Sounds good. I was just wondering if anyone could build an “Antarctica 'industrial-strength” breaker. Now, wondering if getting a “furrin” country to buld one would ever make it through Congress.
I have to disagree with “incompetent at everything it does”. Drug interdiction seems to be working pretty good and the SAR missions as well. If I’m wrong, feel free to disagree but I will need to some “facts”.
The helicopter SAR is amazing, when they are in range.
The boat SAR is probably more or less ok, but nothing special.
The drug interdiction? At enormous cost, and distraction from more important missions like SAR (and USCG licensing) the USCG interdicts a tiny percentage of the drugs coming into the US. There doesn’t seem to be any drug shortage, and there appears to be a great many people on drugs, so I have to call that mission a failure.
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I must admit I’m having difficulty understanding how a nation that can build nuke aircraft carriers and nuke subs, both boomers and fast attacks can’t build an icebreaker? Of course, being the red-headed step-child of the military doesn’t help.
The US shipbuilding industry is capable of producing a heavy polar icebreaker. As you said, the fact that you are already building far more “difficult” ships such as aircraft carriers and submarines proves it.
It would take more time than the various co-operation models discussed earlier and you’d still need to buy at least the propulsion equipment and possibly main engines from abroad, but it’s certainly doable.
Getting some help with the design probably wouldn’t hurt either.
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its not like we didnt know this 10 years ago. The USCG is way over extended in their missions and needs to be reined in. Bollinger is also part of the problem remember the USCG 40’s that were stretched to 80 with disastrous results
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One US shipbuilder described the difference between warship and commercial ship construction was like manufacturing an 18 wheeler and a Ferrari.
you take one steel plate and weld it to another its noit rocket science.
ive been in the shipyards for 40 yrars you cant let them double talk there way out of it.
I’ve never worked in a shipyard but I know some shipyard workers.
What about this?" Understanding NAVSEA Welding and AWS Welding Certifications
Just wanted to give a plug for Peter Rybski’s blog that heavily focuses on icebreakers: https://sixtydegreesnorth.substack.com/
He recently spoke about the Polar Security Cutter mess on the Midrats podcast: Episode 708: The Icebreaker Imperative, with Peter Rybski
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Before you weld plates together you have to have design drawing to build from.
You make the detailed building drawing, or today more likely a computer program, for how to cut and bend the plates, frames and girders.
Now you can start to weld plates into sections that is used to weld together hull blocks that is transported to the building dock and welded together with other blocks into a completed hull. (Not a functioning ship)
Now you have a to choose:
1, You can start outfitting the hull at the same yard.
PS> Most likely you have to import some (or most) of the machinery and major equipment from abroad and get subcontractors to fit piping, cabling, crew quarters etc. before you can commission and test the system for delivery to Owners.
(You MAY even have to get manufacture’s technicians to do some of that)
- Or you can transport/tow the hull to another yard for outfitting. Maybe closer to the equipment suppliers and with skilled workers on site.
As you say it is not rocket science to make that choice if your yard is in a high cost country and there are yards willing to build the hulls (blocks) for a lot lower price.
PS> Quality control is necessary, no matter where in the world you build ships. I have seen the result when you build ships/boats/rigs w/o proper owner representation at the yard.
Hull being transported from building yard in S.E.Asia to outfitting yard in N.W Europe:
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Ombugge pretty well sums it up. If you want to go to sea in a submarine that has been welded up by someone severely lacking in the rocket science department that’s up to you.
Once you have witnessed the acceptance trials that a warship is put through the difference would become more obvious. Doing the same to a standard merchant ship hull would tear the rudder off and write off both anchors and chain for a start.
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Forgive my lack of management level shipbuilding expertise but since construction templates appear or I have been told are available and used worldwide for most commercial bottoms, and a USCG icebreaker would not be a platform for classified weapon systems, a design bought from a Finnish, Norwegian etc yard just for example would appear to be the answer.
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Wow and funny. The most humerous part is the USCG in the last four decades or so tries so hard at pretending to be a modern naval power with relevant naval weapon systems instead of sticking to their core missions. The CG flag level staff are overwhelmingly USCG academy grads and the “naval” mindset instead of “mariner” mindset is dominant. Around 2012-2014 timeframe there was a push by the Commandant to allow an additional four star admiral billet to be created, so that the Coast Guard could sit at the little kiddy table at JCS meetings in case the Commandant was overseas or actually involved in doing core mission work. I may be incorrect but believe the USCG preferably needed a 4 star to attend as an observer. The aforementioned details may not entirely be correct, but the point is, the Coast Guard’s lack of relevant priorites needs to stop. No, USCG, your naval military relevance ended with coastal bombardment and WPB 82ft squadrons assisting swift boats in Vietnam era.
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Sad. You’ll have to do research rather than troll this forum.
What you’re referring to is the so-called “parent design approach”. It’s one of the reasons why the current PSC project has stalled. They took a German design for a civilian-spec polar research and resupply vessel that had not been built but was nonetheless claimed to be mature and production-ready, and turned that into what Bollinger is now trying to build.
Whereas you can take an European frigate design and — at least in theory — adapt it to US Navy service with only minor modifications because at the end of the day modern frigates have fairly similar missions worldwide, the same does not apply to icebreakers (and, to be honest, didn’t really apply to the frigates either). No-one has quite the same mission profile as the United States Coast Guard and any existing design would have to be scooped clean and reworked internally. The end result would be a new design anyway. Even if you could somehow carry over most of the parent design, you’d still have to “Americanize” it and adapt it to the US shipyard’s production practices.
Wikipedia has a pretty exhaustive list of icebreakers in service worldwide and detailed articles of most. For the rest, you can look up their names (add “icebreaker” to the query if the ship is named after someone to filter the results) to get a photograph and some basic data. The only suitable candidate I can think of is Le Commandant Charcot, the French cruise ship that recently sailed from Alaska to Norway across the polar ice cap.
Instead of taking an existing design and rework that, you could as well start from scratch using the same design methods, principles and tools that were used in previous successful projects, and the end result would be a tailored design that should match the USCG’s mission profile.
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Design: Stirling Design International / VARD / Aker Arctic / Ponant
Battery system:
Builder:
my point is that there is alot of graft and corruption in military work and a complete lack of oversight during ALL phases of construction and Bollinger and the USCG are leaders in that field
Or the 100’s stretched to 125?
However, the Coast Guard has “special abilities” for lack of a better word that come in very handy at times. WWII landing craft for example. Then again, will there ever be another war like that again? During Prohibition, Coasties died because they were outgunned by the rumrunners. What happens with drug interdiction if the druggies start ending heavily armed boats to defend their drug mules? Just thinking about the possibilities.