It’s going to cost $605 million to give USS Enterprise three more years of life and another two cruises:
The cost of keeping the carrier in the fleet for two additional deployments now is 33 percent higher than its initial $453.3 million price tag…
Northrop was scheduled to redeliver the ship to the Navy last month, when it was supposed to complete the 16-month project. But in August, the Navy delayed the Enterprise’s delivery by three months to December.
During its extensive repair and inspection process, Northrop has encountered a number of unexpected problems on the flat top that have required additional attention and materials…
Built in Newport News, the Enterprise is the world’s first nuclear-powered carrier. The ship is nearing 49 years old.
Northrop has a contract with the Navy to provide all remaining maintenance to the ship until it is decommissioned in 2012.
Wow.
And ouch.
Old joke: What’s the only evolution the Enterprise can’t do?
Answer: Darken ship…..
Like other pieces of machinery, these things happen THESE days….
Oh, heck, if we can spend $897B on who knows what/where/how/why, why shouldn’t the Democratic controlled congress and executive spend a mere .006% of that on National Defense? Probably enough to get their credibility back up. “Look, how can we be called soft on Defense, we spent $605 MILLION dollars to keep another carrier on duty” /sarcasm
Sounds like the same reports on JFK the year before she got de-comm’d. Look for the news in a week or two, once the left and their propaganda arm get a chance to chew on it a bit.
In the final years of the Coral Sea, that carrier alone consumed over 45% of AIRLANT’s annual operating budget — not just the CV budget, the entire operating budget. As a result, she was decomm’d almost three years early (also decomm’d CVW-13 and all associated sqdns). Don’t be surprised to see Big E get the early axe too. She is one-of-a-kind, even requiring special configurations pierside and the cost of operating her, much less fixing AND operating her for two more deployments will end up being prohibitive.
Hate to say it, but I’d also expect to see a Nimitz-class CVN up for refueling will probably get the axe too, we’re headed down that kind of a slippery busdgetary slope…
- SJS
ah c’mon. what would you really rather have? “E” for another 3 with possibly 2 deployments? Or a shiny brand new unarmed but FAST LCS?
But hey, Charleston needs a new carrier to replace the aging Yorktown as the old gal is needing a $100 MILLION overhaul. Needless to say us poor southern rural rednecks ain’t got that kind of change. We’d gladly take the Big E in trade. And come next hurricane we’d have our own little redundant power station.
Don’t count her out. Intrepid got a makeover that totaled $120M, $55M for the ship and $65M for the pier; $3M to suck 39,000 cu yd of mud from around the screws! LOL! And that from a city that’s broke!
Can anyone tell me if the Big E still has eight reactors, or did the Navy refit her with the big’uns from the Nimitz class?
I’m pretty sure it’s still an 8 reactor model. Rebuilding the engine rooms… and cutting out everything above to get to them… would have been cost prohibitive.
I left Big E a few months ago where I was an engineer. The good news is the therapy is going well. I kid, I kid…
ENT still has the 8 reactor design. Massive design differences would prohibit any attempt to replace the A2W plant with the A4W found in the NIMITZ class.
I doubt ENT will go away earlier than scheduled. We have never decommed a CVN and there are significant technical hurdles to overcome before we can put her to pasture.
Big E will never become a museum ship. Someone may get the island but not much else.
Can’t discuss much else in this forum but if there is ever another Sandy Eggo join up I could probably fill in the gaps.
Maybe once they got the reactors out, they would do to Big E what they did to America.
Hopefully not, but just sayin’
Yeah Lex – when’s the next time we’re going to hoist a pint at Shakespeare’s?
You guys need to spread the joy and move the “hoist-a-pints” around the country.
“…encountered a number of unexpected problems on the flat top that have required additional attention and materials…”
Such as? (If it’s suitable for the ‘net, that is.
VR,
Comjam
P.S. Hey dere, Yooper, why doncha’ come home up here to da land o’da Muskie, eh?
Comjam,
In generalities: Lets say that you need to open up a tank to fix the sounding tube(a small tube that is used to measure the liquid level in the tank). It is a quick fix and can be done in probably a couple days – start to finish.
Once inside the tank you now discover other pipes that are deteriorated, a failing paint system with heavy corrosion, broken ladder, etc.. Once you open that tank, what has been seen cannot be unseen and you are obligated to fix the other items. The simple fix has now expanded and you are going to have do welding in that tank to fix the other items. This may mean you have to; gas free the tank for hotwork, gas free or inert the surrounding tanks to support hotwork, press up or drain other tanks, run ventilation, clean the tank top to bottom and install staging to support the cleaning, mechanically clean the tank to remove failed paint system, prime and paint the tank ensuring that cure times, humidity and temperature all jive, continue to run atmospheric testing of the tank at a periodicity not to exceed 8 hours, run temporary lighting, deconflict this “growth work” from other already scheduled work that is in the work package and coordinate this across ship’s force, shipyard, shipyard hired subcontractors and Supervisor of Shipbuilding reps and the 10 or 11 different trades that will perform different aspects of the work. This all has to happen after the shipyard engineers have scoped the work, obtained technical drawings, put together a work package, had it reviewed by Ship’s Force, Shipyard, SUPSHIP and been approved by TYCOM. Of course, this all presupposes that you have the material to perform the work and that it is not backordered, obsolete or just MIA.
And that, my friend, is how things get crazy and why ships never seem to come out of availabilities on time. I hope that didn’t come across as too whiny because that was not my intent. I’m just saying that it is a pretty involved process with a whole lot of moving parts. Byron A can probably give perspective as well from the other side of the fence. Alas, this is just one example or many.
Oh, and if there were to be an informal assembly of folk for a pint of Guiness, I hear that McP’s serves a lovely glass and, as good luck would have it, that fine establishment is but a few short blocks from Casa Da Yooper. I’m just sayin’
Da Yooper
Do accurate technical drawings for the Big E even exist anymore? I’m sure drawings exist, and I’ll bet they’re accurate for the reactors and associated systems, but it seemed to me like the wiring and ducting on the ship had been field modified so much as to be like something out of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
If you were on her during the 2007 cruise, thanks for probably saving the ship without us airdales even knowing about it. I had the pleasure of eating in the wardroom on the 3rd deck with the engineers a few times, great guys to a T, and all of whom looked beat to hell like they had been wrestling a beast for the past 18 hours straight every time I saw them. A lot of appreciation for you guys and what you do!
Ah, now Laddie. McP’s.
That takes it back a few years. As I recall, NAVSPECWAR has prime ownership shares there after all the pints procured. A sociable conglomerate of lads, as I recall. And they tolerate Airedales…
Da Yooper,
You have nailed the true shipyard experience but I still 100% blame SUPSHIPs for lame miserable criminal ship checks. It is their job and ship’s company to scope the work and actually, you know, do a shipcheck when they develop the work package. Some growth in scope is to be anticipated and one would expect management to put, oh I don’t know, a management reserve against the projected increase in scope….. I was the top snipe on two ships that went through yard avails and served in alternate roles on 3 other ships that went through yard avails. We came in on budget but we are forced to admit that it was SURFPAC and trust me, they don’t have $800 million ‘management reserves” lying around. That almost sounds like 3rd Fleets fuel budget for the whole year. In situations such as Da Yooper described, our SUPSHIP would invoke as soon as he presented me with the bill for increase in scope and point out that this little striker plate replacement in the bottom of a fuel tank would cost roughly 200 times as much as was in the management reserve after we drained the tank, opened the tank, wheelerized the tank, gas freed the tank, paid for umpteen fire watch illegals at $57/hour each for 2 weeks, etc, and we would agree to spending $800 to have the yard manufacturer a photo engraved warning notice to be tacked up on the bulkhead by the sampling tube warning the sampler not to let the bob freefall into the tank but to lower it inch by inch lest it punch a whole through the tank floor and let all that lovely fuel into the bilge. Seriously. Ship was almost 40 years old. All the tanks had warning notices.
25 years ago SUPSHIP sucked and in my humble opinion most of the civilians that worked in that organization were nothing but criminals. The navy 05s and 06 that ran the local office were indescribably worthless.
I’d be happy to tell you about it over a beer at Shakespeares! I know why I like that bar….same reason you like McPs. It’s on the way home and I live a mile away in Mission Hills
Lex likes it because of the superb staff, excellent beer first class british food and closeness to the dungeon known as OTC. Convenient access to 5N and so on.
McPs has a nice enough patio. Always thought that the inside sucked. Not only was it filled with SPECWAR types, they actually let their admiral in to drink with them!!!! Seriously, who wants to drink with admirals? It was actually a SPECOPS place back when I used to frequent it and all of us SPECOPS guys were well tolerated. Remember the cigarette girls in the 80′s with their free sample trays of Camel smokes? They limited the customers to not more than two packs but the SPECWAR guys were always good for taking their share and giving them to us lesser beings.
If we’re not careful, Lex will be inviting us to join him at the Enoteca in Del Mar for a pint or maybe, shudder, cosmos.
~$152 million extra? No biggie, that’s less than the $180-212 million they’ll need to convert the Tridents to carry females. We must have plenty of money to burn, right?
These problems weren’t unexpected. Was on her last cruise and every single engineer I ever talked to said the ship was f’ed and that once the yards saw what they were seeing on a daily basis the decomm decision should have been obvious. This is the after the fact a$$ covering necessary when intentionally blind ignorance paraded around as tough-mindedness (i.e. put her to sea two more times no matter what) ends poorly, as it always does.
She was an old girl when I was on her a decade ago. Kind of like UPS using 1969 Dodge vans to do their deliveries. Sure you can do it – but the upkeep ……….
Enterprise’s problems don’t sound too much different than one of my home remodel projects (except for the cost that is…). I mean, just replacing a wall switch or adding a wire is a 5 trip to Home Depot or Lowes project. What’s that old saw about calculating the cost of a project.
Estimate a cost. Double it. Then round UP to the next unit of measurement. By that method it will cost $2 billion for a $1 million project. Works for time also. Allow two weeks for a one day project.