Two never-used Navy ships head to scrapyard
posted at 8:30 am on July 16, 2011 by Jazz Shaw
I’m not sure precisely what lesson there is to be learned from this, other than it being an example of precisely how wrong things can go when a massive bureaucracy’s thousands of left hands lose track of what its thousands of right hands are doing. But you won’t need many guesses as to who gets stuck with the bill.
Two ships ordered for the Navy back when Ronny was still president are on their way to be converted into razor blades this year. That, in itself, is not all that unusual. The “ghost fleets” are periodically trimmed in this fashion. The startling aspect of this story is that these ship never saw a single day of service.
Embroiled by legal battles for more than 25 years, two U.S. Navy ships are finally headed to the scrap heap without ever having sailed and despite the fact that they’re almost completely finished.
According to Hampton Roads, the USNS Bejamin Isherwood and the USNS Henry Eckford were commissioned in 1985 at the Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Co. to carry fuel to the Navy’s fleet around the globe.
When the company defaulted on its Navy contract in 1989 the 660-foot ships were sent to Florida for completion, but cost disputes terminated that contract in 1993.
Since then, the vessels have sat 95 and 84 percent complete at the mouth of the James River as part of the mothballed ghost fleet.
Since the breakdown of the process in 1993 the United States has made a few efforts to salvage something out of this debacle. They tried selling the vessels off to a private contractor to finish them and sell them to a NATO ally. Unfortunately, these are fuel tankers and they were designed with a single hull. Since the project began the rules have changed and all such ships must be double hulled for anyone to put them in service, so there are no takers.
Now they will be gutted and torn apart for scrap. So will we get back the unspecified millions of dollars which we’ve already sunk into the project? If you think so, I assume you’re new to American politics. No, we actually paid a U.K. company an additional $10M to take them off our hands (along with two other ghost fleet ships) and salvage them for materials.
Careless planning and bureaucratic mismanagement. And you’re getting stuck with the bill.
Blowback
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80% of the American people support recycling metals.
rogerb on July 16, 2011 at 8:37 AM
Actually, I’m not entirely sure there was a way to avoid this from the government end. Sometimes you have to stop throwing good money after bad.
Count to 10 on July 16, 2011 at 8:39 AM
Hell, they must not have tried too hard. You could carry vegetable oil or corn syrup in them and the boat wouldn’t know the difference.
viking01 on July 16, 2011 at 8:41 AM
Decades and billions of dollars and I absolutely guarantee you this is but one of thousands of examples.
If any regular citizen (instead of a government accountant) with a note pad and a calculator was allowed to go through all government departments they could find about 1/3 of the money spent is flushed right down a toilet.
Tim Zank on July 16, 2011 at 8:44 AM
it wasn’t their money so no one cared.
rob verdi on July 16, 2011 at 8:45 AM
8 words that say it all about our government.
CW on July 16, 2011 at 8:52 AM
I’ve probably mentioned before a friend who worked for a government agency who told me that whenever anyone asked him how many people worked there he would say “About fifty percent.”
viking01 on July 16, 2011 at 8:58 AM
Considering this story…..and sand-on-the-seashore others tell me again why THE PAPPY PLAN won’t work?
Two simple steps:
1. Seal the border.
2. 10% Across-the-board spending cuts.
Can a agency not find 10% to cut? How many illegals in say California are on Food Stamps? Medicare? State assistance?
These two “shared sacrifice” steps EVERYONE could understand. Heck, maybe if Congress would pass it we could treat them to a cruise with all the $350 a bottle wine they could drink…..and we’d still save money!!
Just a thought.
PappyD61 on July 16, 2011 at 9:02 AM
Could have just donated them to Canada to serve in their arctic region to thwart Russian and Chinese attempts to control the oil under the waters there – but Canada has a Conservative P.M., so that just wouldn’t do, eh?
honsy on July 16, 2011 at 9:05 AM
Good enough for government work.
Gwillie on July 16, 2011 at 9:08 AM
Winna
docflash on July 16, 2011 at 9:09 AM
And no…..our kids and Grandkids will be stuck with our gift to them…..our Chinese MasterCard (no limit).
Of course we also expect our kids and Grandkids to pay for our retirements. We are truly ignorant of basic Economics.
PappyD61 on July 16, 2011 at 9:09 AM
Should give them to the Gaza Flotilla folks, but having modified the navigation systems so that they could only wind up in Somalia pirate waters.
Robert17 on July 16, 2011 at 9:12 AM
Well, as a government employee I’ll tell you this; my stock answer to that question is “about a third of us”.
darkpixel on July 16, 2011 at 9:15 AM
I’m not sure what lesson we should draw from Jazz’s story. Stop building ships for the Navy?
The reasons cited for why these ships never made it into the fleet—well, they sound rational to me.
- A contractor defaulted and the follow-on contractor failed to budget properly. Those things happen. When those things do happen, you punish the contractor…and it sounds like that’s what happened here.
- Building the ships in the first place doesn’t sound like a dumb idea. Our Navy consumes fuel, and there are no Citgo stations in battle zones, so we have to carry our fuel with us.
- The environmental laws changed. Well, those things happen, too.
So, Jazz, what should we have done differently?
smagar on July 16, 2011 at 9:16 AM
It is not surprising that it cost money to scrap them. Thanks to onerous regulations, there was lots of environmental remediation aspects such as removal and disposing of fluorescent lights, mostly for the ballast of these lights which may have contained PCB’s. Then there is the cost for cutting of steel which may have been coated by paint/primer considered toxic by today’s EPA.
That being said, the U.K. company likely is one which purchased a U.S. scrap recycler, such as the former Southern Scrap, which was based in New Orleans, and does a fair amount of ship breaking.
Kermit on July 16, 2011 at 9:18 AM
This is what happens when people who have never operated in the private sector are in charge. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just sink them and let them become fish habitat?
darwin-t on July 16, 2011 at 9:19 AM
I know the story on these ships. They were Kaiser class oilers, built in an inept shipyard with heavy Democratic ties in Philly. They were really messed up in construction, with an unsuccessful attempt to fix them in another yard. Since then, the serving Kaiser class oilers have been modified and kept up to standards. These bollard huggers have moldered, without the regular upkeep that makes a ship so expensive to keep in top operating order.
It is better that these sorry-ass ships never carry fuel oil and av-gas. The US would pay out a lot of money if their double-bottoms failed and there was a major spill. I would not sail in them if I had a choice.
FWIW, I spent 15 months on a sistership, the USNS Walter S. Diehl (TAO-193).
NaCly dog on July 16, 2011 at 9:21 AM
stupid gummint mandated double-hulled tankers!
sesquipedalian on July 16, 2011 at 9:21 AM
Is it too late to name one of them the “U.S.S. Barack H. Obama”?
The Reasonable Man on July 16, 2011 at 9:22 AM
Also, it costs real money to keep a ship at a berth, or even anchored.
Everything seems to be completely on the up and up in the Navy’s dealings, from its part.
Kermit on July 16, 2011 at 9:25 AM
Rename them after the Union and shipyard that built them the tow them out to sea and let the loose as they arrived from that Philly shipyard.
Make sure the media is there to cover it as they sink.
Fitting.
PappyD61 on July 16, 2011 at 9:30 AM
proud 20%-er.
RealMc on July 16, 2011 at 9:31 AM
I still surprised at the cost overruns we get stuck with after we have a “contract” but this is crazy. And we can even do the scraping? Wouldn’t that be a green job?
Cindy Munford on July 16, 2011 at 9:32 AM
I say name them the Arlen and the Specter then scuttle them. The defaulting PA shipyard probably got the contracts to keep Snarlin’ Arlen from going Benedict Arnold on the GOP twenty years before he finally did.
viking01 on July 16, 2011 at 9:36 AM
Sigh. Hey tool, here’s your sarc tag. /
On a serious note, driving and navigating big oilers takes a lot of skill and training. The sea is always waiting for you. Plenty of cautionary tales on grounding, collisions, and off of Mozambique, waves that have snapped ships in half.
If we used pipelines and drilled our own available oil, the environmental risks to the oceans would go down. Leftists and Environmentalists put at risk the major source of the planet’s oxygen so they can feel better. Yet another reason people who really care about a better, cleaner planet that coexists with humans to hate the Left.
NaCly dog on July 16, 2011 at 9:41 AM
Selling them to the Brits so they can cut them up and sell the scrap metal and keep the money? How unimaginative is that? Why didn’t they sink them to creat a new artificial reef? Oh I forgot. They BUY old boats for that!
Mahdi on July 16, 2011 at 9:42 AM
Fallon on July 16, 2011 at 9:42 AM
Ahh, democratic party corruption feeding (surprise) a greed union some work, -a familiar pattern. Thanks for the rest of the story.
slickwillie2001 on July 16, 2011 at 9:45 AM
darwin-t on July 16, 2011 at 9:54 AM
No, the US navy that entire time had access in time of emergency to those two fueling vessels which could have been fitted and put in service in short notice rather than having the long lead time started from scratch in a time of war. The US received some value by having quick access to these ships if we ever needed them.
tommylotto on July 16, 2011 at 10:10 AM
Take and sink them off the jersey shore to become natural reefs so we can stop the folly of ‘beach replenishment’.
red131 on July 16, 2011 at 10:15 AM
Bingo
jnelchef on July 16, 2011 at 10:22 AM
How about making them the first ships in the “Illegal Alien Repatriation Service”?
BobMbx on July 16, 2011 at 10:24 AM
If the original shipyard defaulted then every third rivet on each boat is probably a scrap bolt, some super glue, a bit of Bondo and spray paint… but from fifty feet away it looks pretty good.
viking01 on July 16, 2011 at 10:31 AM
Not so. Had the Navy tried to use them in an ‘emergency’ *war(, the tree-huggers would have filed a lawsuit that would have tied them up in useless blather in court for years.
The ‘emergency’/war would have been over long before it was done.
Solaratov on July 16, 2011 at 10:33 AM
What a shock that the Pentagon wasted taxpayer money.
Moesart on July 16, 2011 at 10:33 AM
No. Your idea would be a true waste of money. Running charges would be over $50K per day, since you have to feed them.
Simpler to make the country inhospitable to illegal aliens, and a direction we are already headed. If we had the leadership, we can solve the problem in a short time. But fixing Mexico will take longer.
NaCly dog on July 16, 2011 at 10:34 AM
Hmm… I MAY have actually been on one of those. Hydraulics Company I worked for for a short time had a contract to redo some equipment out there, and a couple of times I ended up on the James River “ghost fleet.”
JamesLee on July 16, 2011 at 10:34 AM
edit:
“…’emergency’ (war),…..”
{Recent eye surgery. That’s my story; and I’m stickin’ to it.)
Solaratov on July 16, 2011 at 10:36 AM
Re the scrapping: The UK company mentioned will likely tow the hulls to someplace like Alang, in India. The cost of environmental impact studies alone would make such an operation laughably uneconomical before it ever got off the ground in the West. No such environmental, or human, constraints in Asia. And the double hull nonsense is solely for the protection of ducks, otters and other cute critters, a few dozen of which might buy it in the event of a mishap. Sure oil spills are bad, but they’re not intentional, and guess what, oil is an ORGANIC material. It gets absorbed and processed by the environment — except for the tiny tiny percentage scrubbed from ducks and rocks for the Good Morning America cameras by green-struck college coed volunteers. In other words Gaia recycles it! The nature lovers have conveniently lost sight of that fact.
Our USA national defense is being dictated by the likes of Greenpeace. Feeling safe?
curved space on July 16, 2011 at 10:36 AM
Pretty sure they can pin this on W…
Chicost84 on July 16, 2011 at 10:36 AM
Why would we want to fix Mexico? Seriously.
A strong, well-guarded border would keep that problem at bay.
Solaratov on July 16, 2011 at 10:39 AM
Anyone who thinks there’s not ten percent fat in the military budget is smoking something.
flyoverland on July 16, 2011 at 10:44 AM
Every time there is a Democratic administration or legislature our defenses at the border would be wiped out.
The villages of Mexico that supply many of our male illegals have very few men in them. We have a lot of beta males that are unemployed. My evil plan is to teach them Spanish, set up a VISTA type program and send them south to help the ladies. Win-win-win.
NaCly dog on July 16, 2011 at 10:58 AM
True, but the military is the best run Department of the government. Other agencies waste up to 90% of their funding. HUD and Dept. of Ed., I’m looking at you.
NaCly dog on July 16, 2011 at 11:00 AM
Not to mention Defense as being essential is directly in our Constitution.
The Marxist parasites infecting both DOEs (ED and Energy) , HUD, EPA etc. not mentioned or wanted by the Founders, at all.
viking01 on July 16, 2011 at 11:14 AM
And we can’t seem to cut military spending…
PatriotRider on July 16, 2011 at 11:20 AM
Would you rather live with a problem next door, or fix it? It’s a question of costs, one way and the other. But remember that the costs are borne over generations.
At the very least, we should have policies that make things better instead of making it worse. And yes, effective border control is a start. Supporting the good guys in Mexico when it costs us nothing or nearly nothing is a good step. The problem is that your definition of good guys can change with time. Remember, in WWII the US Army worked with the American Mafia to get access to their connections in Sicily. It was thirty years before we began to get that mess cleaned up.
njcommuter on July 16, 2011 at 11:24 AM
You are absolutely right. Cut the defense budget immediately.
ernesto on July 16, 2011 at 11:29 AM
PackerBronco on July 16, 2011 at 11:32 AM
I’m sure there is, but 1. I’m not going to quibble over the cost of defense, it works or it doesn’t and if it doesn’t, nothing else matters, and 2. defense is constitutionally mandated, unlike just about every other federal department.
Hiya Ciska on July 16, 2011 at 11:41 AM
No one is against cutting the defense budget.
Cindy Munford on July 16, 2011 at 11:47 AM
My husband worked for DOD as a civilian. From time to time they were told that their budget would be cut by a percentage and they managed to meet those requirements. Within their department and without the ability to lay people off. The government has this crazy requirement that if you don’t spend your allotted budget by the end of the fiscal year, the department will lose that money. Same thing with our local school district. People will buy some stupid stuff to spend that money. In what world does this make sense?
Cindy Munford on July 16, 2011 at 11:52 AM
A lot of Republicans – although certainly they aren’t true conservatives – are exactly against cutting the military budget in any substantial way. The dynamic duo of McCain and Grahamnesty leap immediately to mind. Peter King is another high-profile example, although thee are many such in the GOP caucus.
Inkblots on July 16, 2011 at 11:54 AM
I have long wondered what happened to these boats. I was an electrician at Tampa Shipbuilding and a member of the test and trials crew that would have taken the Isherwood for sea trials.
I can’t comment on what happened in Pennsylvania but in Florida the story was pure incompetence by management and union foot dragging by labor.
From day 1 the project was mismanaged. The parts not installed were crated in huge 8′x8′ wooden crates 5′ tall with no concern for contents. Machine parts were thrown on top of light fixtures…
This act of near sabotage by the Pennsylvania workers who were losing their jobs was not appreciated but was understandable.
Arriving in Florida the crates were opened and inventoried… then the parts were returned to the crates!
At the time the yard lost the contract and closed putting 1200 workers on our a$$es without notice, I had been waiting for 6 weeks for the engineers to decide what type of load test equipment to order. The engineer from Seimens (over from Germany) had already given the go ahead on both main and auxiliary generators and was spending his days fine tuning gauges out of boredom.
I am normally accused of being hyper-critical of the government but in this case their only error was not pulling the contract out from under incompetent management sooner.
MaaddMaaxx on July 16, 2011 at 11:55 AM
That’s why I like an across the board cuts, no scared cows or trusts go untouched.
Cindy Munford on July 16, 2011 at 12:01 PM
Rest assured that there was plenty of pressure on NAVSEA from Democratic legislators to keep them in Philly.
NaCly dog on July 16, 2011 at 12:02 PM
Drop them on Tehran.
Akzed on July 16, 2011 at 12:03 PM
This is right.
tommylotto, I continue to be impressed with your comments.
tommylotto is right. USNS type ships are usually for national emergencies.
It’s kinda like spending money on insurance that you never use. It doesn’t mean that you wasted your money on the insurance.
blink on July 16, 2011 at 12:44 PM
This is the same government that is going to run our healthcare system.
Disgusting.
GaltBlvnAtty on July 16, 2011 at 1:04 PM
Private corporations in fact have their own boondoggles, and the costs of their mistakes get passed on to their customers one way or another.
The military-industrial complex must be fed or else we’ll have no one to build our stuff for national defense (or offense) when we need it. Gone are the days when Chrysler and Ford can retool in under a year and start rolling Sherman tanks off of the assembly line. The U.S. may no longer have the luxury of gearing up for war and then going in when we’re good and ready if we go up against Russia or China.
We let the fiscal penny-pinchers scalp our military time and again in our history, and all that did was to make us run around like chickens with our heads cut off when a national emergency rolled up on us.
We have some of the best military equipment in the world. We have a huge military and new programs are always coming down the pike. There are bound to be mess-ups, changes in the needs of the military and so on. But, no…let’s focus on the fiscal disasters so we can attack the usual suspects.
So, the United States didn’t start building Navy ships in Philadelphia until the Democrats and unions took over…huh, didn’t know that. I guess that explains all those WW II ships that sank by themselves within a week of being launched.
Dr. ZhivBlago on July 16, 2011 at 1:06 PM
Uh, no. The US Navy had transfered all of it’s auxiliary ships to USNS so that crew manning is smaller. Even paying commercial wages for Union seafarers, the net cost is lower for the Navy. Our global reach requires USNS ship accompany every battelgroup. They are not in port very much, another reason the USN lets the civilians run with them, they get a higher op-tempo.
S
The Philly yard had not kept up with the advances in shipbuilding like Ingalls in Pascagoula and Bath Iron Works in Maine. In the 80′s Philly was a non-competitive work programs for local workers, forced on NAVSEA to get support for the building program in Congress.
There was only so much SUPSHIP Philly could do to keep the quality up. I heard from an insider at NAVSEA that the keel and frames were not assembled within specs.
NaCly dog on July 16, 2011 at 1:26 PM
No, the U.S.S. Obama is a leaky rowboat armed with a pop gun and toy airplanes on loan to the Indonesian Navy.
turfmann on July 16, 2011 at 2:20 PM
I would think the Navy could tow them out to deep water and sink them for much less than $10 million…
oddball on July 16, 2011 at 2:40 PM
Not an aircraft carrier; this president deserves a destroyer named after him.
slickwillie2001 on July 16, 2011 at 2:43 PM
where is our Republican congress? this is the sort of outrage that gets voters so frustrated/enraged that their blood pressure begins to rise and they, for the sake of their health, have to simply drop out of the political process. DD
Darvin Dowdy on July 16, 2011 at 2:48 PM
How about prison ships for the union thugs, the corrupt ship yard company officials, and the politicans that caused this theft of millions from the American citizens?
TiminPhx on July 16, 2011 at 3:03 PM
Forget it Tim, it’s Washington. Plenty of much bigger scandals out there.
NaCly dog on July 16, 2011 at 3:09 PM
We could have sold them to Bangladesh, but the greens have killed that option long ago… Thanks Sierra Club!
Theworldisnotenough on July 16, 2011 at 3:40 PM
Because the argument to do so is mostly a red herring, much like saying “well, if we’re going to cut spending, it’s only “fair” that we raise taxes too”.
xblade on July 16, 2011 at 4:08 PM
right on xblade, right on!
Minorcan Maven on July 16, 2011 at 4:48 PM
Too bad they cannot donate them to the Sea Shepherd. Gotta love whale wars.
rbendana on July 16, 2011 at 9:04 PM
Just put them on the curb on garbage day – they will disappear in no time. Sink them for artificial reef, use them for target practice, get some use from them – don’t add more money to a debacle.
Corsair on July 16, 2011 at 9:59 PM
I was thinking the pirates would have been willing to just buy them outright and use them as mother-ships.
But I think messing with the flotilla types is a worthy enough goal to justify the interim step.
J.E. Dyer on July 17, 2011 at 1:27 PM
That was my other thought. Seems like a waste to just break them up, when they could be torpedoed or shot at or hit with a Harpoon.
J.E. Dyer on July 17, 2011 at 1:29 PM
Reminds me of a scene in one of my favorite movies, “Dave“.
Kevin Kline’s character, President William Harrison Marshall, physically resembles George H.W. Bush, but in behavior more closely resembles the similarly-named William Jefferson Clinton, who was President when the movie came out.
If you haven’t seen “Dave”, I recommend it. It’s a very sweet and funny movie.
Mary in LA on July 18, 2011 at 3:23 PM