certain Des Browne signed up to whilst at the Treasury.

John Reid did a great job stitching everyone up to ensure the carriers get built.:ok:

In the old days, ship designers sat at big angled desks and used pencil and paper to design compartments. In those days we built plenty of ships and had plenty of people wanting to be ship designers (because it gave them something to do).

CAD/CAM should reduce the risk as simulations can performed.

More significantly, in the old days we had people who could take decisions, this is not true today. Passing the buck seems to be considered an acceptable alternative to competent decision making. This is true not just in the MOD, but throughout the public sector and in many parts of the business world too.

Wrong. This is exactly what went wrong with Astute. Too much technology, not enough expertise. That's why its so horribly late. Skills gap.

Navaleye is bang on - CAD/CAM is actually the source of much of the problems with Astute (and LPDR for that matter). CAD monkeys who know how to build ships are few and far between - BAE ended up hiring a load of general engineering / architectural draughtsmen who didn't know how to design ships, apply naval or marine standards etc. Lots of slippage and costly rework (and LPD was a simple ship).

CVF is also a simple ship and that is the reason for disquiet on lack of progress. There are one (possibly two) systems with any significant technical risk in the vessel, both of which have risk reduction programmes in place. In the meantime, capability is being taken out of the vessel because the estimate (NOT costing) looks too expensive. A bit more detail design would give better costing and would certainly help progress the ship.

WEBF is partly right however, no-one is in charge of the job. The SRO has a tiny budget and no authority to actually make thigs happen (IMHO).

I should have written: CAD/CAM ahould help - if they had proper marine engineering/ship design people using it. But Gash In = Gash Out.

Another questionable decision made by Ministers: In future frigates will be expected to perform Mines Counter Measures - forget about small and highly manoeuvrable specialist ships with minehunting sonar (rather different to the sort used to detect submarines) that are built of non magnetic materials and are hardened against underwater blast, why not use large steel vessels that aren't hardened? After all no Western waships have been damaged by mines recently (except Samuel B Roberts, Princeton, Tripoli)...........

USN is going exactly the same way. Getting rid of its minesweeping fleet as we speak. A few being donated to Egypt. The future is front line ships having their own capability.

Hmmm, so what about things magnetic signature, hardening against underwater blasts, dynamic positioning, getting in really small harbours and waterways.

Yes unmanned and organic systems will have a role to play. But binning current MCM technologies on the basis of possible future technologies..?

I remember being at Navy Days one year (1991?) and an Officer aboard one of the Hunt class said that they had experienced an underwater explosion at close range - and been unscathed. A conventional steel hulled warship (GRP is stronger than steel in that way), without isolated machinery would have been sunk.

Can we afford to be so blase?

Anyway, back to CAD/CAM..........see this.

I think you'll find that CVF is being designed by proper marine engineering/ship design people.....

http://www.bmtdsl.co.uk/default.asp?ID=11

...Depends what they mean about Mine countermeasures. Mine Hunting in shallow water using RV's then I wouldn't think there would be much of a problem. Deep water minesweepng on the other hand is a different kettle of Fish. Mind you if the RN needed this capability they'd only have to go to Peterhead or Hull and Charter a few Trawlers!

C-Bert

I think you'll find that the company in question did a large chunk of the feasibility design, but are now largely off the job - the Carrier Alliance includes Big and Expensive Ships, VT and Babcocks. The original Chief Naval Architect for the ship is now working for a European defence firm designing the French PA2 carrier.

I could also note some horrific errors in the original feasibility designs involving amateurish subdivision and some more recent ones (incinerator flue running 20m across the hangar deckhead anyone??), but that would be telling...........

Boffin, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you. I think you'll find that the vast majority of the platform design team are still BMT employees.

C-Bert - happy to be corrected, but as far as I'm aware they are subbied into T-N. I'm sure they were laying people off from the Bristol office a year ago. If they've taken them back on - fair enough, but I still doubt that they would be doing the detailed design on CADDS5 or FORAN - that tends to be the shipyards involved who have to augment their drawing office staff with contract labour, which is where many of the problems occur.

In any case the original premise is still valid - very little progress on detail design has yet been made and there are still some horrendous aspects of the design that need to be addressed.

They are indeed subbied into T-N, much the same as Thales is subcontracted to the PCO (despite it being a partnership...:ugh: ). However, when I was there they were indeed doing the design work on CADDS5.

I may be wrong but I will be very suprised if the shipyards end up doing any design work, for the simple reason that at some point all 5 super blocks (or whatever they are called today) will have to be joined up, and if a VT draightsman has drawn a pipe in one location, you can be sure that a Babcock draughtsman has drawn it in another. Configuration control in that situation would be a living nightmare. Far easier IMO just do all the drawings/design at the PCO and then distribute them to the relevent shipyards. At least then (in theory) everything shoud join up at the end. :\

C-Bert

Valid point re interfaces between the blocks. However, the PCO is unlikely to have sufficient manpower to do all detailed design for the four blocks plus all the hangar / gallery / FD blocks.

Each shipyard will also have particular preferences / limitations for building the blocks which is best done by those in the yard who know. Probably the best solution is to set hard interface datums at block boundaries (done by PCO), but let the individual yards sort the detail in block.

Q: What about project management on MOD projects?

A: It would be a good idea.

Surely someone (DPA?) is responsible for making sure all the companies involved are singing the same tune - ie compatibility and interfaces? If the problem is lack of experienced ship designers then can some expertise be brought in from outside?

althenick

They are on about replacing dedicated MCM vessels with a seondary capability for our dwindling frigate/destroyer force. So less capability, less safety, less protection for the crews, and ships will need to be in two or three places a the same time. The sonar used for hunting mines is rather different from that used for hunting submarines, for instance. Also I remember being at Navy Days in 1991 (I think) and an Officer aboard one of the Hunt class told us that they had been close to a mine that exploded and been unscathed - a steel hulled ship would have sunk! GRP is stronger than steel.

Making a larger ship from GRP would be very expensive, and isolating equipment to harden against underwater blasts would be too. More expensive than building a new class of MCM Vessels.

Then again, to the powers that be, a ship is a ship. Wire is wire. Sonar is sonar. This is one of the reasons procurement is so troublesome: those at the top misunderstand the little things.

Which brings us back to CVF...........

I keep hearing rumours that the RN would like to see the F35C ordered and until now the major advocate of the F36B has been the RAF. This seems to be weakening and the C version is still a possibility. Also that industry is in discussion with the US about using the EMALS system in lieu of steam cats, though this may require an increase in electrical output to be achieved.