Updated: USS Zumwalt Sidelined in Panama Following New Engineering Casualty

The ship is being repaired and no time line is given to when it will be repaired. At a cost of $1.4 billion each I hope these prove to be very reliable.

The ship is being repaired and no timeline to when it will be done. The schedule will remain flexible to make sure it is sea worthy.

The ship lost propulsion in its port shaft during the transit and the crew saw water intrusion in two of the four bearings that connect to Zumwalt’s port and starboard Advanced Induction Motors (AIMs) to the drive shafts, a defense official told USNI News on Tuesday. The AIMs are the massive electrical motors that are driven by the ship’s gas turbines and in turn electrically power the ship’s systems and drive the shafts.

Another breakdown, we don't know what broke. What do you want for a cost of $1.4 billion each?

Following its Oct. 15 commissioning, Zumwalt suffered additional unspecified engineering trouble around the time arrived at Naval Station Mayport, Fla. and spent extra time repairing and testing the propulsion system, USNI News understands.

news.usni.org...

$1.4 Billion could feed and house a lot of needy people. More homes for the homeless and food for the hungry. PEACE.

a reply to: seasonal

Bleeding edge technology tends to break, a lot, in the early days. They'll figure it out and get it working in the long term.

I hope they got the extended warranty when they bought these lemons, did ford make these ships?

a reply to: Tardacus

So something on the bleeding edge breaks down, and it's a lemon? I guess only things that don't ever have any problems are acceptable?

Sure seems like the design or components in those assemblies is poor.

I can hear our enemies now. "we'll worry about the ship IF it gets here to take up position off our coast."

It's not how well it can fight but whether it can get to the fight.

a reply to: roadgravel

It's a brand new ship, that produces more power than any other three ships, using new technology. It would be far more amazing if they DIDN'T run into a few issues during trials and testing.

Sounds to me like they shouldn't have ordered those Chinese stuffing boxes maybe?
Water in the electrics of those power plants could be scary....
Salt water is bad news for that stuff....

Given the multiple seal failures, some different materials must be needed. I would imagine it will be corrected in time.

a reply to: Zaphod58

shouldn`t all this new fangled technology be tested before it is sold to the taxpayers and put into daily use?

Obviously they didn`t test this ship enough that`s why I said I hope the navy got a warranty since the navy is basically testing all this new technology for the manufacturer.

a reply to: Tardacus

You can test components, but until you have the entire system together, you don't know if you're going to see a failure. If you test to the point of failure, then you have to get a new system and you don't know how that one is going to react. You can test the entire system at the dock, but again, you're not going to know how it performs at sea, after weeks of being powered up, and being beat by seas.

I've seen a number of components make it through testing, work for several weeks, or even years, and then fail far earlier than it should have. The F-35A fire at Eglin is a good example. The engine in that aircraft had been flying for awhile, with no problems, until a particular maneuver that the aircraft and fleet had performed numerous times, caused the engine to flex just slightly more than planned, and started rubbing against the insulation. Up until that point everything was fine, then during takeoff three weeks later, the engine came apart from that rubbing, and blew through the top of the aft fuselage.

There are a number of weapons systems that suffered years of problems, and are considered great today. The Zumwalt, will figure out the problems it has, and eventually will get to the point they have been worked out.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Zaphod,

What concerns me is that we're seeing troubles with this stuff across zumwalt LCS and type 26 I believe it is...

3 of the newest western ship designs all having troubles that in the case of LCS and type 26 are starting to look distressingly major.

As you've said yourself there's definitely something rotten in procurement, and I think many of us are justifiably starting to worry that these incidents indicate a sort of tipping point.

Specifically, a tipping point of corruption and ineptitude in western procurement.

a reply to: roguetechie

The LCS has a long history of problems though. Yes, it has major problems, but it's had years to show that it's systemic, and not individual hulls. The Zumwalt has had a couple of minor problems, and has been at sea a fraction of the time, and it's far too soon to even start worrying about if it's going to go the same route. If in six months we're still seeing problems cropping up, then that's a different story.

Of course procurement is screwed to hell and gone, but there are still damn good programs out there, and programs that have the potential to be damn good.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Yeah, I'm aware of the differences between Zumwalt and LCS.

what's unfortunate is that the troubled program is being bought en masse while Zumwalt is down to at best 3 ships and 91 rounds total for the guns.

Zumwalt at least has potential to be a good program, while LSAT was basically doomed before the first hulls were laid.

Especially now that the HSV-2 swift incident has shown that the littorals are dangerous, AshM's are proliferating, and that if you're going to play in brown water much more than just sheer speed is needed!

That is just the trouble with unobtainium, cannot get it anywhere, so I think they will have to go back to cast iron, plenty of that about.

a reply to: pikestaff

Zumwalt is far from unobtainium...

Realistically, it actually represented the Navy getting back to being a real Navy that does real Navy things rather than endless presence patrols and loitering around conflict zones just waiting to get lit up by supersonic anti ship missiles!

The distributed flexible power systems architecture is something we absolutely need in order to have real and viable surface combatants going forward.

The $866,000 completely proprietary cannon ammunition and proprietary barrel etc was definitely a bad idea.

However, the base systems being developed and integrated into this ship are very necessary.

Even if it winds up as a 1-3 ship tech demonstrator and experimental test bed class.

a reply to: Tardacus

all new ships should be given a proper shakedown cruise close to port. so the kinks are worked out before it gets out halfway to tp sputh pole and breaks down.

a reply to: Tardacus

There no warranty - it's all above and beyond.

We've been building ships with shafts for long long time. Seems shaft seals should be mature tech by now - wonder what's different.

Or is problem a maintenance/operations procedure issue.