Hogs at the Feeding Trough
Ron Ault,
President
Metal Trades Department, AFL-CIO
The Metal Trades Department is the only labor organization that has a charter/constitutional responsibility to lobby for the American shipbuilding industry. One hundred years ago our founders wrote that into our constitution as one of our principle goals. When I was sworn in as the eighth President of this 100 year old labor organization, I swore to uphold the constitution. That is what I am trying to do in this article.
This past week the House Seapower & Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee held hearings on the proposed cancellation of the Zumwalt “Stealth” DDG 1000 Destroyer Program after building two ships. I felt sorry for the Navy’s witnesses. They were thrown out to defend an indefensible position and they knew it going in. The hearing was strictly a “show” hearing, predisposed to come to only one conclusion. It was the first time I can ever remember that testimony to supplement the record was excluded from being placed on the public table. Organized labor had compiled testimony in support of the DDG1000 from many union sources, myself included. Subcommittee staffers barred union representatives who were attempting to deliver 30 copies of our written statements to the public table. The Subcommittee apparently did not want to hear any testimony in support of continuing the DDG 1000 program at this hearing.
In written testimony, I tried to make the point to the Sea Power Subcommittee that restarting the construction of DDG 51s is “a bird in the bush,” not a “bird in the hand” and that the DDG 51 would be years away from coming back into production, leaving thousands of U.S. shipyard workers at Bath Ironworks and the Gulf Coast NGS Ingalls and Gulfport, Mississippi, without either the DDG 1000 or DDG 51work. Navy acquisition czar Allision Stiller testified that the DDG 51 reduction gears (something you build the hull around) would be a 50 month long lead time item because alternative sources must be found now that the original manufacturer has shut down. The DDG 1000 employs newer 21st Century electric ship propulsion, DDG 1000 does not have any reduction gears.. The startup costs of the DDG 51s as well as the shutdown costs of the DDG 1000 will bankrupt the Naval Shipbuilding budget and cause massive layoffs and disruption to the industrial shipyard supplier base and our military construction shipyards. The Metal Trades currently has shipyard workers laid off and unemployed in our Gulf Coast Northrop Grumman shipyards (NGS) in Congressman Gene Taylor’s district in Mississippi due to lack of Navy work. The cancellation of Zumwalt could have devastating effects in the NGS Mississippi and Louisiana yards.
Meanwhile, Communist China and Russia, flush with surplus cash, are continuing ambitious military offensive weapons development. Both nations are developing superior blue water Naval assets to confront the present U.S. Navy warships on station— including new, previously unknown weapons systems that we don’t have answers for….that is unless we build the Zumwalt and task it for these “blue water” threats.
Zumwalt gives America a thirty year Destroyer lead in technology over anyone. Zumwalt has vertical launch tubes just like the DDG 51s that can be loaded with all of the weapons systems in the Navy’s inventory. It has a much longer reach with precision gunfire; 63 nautical mile range for Zumwalt’s 155 mm rapid fire cannon compared to 13 nautical miles for the 5 inch gun mount of the DDG 51. According to the Navy’s testimony, the only superiority of the DDG 51 is its deep water bow sonar that gives it an ASW advantage in really deep water. However, the Zumwalt bow sonar is much better for the shallower littoral waters.
The witnesses were very precise in saying that Zumwalt is not presently tasked for ballistic missile defense and that it would be costly to redesign it for that task.
Let’s see: the Zumwalt has a radar that everyone agrees is at least 10 times more powerful than DDG 51; and this radar is much more capable of picking out objects in the cluttered littoral environment where the shore meets the water. Zumwalt carries the exact same missile vertical launch tubes that the DDG 51s have; only more of them…The missiles are the same (only the Zumwalt carries more of them) better radar, much better gun… Unlike Arleigh Burke class Destroyers, Zumwalt is nearly impossible for an enemy to find without entering its weapons’ kill range…. am I missing something? It seems to this old country boy, that the ABM task would be much easier for the more powerful Zumwalt radar capable of distinguishing space clutter from an incoming warhead than the much less powerful DDG 51 radar…both firing the same missile interceptors…and did I mention, the Zumwalt is crewed by 148 sailors while Arleigh Burke requires 317?
A win/win for the Navy would be a robust retro-fit SLEP of the present 50 Arleigh Burke class DDG51’s to cover the ballistic missile defense roles the area commanders are asking for. Additionally refitting the Arleigh Burkes with would exploit the latest advances in open architecture radar systems and software while continuing the DDG 1000 stealth program that the Navy has spent billions on R&D and provided 13 years of support in Congress.
How do you throw out 13 years of Navy testimony to Congress in support of this new weapons system—under both Democratic and Republican administrations—up until about five months ago without losing credibility? Just this February, the Navy told Congress they needed the DDG 1000 and asked for full funding. Without any full scale threat assessment studies or the Joint Chiefs signing off on the “changing needs,” the CNO wakes up one morning to a brand new world of threats? Hmm…that one just doesn’t pass the smell test.
What is really going on with the Navy’s shipbuilding program is a behind-the-scenes battle among the radar/weapons manufacturers. Billions of dollars are at stake and these defense contractors play hard-ball politics.
Like the Microsoft Windows operating system, AGEIS is a legacy, proprietary radar system owned by the developer/manufacturer. No one else is allowed to make or provide this system. It is unique and has a bloated, expensive infrastructure of supporting facilities, training simulators and other built-in features that go with every AGEIS system in the fleet. Like the Linux operating system, the super powerful, next generation radar system on the Zumwalt class is open architecture (by Navy contract specifications). The developer of this system had to open it up and allow competitors to bid so that the same manufacturer of AGEIS has a share of the Zumwalt work, but nothing like they would if the Navy continued AEGIS with new DDG 51s. Knowing what I know about Zumwalt and DDG 51s, while watching this hearing reminds me of my youth back on the farm in Arkansas….watching fat pigs push other fat pigs out of the feeding trough of our public funds…Retiring General officers need civilian jobs in a recession, too. It is all about money….If anyone thinks this is about “saving the taxpayers’ money” I’ve got some land for sale that is only covered by water twice a day…
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Metal Trades Department, AFL-CiO • 815 16th Street, NW •Washington, DC 20006
Phone: 202-508-3705 • Fax: 202-508-3706 • email: metaltradesweb@gmail.com
