"Scratch one nuclear sub?" Topic

Seems there was a fire on board a submarine while in drydock…

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Old news Bill :-)

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Seven people have been injured in a fire on a nuclear-powered submarine in the US state of Maine, officials say.

Nah. Sounds like it was relatively minor damage in the accomadations section.
-Kle.

Boat was in drydock. Fires happen all the time in drydock. This one seems to have got a bit out of hand. Plus everybody gets all wacko when you say nuclear and fire in the same sentence.

Mike

I don't think the sub is a write-off by any means.

-Will

If it was a Soviet sub however…

"Plus everybody gets all wacko when you say nuclear and fire in the same sentence".

Can't really blame them.

I've been in drydock on various types and sizes of vessels, about 6 times? Perhaps 7 or 8. I've never seen or heard of a fire in drydock.

The main point isn't the amount of damage, it's the money. The Defense Department might not have the unallocated funds to repair the sub. They could let it set until they do, but it is a nuclear sub, and you can't just turn off the lights and lock the hatches. It has to be manned and monitored at all hours. So from a budget point of view, it might mean they scrap the sub, no matter how repairable it is.

Right down the road from me….

I think my boat had 4-5 spot fires in one drydocking alone… welding or cutting steel makes for a mess, and it seems they were gutting the Miami.

Depends on the nature of the overhaul, but this might not add all that much to the costs!

The main point isn't the amount of damage, it's the money. The Defense Department might not have the unallocated funds to repair the sub. They could let it set until they do, but it is a nuclear sub, and you can't just turn off the lights and lock the hatches. It has to be manned and monitored at all hours.

Yeah, the Nautilus *still* has a crew of nuclear operators standing watch over the reactor, even though I don't think it's been brought up to power in more than 30 years!

The main point isn't the amount of damage, it's the money. So from a budget point of view, it might mean they scrap the sub, no matter how repairable it is.

Doubt it.
It's a lot cheaper than a new Virginia to replace it.
You seem to be laboring under the misunderstanding that "budgets" are something that is binding for the Feds.

Now, they might decommission it, but it won;t be for any sensible sort of reasons.
-Kle.

Also, there's a lot of screaming from all the theater commanders about needing more submarines for various things (usually sneaky stuff).

An unplanned loss of a hull is not something that the US Navy likes to consider. Note that they chose to repair the USS San Francisco, even after she slammed into a mountain at flank speed!

Yes they repaired San Fran, but by welding parts of Honolulu onto her. Despite the fact that Honolulu was newer by about four years, San Fran had just been refueled, which factored into the equation. The latter got decommed. Sometime the solutions aren't optimal and they don't make sense from an asset management viewpoint.

You also need to look at it from the "how long will it take to replace this asset" point of view. It's not like a car or something that you can just drive a replacement off the lot, or even a house that you can have rebuilt in a month.

Replacing a ship takes 5 years or more!

The Honolulu was either going to get refueled or decommissioned anyway (I don't remember which). Newer hull != better condition.

@Lion – Honolulu refueling was somewhere around 170MM, cannibalizing her parts onto SF was somewhere around 30%, so I guess the numbers worked for the bean counters. The old farts were right – the calculus in the end is always about cash flow.

Cost of the repairs looking to be about $400 USDm+ and may have started in a vacuum cleaner. ;).

Alex H.

*low whistle* daaaaaaaaaaaaaayum. That was a *bad* fire to cost a third the price of a new boat to repair!

The new Russian anti-sub weapon: The Oreck.