By Geoff Fein
A Navy Judge Advocate General report on the finding of metal shavings on the oil side of the main propulsion diesel engines of the USS San Antonio (LPD-17) placed responsibility on numerous failures including poor workmanship and inadequate government oversight during new construction, according to a top Navy official.
The shavings were found in LPD-17’s diesel engines in November 2009.
According to the report’s executive summary: “The investigation identified inadequate workmanship combined with a lack of quality control during new construction as the major cause of the damage. The investigation further identified shortcomings in ship design, systems integration, training, and ship’s force management of critical engineering programs.”
San Antonio, the lead ship of the new LPD-17 class, was built by Northrop Grumman [NOC] Ship Systems. The company just christened its latest, San Diego (LPD-22).
All told, repairs to make San Antonio whole again will run $7.5 million, Rear Adm. David Thomas, Commander Naval Surface Force Atlantic, told reporters during a teleconference yesterday.
“That is the total estimated costs of the necessary main propulsion diesel engine corrective maintenance…to get those engines back up and ready to go,” he said.
The total cost liability is still under discussion between the Navy, Northrop Grumman and the company’s vendors, according to Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).
The report’s conclusions support many of the findings from the industry/Navy technical team investigation into the bearing damage on the LPD main propulsion diesel engines (MPDE) this spring, resulting in a corrective action plan with recommended actions which are already in process, Northrop Grumman said in a statement.
“These recommendations have centered on system design changes, revised lube oil operating and flushing procedures and component-and system-level manufacturing changes. Northrop Grumman has aggressively prosecuted the issues and we are focused on corrective actions and moving forward,” the company said. “We are committed to completing our actions in the plan and we continue to work closely with our subcontractors and with the Navy, so that the operational readiness and the maintenance of the ships can be appropriately addressed.”
Design engineers and Northrop Grumman along with some key subcontractors identified four change areas for increasing reliability:
- Improving lube oil filters;
- Improving the lube oil strainer;
- Defining a better fill and transfer and flushing procedure; and
- Upgrading the service system flushing procedure.
“Those four change areas are being accomplished by the ship builder for the ships under construction before delivery and are being implemented throughout the in-service ships throughout the class at the earliest opportunity,” Thomas said.
According to the report, “Numerous unacceptable conditions coalesced aboard USS San Antonio to produce the ship’s significant engineering problems.
“Inadequate government oversight during the construction process failed to prevent or identify as a problem the lack of cleanliness and quality assurance that resulted in contamination of closed systems. Material challenges with this ship and other ships of the class continue to negatively impact fleet operations. Failures in the acquisition process, maintenance, training, and execution of shipboard programs all share in the responsibility for these engineering casualties,” the report said.
The scope of the investigation, Thomas noted, was focused strictly on the San Antonio. “We are focusing on making San Antonio a reliable fleet asset again.”
The ship should be ready to sail in a few months, he added.
“As it stands now, it appears that [in] August or September we will have these engines back up and ready to go,” Thomas said. “That will begin the opportunities to train the ship. At that point, we will have a better feel for whether or not the repairs will support her next scheduled deployment.”
One determination reached was that “pre-commissioning and the interim framework that were developed did not provide the ship’s force a sufficient level of knowledge to effectively manage the engineering plant,” Thomas said.
San Antonio was designed to be manned and operated presuming all the automated controls and monitoring systems are operating properly, Thomas added.
“The ship’s force ability to operate the plant during normal and casualty operations was severely degraded by the failure of installed monitoring and control systems to operate properly,” he added.
San Antonio, Thomas said, was delivered with some of these systems not operating correctly.
He added the Navy is working to immediately put the report’s recommendations, including the four change areas, into place.
NAVSEA, for example, has begun to address some of these including, change of the system design process improvement and greater government oversight during construction, Thomas added.