"Just under two years after the amphibious transport dock New Orleans
(pictured) was delivered incomplete, the [amphibious ship] still can't perform the central mission (.pdf) for which it was designed," Defense News reports. Flaws include poor ventilation, unfinished vehicle ramps and, perhaps most gravely, bad electrical wiring.
Looks like plans to deploy New Orleans overseas next year might be a bit, um, premature.
The flaws make New Orleans at least the fourth major warship to come out of Northrop Grumman's Gulf Coast shipyards with major deficiencies. New Orleans' sister ship San Antonio, was a "disaster" when it was launched in 2003. The Coast Guard cutter Bertholf, finished this year, had a long list of problems, and so does Makin Island, a Wasp-class amphibious ship still under construction.
Hurricane Katrina is partly to blame for some of the botched vessels. The storm heavily damaged three Northrop shipyards and resulted in a $100 million taxpayer-funded bailout.
But even with the cash injection, the yards have struggled to keep up with big demand for big ships as the Navy tries to grow its fleet.
So what's up? A skilled-labor shortage exacerbated by bad management, according to Martin
Shearington, a contract shipwright who contacted me last year to describe huge problems at the Pascagoula, Mississippi, yard. "Workmanship is low [quality]. The welding is low [quality]. The inspectors working for
Northrop Grumman don’t know what they're doing. The welders just take a test and that's it. Most aren't certified."
Regarding problems with metalwork, Shearington claimed, "they’re saying they’re just going to paint over it."
As a result of shoddy work, "those ships will never do what they were designed to do," he said.
Photo: Navy
