Nuff said…
Spain spent $680 million on submarine that ‘can’t resurface’.
Spanish engineers, who already spent some $680 million on designing the new generation S-80 class submarine, say it is a major “technical innovation.” There is just one problem the calculations show – if submerged into water, it may never come up again.
The Spanish media has been furiously discussing the errors made by the state-owned Navantia construction company, which has spent about a third of the huge $2.2 billion budget only to produce an ‘overweight’ submarine that is not able to float.
Spain’s Ministry of Defense has confirmed that Navantia detected “deviations” in the new submarine’s design, thus delaying its March 2015 scheduled launch for one or two years.
Navantia said an excess weight of up to 100 tons has been added to the sub during construction, and the company may have to redesign the whole craft.
The excess weight may result in significant problem in the craft’s buoyancy and severely affect its ability to submerge and resurface from depth, the local media explained.
To ensure the submarine does not sink, Navantia considers lengthening its hull in order to re-balance the weight, infodefensa.com said, citing sources.
But each extra meter of the sub will reportedly cost the austerity-stricken state more than €7.5 million ($9.7 million).
Spain’s opposition party United Left has mocked the submarine development in parliament and demanded explanations.
The Ministry of Defense downplayed the clamor, saying adjustments and delays in such complex technological projects are “within normality.” The ministry is now “studying the scope of the problem to determine its impact in terms of time and money” and is considering “various alternatives.”
A delegation from the local College of Industrial Engineers in Murcia region on Tuesday visited the Navantia facilities and spoke in support of the company’s engineers “facing unprecedented technological solutions,” La Verdad said. Navantia’s “technical innovation” is an even more challenging task, given that the plant has to build “four submarines simultaneously,” said the Dean of the College Andres Ortuno.
While the Spanish state is waiting for the four S-80 class submarines to be modified and completed, it will only have two submarines in service – and may have to spend €30 million ($38.8 million) to repair the aging S-74 Tramontana.
The unexpected costs come at a time when Spain’s Ministry of Defense has seen its budget cut by some 30 per cent as part of austerity measures.
Ya just gotta wonder…
And some of those days one has to throw one’s self under the bus or off the cliff…
Yesterday was ONE of those days…
Sitting in a meeting with an asshole that I have a 20+ year history with, PHD type with an EGO that barely fits through doors.
Has a tendency to lock in on minuscule details to the extent that he marginalizes the ‘bigger’ picture. In this case it was over a couple of words “missing” from a line on a brief…
So down the rat hole we went, the tensile strength of the wire is NOT strong enough for what you are doing it is only XX lbs!
“Well, there IS a strength member that is adequate for the application, it’s XXX lbs.”
“But you didn’t SAY that, yada, yada, yada…” For about 10 minutes!
I’d finally had enough, told him “Enough, you’re boresighted on trivia and wasting our time (waving my hand to the other attendees), which is typical of your micro-managing style. You haven’t learned anything in the 20+ years I’ve know you because your EGO will not let you admit you’re wrong, and I’ve had enough of your BS!”
And I walked out…
My boss told me later he turned beet red, started gulping like a fish and was literally speechless (I think THAT was a first)!
But they got through the rest of the meeting without anymore BS questions; and apparently I’m ‘not’ invited back for the next meeting! YEA!
Maybe now I can actually get some work done!!!
Y’all know AD and TOTW (and probably every other EMS blog) have bitched about frequent flyers…
Well, here’s one from my daughter (she’s a Paramedic and Battalion Chief out West). Go to the link HERE, and listen to the first two minutes…
Yes, she REALLY WAS calling 911 from the back of the ambulance that was taking her home from the hospital…
My daughter said this woman calls 20-30 times a day and they now have had to refuse to respond to her home; they are now required to forward them all to the fire department. She also said they have transported her up to 10 times in one day back and forth to the hospital.
And you wonder why insurance rates are going UP???
These brought back a few memories…
We were deployed to the Med, and were flying around the clock on a Victor-II sub that had made the mistake of running through one of the crew’s patterns. We took over the tracking just at dark…
About an hour later, I hear from the flight station, “Hey, you gotta come see this s**t!”
So I stroll up, and I get told to wait a minute then look out the left side of the cockpit. And what do I see, but lights… But they don’t quite look right…
Puzzled, I go back to my seat, look at my screen, and don’t see a radar contact. Call up the SS3, get him to do a sweep, nope no surface contacts anywhere near. WTF???
Flight comes back around again, look out the window again, sure enough, funky looking lights…
O.M.G. THAT’S THE FRIKKIN SUB!!!
They’d forgotten to turn off their navigation lights!!! 🙂
Made for a real easy onstation, and we told the follow-on crew, they followed the lights for the rest of the night! 🙂
It wasn’t until about two days later, they finally turned their navigation lights off.
Q-2 over the Med.
This one was taken about a month before one of the A-3s here came apart in-flight… Sadly only one of the crewmen survived.
Or as we called em, crash and dash…
Hopefully with most of the parts remaining attached to the airplane! X-47’s first touch and go’s at sea, on USS GHW BUSH.
Full arrested landings coming this summer to a carrier near you!
Finally getting more or less back on the right time zone…
NO SPOILERS! 🙂
So, I had ‘plenty’ of time to read coming back on the last leg of the trip. First up, Larry Correia’s new novel Warbound. It’s the third book in the Grimnoir Chronicles, and it keeps up the pace of the earlier books, good (and now familiar) characters take on new ‘adventures’ with some interesting plot twists, and a very interesting ending (not what I expected). Highly recommend it, Larry has done it again!!!
Next, the new (and FIRST) novel by Marco Kloos, Terms of Enlistment! It’s Mil-SF and follows a young man from the slums to space! Great read, good characters, smoothly integrated plot lines and a pleasure to read (finished it in one sitting).
And last but NOT least, Peter also has a new (FIRST) novel up, Take the Star Road! Again it’s Mil-SF and follows a young man who chases his dreams into space. A totally different approach from Marco’s book, but again great read, good characters, good plot and another pleasure to read (finished it in one sitting too). You can read Brigid’s review HERE, as I’m not going to try to top it… 🙂
I would highly recommend all three, they are good “escape” books, and I read all three in one sitting each… And Marco and Peter, where are the next books???
I’m waiting… tap, tap, tap…
From a discussion this morning at work…
Isn’t it strange that after a bombing, everyone blames the bomber, but after a shooting, the problem is the GUN!
Sometimes you just gotta take an unplayable lie…
And this one offers some neat possibilities…
iGlock, iColt, iSAA, iAR, etc. THOSE would be some interesting t-shirts!
Or you could just go old school…
h/t to JP for the last one, apparently one of his previous SASS classes…