26 April 2008
 
Faster Better Cheaper

 

The Princeton explosion 1844
 
It was a tough week. The lawyers told me to empty the contents of my pockets on the desk and see of opposing counsel saw anything she liked. The retirement plan people told me another court order was required to let her take what she wanted and go away. Then we heard that the Big Contract to do things better and cheaper for the government is stalled, since the government can’t seem to get out of its own way on the matter. I had to hang around late in the day waiting, since nothing was happening fast.
 
It was a marvelous day. I stopped on the way home to have a beer with the Judge outside at the Cap City, and marvel at the emergency of the female form on the street with the arrival of Spring. When I got back to Big Pink, I found tempers fraying at the front desk.
 
The Mayor of the building was going at it with some lady who seemed to think that he worked for free after hours, and then I got into it with him even though I knew I should walk away. My issue was about the disappearance of the wind-deflector from the Hubrismobile, which I had temporary removed from the back seat in order to haul some dignitaries around.
 
The precise issue was whether a part of my car was authorized for storage against the wall of my plush garage parking place. The Mayor contended that if I was permitted to do so, the next step was spare engines and tires.
 
He was at the end of his rope, what with the work to replace the riser-pipes and the irate residents, and I was, too. In the end, there was compromise and contrition, but it took more emotion than I could handle at the end of the working week. I finally got back upstairs to Tunnel 8 to discover a note from a colleague about another disaster, though thankfully it was one for which I was not responsible.
 
It was a comfort to see someone else in a pickle. The Navy was going to free itself from the shackles of the cumbersome Pentagon acquisition process. It was a swell idea, since all the cumbersome regulation had resulted from sky-rocketing costs and lack of accountability. The Service thought it could adopt commercial best practice to meet crushing needs.
 
The Secretary of Defense has impressed me with his low-key approach to getting business done, but he has voiced frustration with his fractious components of late, who are still reeling from the non-stop cascade of “snowflakes” that issued from his predecessor’s prodigious pen. 
 
He told the Air Force that he was disappointed with their failure to support the war with unmanned drones, and naturally he stirred up a hornet’s nest of pained opposition. The Zoomies bet the farm on the sleek F-22, a flying marvel of technology that will be useful in future combat, unless it is obsolete first.
 
The Navy squirmed a bit with the Secretary’s remarks, since it is also laden with an inventory of big-ticket hardware that is designed to last a half-century in operational use, and does not have a great deal of application in the current war.
 
Trapped in a force structure of aircraft carriers, Aegis cruisers and submarines, the Admirals responded over the last decade by outlining requirements for fast, low-maintenance, highly capable combat ships with dramatically reduced manning. The answer was to adopt commercial technology and industry best-practice in construction.
 
Anyone who thinks that the Government is the answer to anythingought to consider what happened in response.
 
The Defense Industrial Base is a critical element of national strength. The damage to the ranks of government workers in the long draw-down that followed the end of the Cold War is profound. With no hiring for the better part of a decade, the best and brightest were no longer on the inside, but had retired and joined the legions of the outsourced.
 
That had seemed like a good idea at the time, but the Government is now hostage to five or six mega-companies. In order to do anything, it has to put the idea out for bid to the commercial sector. As an answer to the Navy requirements, two of the Aerospace Giants proposed radically different solutions from a shared commercial heritage: the high-speed car ferry.
 
In 2004, the Navy selected Lockheed and General Dynamics to compete for the business. The model for the Lockheed candidate was dubbed “Freedom,” and based on a mono-hull ferry built in Italy. An Australian trimaran car carrier was the model for the GD prototype, named “Independence.”
 
Charitably, the efforts have been a disaster. There is no need for me to explain how the costs mushroomed, or how what were intended to be low-cost alternatives became gold-plated extravaganzas. Since the Navy could never quite make up its mind what the ships were intended to do, alteration after alteration to the designs were issued.
 
The most expensive thing in the world, besides divorce, is the “ShipAlt.”
 
It is enough to say that the ships were built backward, as if they started with the hull and built inward into increasingly confined spaces, and put in the engine last.
 
The insistence of the Service in having the ships in the water while simultaneously issuing design changes accounts for most of the expense and chaos. I am confident that in the end, the navy will muddle through, though necessarily the grand scheme in numbers will be reduced. The lead ships of a class are always the hardest to build, after all, and every new ship is an adventure in unproven technology.
 
Thus has it ever been, and the weary taxpayer can take at least cold comfort in that.
 
The story of the USS Princeton, first of her name and class, is a microcosm of how the Navy works, then and now. She was an original and creative design of the brilliant innovator John Ericsson, though reality intruded early in the process. She would never have been built without the relentless efforts of a self-promoting and highly ambitious naval officer named Robert F. Stockton in the halls of Congress.
 
Ericsson’s design was a hybrid of old and new. She had masts and sails, but carried in her heart an advanced steam power-plant of original design. It was small enough to be placed below the waterline, improving the ship’s center of gravity, and transmitted its power via shaft to a screw propeller under the stern. The ship had a host of other innovations as well, including a removable stack.
 
She was a sleek lady. On sea trials, she outraced the famed SS Great Western, the massive side-wheel packet-ship that was once the fastest in the world.
 
The key to any ship of war is the main battery, though, and that likewise was the test-bed for a pair of innovative and competitive designs. One was designed by Ericsson and called “Oregon.” It was a 12-inch smooth bore cannon loaded by the muzzle in the old style, and made with the traditional wrought iron.
 
Despite the traditional materials and loading, the gun was a technical marvel. It was capable of firing a 225-pound shot five miles, propelled by fifty pound of black powder. “Oregon” was manufactured in England at the Mersey Iron Works through a revolutionary new process called "built-up construction." It was really cool. Most of the guns of the Civil War period that remain in front of the courthouses feature the big banded silouette.
 
Red-hot iron hoops were placed around the breech-end of the weapon during the forging that pre-tensioned the gun and made the breech able to handle the much higher charge necessary for increased range.
 
The other 12-incher was named “Peacemaker.” It was another muzzle-loader, forged by the firm of Hogg and Delamater of New York City to the design and direction of CAPT Stockton. Attempting to copy Oregon’s capability, but failing to understand the importance of Ericsson's hoop process, Stockton instead decided on a brute-force solution.
 
He had to have it fast, and he had to bring it in with the money he had. The breech heavily reinforced, making the iron thicker. It ended up with a total mass of more than thirteen tons. Despite the weight, Peacemaker had the inherent weakness of wrought iron construction, and the breech was not capable of withstanding the increased transverse pressure of the higher explosive charge. 
 
Time and public relations allowed Stockton only a few test charges in Peacemaker before putting it aboard the Princeton.
 
Stockton made weigh for the Chesapeake from New York in January of 1844, arriving in the Potomac in mid-February. Washingtonians displayed great interest in the ship and her guns at the Navy Yard, and public relations being one of the instruments of Naval Power, Princetontook passenger jaunts with down the placid brown Potomac. Peacemaker was run out and fired several times.
 
1844 was a leap year, and the day before the end of February,Princeton departed Old Town Alexandria (which it wasn’t, then) with a VIP entourage on board. The most prominent of them was President John Tyler, who boarded with his Cabinet and two hundred assorted strap-hangers.
 
The highlight of the trip was to be a demonstration of the guns. With the dignitaries looking on at close range, CAPT Stockton gave the order to fire the Peacemaker. The defective gun burst, instantly killing Secretary of State Upshur and Secretary of the Navy Gilmer, along with Chief, BuNav, CAPT Beverly Kennon, Virgil Maxey of Maryland, and David Gardner, who had been Charge d'Affaires in Belgium for five years, as well as the President’s valet, a slave named Armistead.
 
Twenty more were also injured, including CAPT Stockton, who had all of his hair burned off.
 
Considering the high profile of the disaster, a Court of Inquiry was convened at the Washington Navy Yard.
 
Stockton was able to duck responsibility largely because of his political influence, and blamed the whole matter on Ericsson, who had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
 
For years after, Stockton claimed credit for the innovative design of the ship.
 
Ericsson went on to design the Monitor, another revolutionary ship. But his greatest contribution to the naval art was not cannons, nor power plants, though he stood at the head of his profession in those fields and everything he did for the government was “faster and better.”
 
The feat for which he was memorialized on a pillar next to the Potomac is the screw propeller, which besides the sail remains the near-universal means of navigational propulsion.
 
I used to run by the monument on my route across the river from the pentagon. It was very impressive, and I would often jog around it to great the full experience of the sculpture of the seated Ericsson, six and a half feet tall, with three standing figures representing "adventure," "labor," and "vision."
 
I am not aware of any monument to Stockton, though the bell of thePrinceton is at the borough hall in New Jersey.
 
Ericsson’s experience with Stockton left a bad taste in his mouth. He maintained a hearty contempt for the political sort of Naval officer common to Washington. He also harbored a deep suspicion for the acquisition process, which is entirely warranted.
 
Faster, Better, Cheaper. Only two of those three words can apply to government procurement, and while it is possible to choose which ones, the Admirals and Generals always get it wrong when they insist on all three.
 
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com