Five frigate finalists fingered for FFG(X) fight by Navy
Interesting how the Navy procures now, it seems like it is a hodge podge affair, where they used to design, or work with a company to design, the ship they need. Now, it's pick and choose, although I would go with the Aegis frigate, if just for the multi mission modes Aegis offers. But it seems it is really hard to budget anything with this hodge poge effort.
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/nav...
My only point was simply that there are highly capable and ethical people in government procurement, but they are bound by the rules that are set up by others. While he doesn’t discuss details, I do know he is often quite frustrated, no matter which side of the procurement he is on. There are highly capable and even brilliant and patriotic entrepreneurial people out there trying to do a good job but struggling under the "system."
They are building FFG(X) to replace LCS (little crappy ship), which is militarily inadequate. They are keeping LM and Austal with their two LCS-based platforms in the competition to avoid massive political pressure.
The BIW, Ingalls and Fincanteri (Marinette Marine) offerings are far superior. They are based on the Spanish/Navantia F100, USCG Nationals Security Cutter and Italianversion of the FREMM respectively.
Another bit of nonsense is maintaining the 57mm gun as the main gun, with a range of ~7 miles. All our allies frigates use a 76 mm or 127 mm gun, with an available range of over 26 miles. More politics.
However, this ship should be more capable than the LCS.
Yea, it looks weird, kind of like a tri hull ship...we call them trimarans also looks like it's propelled by water jets.
In addition, neither a torpedo, a naval gun or a missile would be targeted at or protected against by the outer hulls. A torpedo does not approach like the WWII movies, and a missile targets heat or radar returns. It will seek the center.
The purpose of the hull design is efficiency through the water and providing a large helicopter deck.
All in on Star Destroyers!
See the discussion at the top of p245 in the attached and Figure 14.4:
https://www.asminternational.org/docu...
The main issue with AL superstructure is not so much strength or cracking as fires. Modern missiles and rounds will penetrate either, but AL burns. Also, in a fire, AL loses virtually all of its strength from strain hardening or heat treatment, and returns to a base AL, which is pretty weak.
Composite superstructures are used. DDG1000 has one. However, challenges in its manufacture and repair have caused the Navy to revert to steel or aluminum in most cases.
https://news.usni.org/2013/08/05/navy...
Theycan put the 76mm on either LCS. We have confirmed theat with both shipyards, and can offer the 76mm for the same price as the 57mm. However, the Navy is sticking with the 57mm popgun with some BS story about standard ammunition, even with the change to the FFG(X). This means our frigates will be out gunned by about everything tin the ocean bigger than a fast patrol boat. Hopefully, this is just because missiles like the Harpoon.
I doubt composites will take over steel and limited aluminum for a long time in large military ships. Repair is so easy by welding, and there is inadequate weight attention.
My little brother teaches a class in aerospace structures, and one of his oolies (sp?) is that in each step ships, to cars to airplanes to spacecraft there is a 10x structural density requirement.
Ok, now your turn to enlighten me on my next PC. I am trying to decide between an all out gaming setup (no I don't game) and a iMac or iMac Pro.
Do you want to be able to upgrade it in the future?
I almost always build my own and I hate being stuck with proprietary soft/hardware that prevents upgrading. (But I have a limited budget and now upgrade with 4 year old technology- since it actually impedes my use very little. ;^) Building your own is easy once you set your requirements and budget.
Do internet, some programming, some programming of embedded devices (e.g Raspberry PI et al), do picture editing and want to get into rendering.
I like the power and upgradability of a PC, but also really like running Windows on a Mac using VM ware Fusion. It works great.
I am totally ok with building a computer. I’ve done it before, and am pretty technical.
I am just trying to decide:
M.2 vs The Apple Fusion(?) drive. Or SSD
The lanes on a PC vs Thunderbolt/USB3.1
An Nvidia 1080ti vs the Mac AMD cards for rendering.
Also wondering about the 7700k (iMac or PC) 79xx (PC), and Xeon (iMac pro)
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B...