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  • #16
    Thought this may fit in here since you dont see this happen very often,

    Bigger than big: Huge ship to haul sub from Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to Puget Sound

    By GEOFF CUNNINGHAM Jr.
    Tuesday, November 3, 2009

    John Huff/Staff photographer The USS Carter Hall LSD 50 (Landing Ship Dock) arrives at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, Monday morning to begin the transport of the now decommissioned NR-1 submarine.

    KITTERY — A ship long enough to hold two football fields has made its way to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in anticipation of a mission that will see it transporting a deactivated research submarine to a Navy facility in Washington State.

    The mammoth 609-foot-long USS Carter Hall motored into Portsmouth Harbor at around noon on Monday carrying 24 officers, 328 enlisted sailors and plenty of room to haul Submarine NR-1 to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

    The USS Carter Hall is a landing ship dock whose routine mission is to transport Marine personnel, landing craft, vehicles and cargo and launch them using landing craft and helicopters in support of military or humanitarian assistance operations.

    The massive ship has a well deck capable of holding two air-cushioned landing craft and a variety of amphibious tracked vehicles.

    The ship's two-spot flight deck can land and service any Navy or Marine helicopter.

    Portsmouth Naval Shipyard officials say the USS Carter Hall traveled to the Portsmouth to pick up the NR-1 submarine — a nuclear-powered research and ocean engineering submarine that arrived at the Kittery yard in December of 2008 for "inactivation."

    An official deactivation ceremony was held for NR-1 in Groton, Conn., on Nov. 21, 2008.

    The crew of the USS Carter Hall will be tasked with taking the submarine to Puget Sound.

    The NR-1 has been configured to a barge as part of the transport process and will be loaded into the USS Carter Hall, which has the ability to lower the well deck into the water to allow the submarine and barge to be loaded inside.

    The barge and NR-1 will be guided into the well deck of Carter Hall utilizing a combination of tugs and the ship's capstan system — a rotating machine that is used to lift or pull heavy objects with the assistance of lines or cables.

    The Navy's website indicates the USS Carter Hall is an armed vessel that can cruise at maximum speeds of up to 23 mph being powered by four 16-cylinder diesels that produce 33,000 "shaft" horsepower.


    Fosters.com - Dover NH, Rochester NH, Portsmouth NH, Laconia NH, Sanford ME
    Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

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    • #17
      Some more talk of merging many US Navy submarine types into the Virginia type hulls (stretched etc.).http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/1...ssile-101511w/

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      • #18
        The Navy’s next boomer
        By Philip Ewing Thursday, October 20th, 2011 6:02 pm

        The Navy’s top submarine planners are confident they can build a new class of ballistic missile boats on time and on cost, without swallowing up the service’s entire shipbuilding budget. But to get there, they admit, everything has to go perfectly.

        Capt. Dave Bishop, program manager for what the bubblehead community now calls “the Ohio-replacement,” – not “SSBN(X),” – gave the Naval Submarine League a detailed brief on his long-term plans on Thursday outside Washington. Although surface-dwellers still debate whether the Navy should “stretch” its Virginia-class attack submarines to build a new class of boomers, the sub force is treating a whole new boat as a done deal, and Bishop’s work has been quietly progressing underneath the surface.

        In fact, for Bishop’s purposes, almost everything is settled: He is planning a class of 12 newly designed, newly built ballistic missile subs equipped with 16 tubes apiece, down from the 24 aboard current Ohio class. The new boomers’ tubes will be able to accommodate the Navy’s existing arsenal of Trident D-5 nuclear world-enders, augmented down the road with a life-extension program. The new subs also would be able to handle a theoretical new missile of tomorrow. (More on that later.)

        The detailed design work for the lead ship will begin in 2015; construction would get underway in 2017, with the start of assembly of the missile compartment; then major work on the boat itself would begin in 2019. Figure about seven years for full assembly, then add time for a shakedown availability, test missile shots for both Gold and Blue crews, and the first Ohio-replacement boomer could take its first deterrent patrol in around 2029, Bishop said.

        During the construction phase, Bishop said the Navy wants to build the first boat in about 84 months, as compared to the 86 months it took to build the first-in-class fast attack sub USS Virginia.

        “That means we need to get everything right,” Bishop said. “We can’t afford to over-expend on anything.”

        So he wants to borrow as much as possible from the Virginias and have as much design work finished as possible before the serious work gets underway – sounds like common-sense ideas, but the Navy does not always adhere to them. Specifically, Bishop wants engineers to finish about 60 percent of design work before major construction.

        “We have to get that right, now,” he said. “There is no more room to slip funding or schedule and not impact my 2019 start. So we have to stay on target.”

        What does it all mean? Same as always: Money. The Navy hasn’t designed a new submarine class in decades, and it hasn’t designed a new ballistic missile submarine since the 1970s. That means a lot of “non-recurring engineering costs” for the original work to design and build the first ship, plus the costs to build the next 11 and operate and sustain them all.

        Naval observers worry it could cost so much money the Navy might not have any left over to build the other ships it wants – and will need as its 1980s-vintage cruisers and destroyers begin to leave the fleet in large numbers. The Navy’s top logistics officer, Vice Adm. Bill Burke, acknowledged it’s still a common fear, and also that there are voices inside the Building that want to delay or even cancel a new boomer to afford other ships.

        “It’s a bitter pill because none of us want to see the Navy get any smaller,” he said. “There are people telling me, ‘Hey Bill, that’s a great idea.’ There are still people out there who believe we’re going to wreck the shipbuilding plan with the Ohio replacement.”

        Burke said he doesn’t agree; he thinks the Navy can prioritize and balance all its programs. Service officials and some congressional allies tried for a time to pay for a new boomer with another part of the federal budget, arguing that the new SSBN was a national strategic asset, not just a Navy toy. But that case does not seem to have won many converts.

        Bishop’s numbers tell the story: He anticipates the first ship will cost $4.5 billion to plan and design, then $6.8 billion to build, for a total overall cost of about $11.3 billion. He believes the follow-on boats will cost about $5.6 billion apiece. But Bishop thinks he can use “government improvements” and “shipbuilder improvements” to get that follow-on cost down, to around $4.9 billion per copy.

        Add up that roughly $700 million per-ship reduction over all the follow-on submarines, and Bishop’s goal is to reduce the overall cost of the program from about $62 billion to around $54 billion, in fiscal 2010 dollars.

        What if he can’t? What if, as in some Navy shipbuilding programs, there are delays and overruns in the class until about the third or fourth hull? What if congressional dysfunction means the Doomsday Device is triggered, or lawmakers allow the U.S. to default on its debt? Well, that’s not allowed to happen. And it’s just best not to think about the state of the surface force in the 2020s.

        Bishop was not glum about his prospects – he talked eagerly about the plan to use modular construction to build the new submarines, which he said would save time and money. Robots will do a lot of the welding and assembly of the Ohio replacement’s missile tubes, for example. By comparison, when human welders built the USS Ohio’s missile tubes, the work was so hot and dangerous that they couldn’t stay on the job for more than 30 minutes at a stretch, Bishop said.

        All this time, money and effort will be worth it because it will yield the best ballistic-missile sub in the world, Bishop said. The boats will have 159 racks for 155 planned crew members, meaning sailors won’t have to share. And they’ll have a comparatively spacious boat, about the same length as the Ohio — some 560 feet — despite its eight fewer missile tubes, and bigger: Planners want the Ohio replacement to displace some 19,700 tons, according to Bishop’s presentation, as compared with the Ohio’s 18,700-ton submerged displacement.

        “It’s becoming a real life submarine,” Bishop said, promising another update at a future sub conference. “Hopefully next time we’ll have a little bit more detail along the way.”

        http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/10/20/th...s-next-boomer/
        Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

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        • #19
          I am adding this recent news story to this older existing thread to give the news story some context.



          Congress wants a sub optimized to host special operations forces

          4/25/2017
          Inside Defense

          Congress wants the Navy to design a submarine optimized to host special operations forces based on the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine.

          Lawmakers envision the SOF-optimized sub to be built after the Navy has met all of its commitments to the nuclear triad.

          "Between 2026 and 2029 the four OHIO class guided missile submarines (SSGNs) will be inactivated and the Navy will lose dual dry deck shelter (DDS) capability and large volume host submarine support to SOF," according to a report on undersea mobility for special operations forces. Congress directed the Navy to submit a report on this topic in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.

          The first 11 Virginia-class attack submarines were built to support SOF operations, with each sub carrying a DDS and outfitted with a lock out trunk, the report reads.

          "Four of these SSNs have been designated as primary SOF support SSNs and have completed DDS testing and certification, and another two have been designated as alternates," according to the report signed by Allison Stiller who is performing the duties and functions of the Navy acquisition executive. Inside the Navy reviewed a copy of the report.

          Block III and IV Virginia-class submarines are not designed to carry a DDS but they do have a lock out trunk, the report reads.

          Once the SSGNs decommission in the mid-2020s the Navy will certify additional Virginia-class submarines to meet SOF availability requirements. However, the service needs to evaluate the technical feasibility of having these subs cross-fitted to host various DDSs. Currently, specific Virginia-class submarines are designated for a particular DDS.

          "The Navy is evaluating the number of single DDS SOF capable submarines to include in Block V; this would provide additional flexibility in meeting USSOCOM availability requirements over that of the currently certified VA Class," according to the report.

          In FY-21, the Navy will begin designing Block VI Virginia-class submarines and this provides the opportunity for the service to optimize the boats for SOF.

          "The Navy SOF stakeholders have begun discussions to provide input to the Block VI design to optimize SOF capability," according to the report. "Although the VA Class hull is too small to support dual DDS operation, the capability of employing two vehicles, one from a single DDS and a second stored vertically in a VPM tube, is under evaluation."

          Block VI Virginia-class submarine design will also consider the need to maximize berthing and training space for SOF while embarked.

          Further, the dry combat submersible program is on track to achieve initial operational capability in FY-19. The DCS is designed to launch and recover from a surface ship, the report reads.

          "While in some scenarios there may be greater operational risk due to the increased detectability of a host surface vessel, the risks can be mitigated by using appropriate tactics, techniques, and procedures, and by selecting a surface delivery platform with reduced detectability and improved situational awareness systems," according to the report.
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          • #20
            Follow on Columbia Class boats after delivery of SSBN’s, may be SSGN’s that also would include Global strike ballistic missiles.
            https://news.usni.org/2017/11/03/nav...-class-boomers

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