Littoral Combat Ships

[surfgun]

By Tony Capaccio

(Bloomberg) — Lockheed Martin Corp. is under orders from the U.S. Navy to correct quality control failures in building its version of the Littoral Combat Ship, an issue that has delayed deliveries and resulted in three citations from the service’s shipbuilding inspectors.

The Navy’s supervisor of shipbuilding issued “Corrective Action Requests” in May, June and July of 2015, with one of the three withdrawn after the contractor’s plan to resolve the issue was accepted, Dale Eng, a spokesman for the service, said in an e-mail.

The quality questions, which hadn’t been disclosed previously, add to concerns about the $29 billion program that Defense Secretary Ash Carter has reduced to 40 vessels from 52. The citations also could hurt Lockheed’s chances in a future competition with Austal Ltd., which builds another version of the ship. No corrective action requests have been issued against Austal, according to Eng.

The Pentagon plans to choose one of the two companies by 2019 to build as many as nine ships in a new, heavier version intended to be more armed and survivable, like a frigate. The Littoral Combat Ship, intended for missions such as mine-clearing in shallow coastal waters, has been criticized as too vulnerable to attack in combat.

‘Systemic’ Deficiencies

The Defense Contract Management Agency found Lockheed has “systemic quality deficiencies” at the Marinette Marine Yard in Wisconsin, where it builds the ships, agency spokesman Mark Woodbury said in an e-mail.

The citations to Lockheed were for inadequate oversight of vessel propulsion systems, an “inability to adequately control critical system cleanliness” on those systems for the USS Milwaukee and USS Detroit and a failure by the company and its subcontractor, the marine unit of Fincantieri SpA, “to ensure adequate subcontractor oversight,” according to Eng.

The citation for inadequate oversight of the propulsion system was withdrawn on April 7 after the Navy and the contract management agency concluded Lockheed’s corrective action plan was adequate, but the other two remain in effect, Eng said. Lockheed “has been diligently working their plan of action and milestones schedule toward closure” of the remaining citations by mid-September, he said.

Lockheed spokesman John Torrisi said in an e-mail that the company takes each “Corrective Action Request very seriously, as each one identifies manufacturing and training improvements, which our industry team implements, in close coordination with the Navy.”

He said all three Lockheed-built Littoral Combat ships delivered to the Navy so far “have met or exceeded Navy specifications for quality and performance prior to acceptance” and that the Bethesda, Maryland-based contractor and its industry partners have invested more than $100 million to improve the Wisconsin shipyard, hire more staff and train its workforce.

Lockheed’s quality shortfalls were the main cause of a three-month delay in delivering one of the ships, the USS Milwaukee, which was damaged during preparations for a trial at sea when the starboard propulsion shaft was “inadvertently operated without proper lubrication,” according to Eng. The Milwaukee was sidelined less than two months after its eventual October delivery by an apparently unrelated gear issue. Similarly, the Lockheed-made USS Fort Worth suffered extensive damage at dockside in Singapore in January when its crew failed to follow proper lubrication procedures.

GAO Report

Broader questions about the Littoral Combat Ship also persist. In a draft report stamped “For Official Use Only,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended that Congress “consider not funding” either of the two vessels requested by the Pentagon for next year “because of unresolved concerns with lethality and survivability,” the Navy’s lack of funding “to make needed improvements and the current schedule performance of the shipyards.” The Navy is reviewing the report.

But congressional support for the ship, and the shipbuilding jobs it provides, remains strong. In H.R. 4909, its version of the defense authorization bill for fiscal 2017, the House Armed Services Committee added a third ship. The House Appropriations defense subcommittee, which often follows the policy panel’s lead, acts on the defense bill Wednesday. The Senate Armed Services panel also will craft its version of the authorization measure this week.

The GAO also recommended that Carter not approve the Navy’s current procurement strategy until “it completes a significant portion” of detailed design for the future frigate-like ships before soliciting competitive bids.

Captain Thurraya Kent, a Navy spokeswoman, said in a statement that she wouldn’t comment on the GAO’s draft report because she didn’t “know what changes may or may not be made” before it is made final and because the Navy’s views will be incorporated in a Pentagon response.

Schedule Delays

Aside from Lockheed’s quality issues, there have been “significant schedule delays” at its Wisconsin shipyard and at Henderson, Australia-based Austal’s facility in Alabama, according to the GAO draft. “Our analysis of Navy contracting and budget documents identified that actual or planned deliveries of almost all LCS under contract” through the 26th ship “were delayed by as much as 19 months” from their original delivery dates.

With delays, “there is not a schedule imperative to awarding additional LCS in fiscal 2017 as the shipyards will both have work remaining from prior contract awards — not including any other work from other Navy or commercial contracts,” GAO said.

Three more of Lockheed’s Freedom-class vessels are already projected to be six or seven months each behind their original schedules, according to the GAO. Four Austal vessels are estimated to be as much as 15 months late, the GAO said.
http://gcaptain.com/u-s-navy-asks-lo...-lcs-problems/

[Gun Grape]

"The Fort Worth 'has just had a terrific deployment to the Pacific' Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said to a House Defense Appropriations subcommittee on March 1, without noting it's been sitting immobile in port.

Look at what she did before she broke down. It has been a good deployment. The Navy might want to rethink (again) the crew swap program though

From Wiki

Fort Worth reached the 7th Fleet area of responsibility on 4 December 2014. The ship is expected to remain in the area until March 2016.[27] It will be the longest deployment of a U.S. warship in 42 years, since the aircraft carrier USS Midway was under way for 327 days in 1973. The long deployment is to stress the Navy’s logistics capabilities and identify potential problems. Once the deployment is completed, Freedom will take the ship's place, returning to the area again.[28]

On 31 December 2014, Fort Worth was dispatched from Singapore to the Java Sea to take part in the search for Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 that crashed on 28 December.[29][30] On 3 January 2015 she arrived in the area to commence search efforts alongside the destroyer USS Sampson at the request of the Indonesian government. The maneuverability and shallow draft of the design allowed her to conduct expeditious visual and radar searches in the congested, shallow water environment.[31] Both ships concluded search efforts on 15 January 2015 after performing 650 combined search hours. Fort Worth provided unique capabilities over the larger Sampson, and employed her two 11-metre (36 ft) RHIBs in 107 hours of operations. A team from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One was embarked on the ship, operating three Tow Fish side scan sonar systems to search for wreckage during 78 hours over 12 sq nmi (16 sq mi; 41 km2), the AN/PQS-2A passive sonar to listen for black box pings during 17 hours over 24 sq nmi (32 sq mi; 82 km2), and a remotely operated vehicle to investigate objects.[32]

On 13 May 2015 the Chinese foreign ministry sent a complaint to the United States after Fort Worth made Freedom of navigation passage near Spratly Islands claimed by China.[33] During her deployment to the South China Sea, Fort Worth encountered several warships of the People's Liberation Army Navy, putting the new rules of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea into practice in a "professional" manner.[34]

On 22 January 2016, according to a memo from the service, it was reported that Fort Worth was sidelined in port at Singapore indefinitely because of damage to gears that propel the vessel, which resulted from a failure to use enough lubricating oil.[35] As a result, on 28 March 2016, CDR Michael Atwell, the commander of LCS crew 101 (the LCS is manned by a rotating crew), was relieved of duty and was temporarily replaced by CDR Lex Walker, deputy commodore of Destroyer Squadron 7. The Navy cited the reason for CDR Atwell's removal was "due to a due to loss of confidence in Atwell's ability to command," stemming from initial findings into the incident that sidelined Fort Worth. [36] It is estimated that the repairs to Fort Worth would cost between $20 and $30 million according to defense officials, and the ship may need to be heavy-lifted back from Singapore to San Diego so it can be repaired during its scheduled overhaul.[37]

[gunnut]

I don't think he knows the definition of "terrific"...

Ever noticed that "horrific" comes from the word "horror," means really really bad.

But the word "terrific," while coming from the word "terror," means the exact opposite....

[Cruiser]

Is the USN still planning to pick one LSC/Frigate design or the other or keep buying both?

The latest I've seen concerning this is an on-line copy of a Congressional Research Service report dated April 5, 2016. It states that Congress is to decide whether to "approve, reject, or modify the Secretary of Defense's December 2015 direction to the Navy to reduce the program from 52 ships to 40, and to neck down to a single design variant starting with the ships to be procured in FY2019."

So, apparently it's yet to be a final decision.

[SteveDaPirate]

RMMV, CUSV, Knifefish Will All Play a Role in LCS Minehunting

Is this the Navy's new acquisition strategy? Instead of down selecting to the program that fits the requirements best, we'll just get them all and see how it plays out? I thought the LSC was the odd duck in that regard.

Is the USN still planning to pick one LSC/Frigate design or the other or keep buying both?

[jlvfr]

The bill: $23 million

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/14/politi...irs/index.html

Ouch!!!

"The Fort Worth 'has just had a terrific deployment to the Pacific' Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said

I don't think he knows the definition of "terrific"...

[Cruiser]

Oh, I can think of someone who would have had a lot to say about this besides wanted to rip some a new hole. An engineering/training snafu.

Oh yeah...

[Cruiser]

It looks like some revisions to the training and service manuals is in order.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...p-in-singapore

This guy seems to think things are just "terrific":

"The USS Fort Worth... botched maintenance procedure in January... sidelined in Singapore ever since"

and

"The Fort Worth 'has just had a terrific deployment to the Pacific' Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said to a House Defense Appropriations subcommittee on March 1, without noting it's been sitting immobile in port.

[tbm3fan]

The bill: $23 million

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/14/politi...irs/index.html

[JRT]

More news...

Stackley: Near-, Mid-, Long-Term Solutions in the Works for LCS Mine Countermeasures

By RICHARD R, BURGESS, Managing Editor, SEAPOWER
Posted: April 6, 2016 5:36 PM

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy has settled on three parallel solutions to the weak link in the mine-countermeasures (MCM) mission package for the littoral combat ship (LCS) for the near-term and into the future.

Testifying April 6 before the Senate Armed Services seapower subcommittee, Sean J. Stackley assistant secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, said the MCM package’s components work properly, but the Remote Multimission Vehicle (RMMV) that tows the AQS-20A sonar sensor has demonstrated unsatisfactory reliability, and that the Navy will field successor MCM systems.

Stackley said instead of investing in a new RMMV design, which would be a three-year program with needed testing and cost uncertainty, the Navy intends to adapt the LCS’ unmanned surface vehicle (USV) and “make it dual-purpose” to tow the MCM sonar sensor.

The Navy will proceed to demonstrate the ability to tow the sensor with the USV this summer, Stackley said.

“Assuming that success, that [MCM] mission package would be ready for IOC [initial operational capability] in about the 2020 timeframe,” he said.

The Navy plans to upgrade the 10 RMMVs existing in inventory to a higher reliability as a deployable near-term solution.

“We expect the mid-term solution to be the unmanned surface vehicle,” he said. “We believe the long-term vehicle is simply an unmanned underwater vehicle that does not require a separate tow but carries the sensor on a front end, called the Knifefish. The Knifefish, today, is deploying [but] does not have the endurance that we need. … What we are exploring for the longer term is simply a vehicle like the Knifefish — which works today — but getting the endurance that we need for the mission itself.”

The Knifefish is an autonomous unmanned underwater vehicle developed for mine countermeasures by General Dynamics and Bluefin Robotics, the latter now a unit of General Dynamics Missions Systems.

“We expect that the mission package with the upgraded RMMVs would be ready for deployment in 2018,” Stackley said. “We expect that the mission package with the unmanned surface vehicle will be going through the formal IOT&E [Initial Operational Test & Evaluation] to support initial operational capability in 2020, and during this time we are already working with the Knifefish.”

Stackley: RMMV, CUSV, Knifefish Will All Play a Role in LCS Minehunting; Not a Competition

By: Megan Eckstein
USNI News
April 7, 2016 1:06 PM

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Navy will rotate three different unmanned vehicles into its Littoral Combat Ship mine countermeasures mission package to fill a primary minehunting role, rather than competing the three vehicles as the service previously announced.

When it became clear the Remote Multimission Vehicle (RMMV) could not meet reliability requirements last summer – the vehicle was only reaching about 40 hours mean time between operational failure instead of the required 75 – the Navy paused testing on the MCM mission package until it could decide on a new path forward.

In February the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition (ASN RDA) said the Navy would “evaluate and compete three capabilities to perform the volume and bottom minehunting function”: an upgraded Lockheed Martin RMMV towing the mission package’s AN/AQS-20A sonar; the Textron Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV), which will tow a minesweeper in a later increment of the mission package, towing the AQS-20A sonar; and the General Dynamics Knifefish unmanned underwater vehicle, which will hunt for buried and high-clutter mines in a later increment, using its built-in sonar.

However, after an April 6 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, ASN RDA Sean Stackley told reporters that all three systems would be used as the Navy incrementally improves the mission package.

“I wouldn’t call it a competition,” he said. “I don’t see them as competing, I see it as an incremental approach: what we’ve got today for near-term, what we see as a mid-term, but where we ultimately want to get to is a single unmanned vehicle” that doesn’t have to tow its sensor package.

Stackley explained that the rest of the MCM mission package works fine, but that the RMMV – despite going into a Reliability Growth Program in 2011 to get up to the 75-hour requirement – couldn’t get past the 40-hour mark. The growth program produced several solutions, but not all can be backfitted onto existing vehicles. Therefore, the Navy would have to build new vehicles and then start testing over to see if the improved vehicles actually achieved the reliability requirement – about a three-year process with a cost of about $15 million per vehicle, he said.

“That’s a significant investment, a three-year period of time, and [does] not close the loop in terms of certainty that we’re going to pass,” he said.

Instead, the Navy will upgrade the 10 RMMVs is already owns and field them around 2018, “because that’s better than what we’ve got out there today (with legacy MCM systems), so we’ll have an operational capability that doesn’t fully meet our requirements.”

In parallel, the Navy expects to receive its Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV) this August and will begin testing it to see if it can tow the AQS-20A sonar. In 2011, prior to sending the RMMV into the reliability growth program, the Navy considered ditching that vehicle in favor of using an unmanned surface vehicle to tow the sonar – but at the time the movement of the unmanned vehicle on the water’s surface rendered the sonar inaccurate, Stackley said. Today, software exists to correct for the movement of the unmanned vehicle, and isolation devices can minimize how much the bobbing CUSV actually moves the towed sensor.

Stackley said the CUSV costs a third of the RMMV, coming in at $5 or $6 million apiece, and testing can begin this summer. The Navy wouldn’t be ready for initial operational test and evaluation until 2020, however, and so the upgraded RMMVs will fill the volume and bottom minehunting role for two years until the CUSV could take over, he said.

Finally, he said, the smaller Knifefish vehicle has performed well in testing but does not have enough endurance to cover large minefields.

“Knifefish … doesn’t have the legs that the RMMV has. RMMV is a truck, you put that thing out in the water and it just goes goes goes. It’s got long endurance,” Stackley said. “Well the Knifefish doesn’t have the same degree of endurance. So for certain mine countermeasure missions, it’s actually better than the RMMV, but for long endurance … we need to up the endurance on Knifefish.

“If we succeed in getting the endurance that we need out of Knifefish, now you have further simplified the mine countermeasures mission package because now you don’t have a vehicle towing a sensor, now you have a sensor embedded in a vehicle,” Stackley continued. In that case, the CUSV would remain in the mission package to tow the influence sweep system only.

“If a version of Knifefish, if we can get that to provide the degree of endurance that we need, we will probably end up buying more of those,” Stackley said. “I don’t know about CUSV, we haven’t done the analysis yet. Because we’re already going to have CUSV as part of the mission package, what we’re going to have to do in the analysis is determine, since we’re going to be multitasking the vehicle, we have to look at the various [concepts of operations].”

Vice Adm. Joseph Mulloy, deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources, added that it was still unclear if a single CUSV could tow a sweep and a sonar in the same run or if two separate vehicles would have to conduct two separate missions in the same minefield. He said he hoped to complete that analysis in time to inform the Fiscal Year 2018 budget request – by about this fall – though he acknowledged this was a tight timeline given all the other moving pieces in the LCS MCM mission package.

Mulloy also added that the FY 2017 budget requests includes $634 million for unmanned underwater vehicles, some of which will fund research on improved power and energy systems that will increase the endurance and reach of all UUVs in the fleet.

Navy’s Remote Minehunting System Officially Canceled, Sonar May Live On

By: Megan Eckstein
March 24, 2016 5:00 PM
USNI News

THE PENTAGON — The Navy has officially canceled the Remote Minehunting System acquisition program, but the AN/AQS-20A advanced minehunting sonar within the RMS program may live on in another capacity, a senior defense official told reporters Thursday.

The Navy originally planned to buy 54 RMSs for its Littoral Combat Ship mine countermeasures mission package. It has bought 10 so far and will not award a contract to Lockheed Martin for additional vehicles, the service announced Feb. 26. Service officials said then that the Navy would upgrade most of the 10 Remote Multimission Vehicles – the unmanned vehicle at the center of RMS – and ultimately compete it against the Textron Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV), which is already slated to join the LCS mine countermeasures package as a minesweeping vehicle, and the General Dynamics Knifefish unmanned underwater vehicle, which will join the mission package for buried and high-clutter minehunting.

On Thursday the senior defense official said that future Navy budget requests would contain funding lines for an unmanned vehicle to tow minehunting sonar, since the requirement for an unmanned vehicle to search for mines still exists, but decisions haven’t been made yet about what that future vehicle might be. Though the AQS-20A sonar has performed well in testing, the Navy has not formally decided if the future unmanned vehicle will tow the Q-20 or another sensor.

Still, the official said it was likely that the sonar could live on. The Navy and Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall are in discussions about whether the sonar would become its own program within the mine countermeasures mission package, be folded in with another existing acquisition program, or something else. There are no immediate plans to buy more sonars, the official said, giving the Navy and Defense Department time to figure out the best path forward.

The official said canceling the RMS program after just 10 vehicles saved the Navy about $750 million, though the Navy will still have to buy more vehicles eventually. The cancelation technically triggered a Nunn-McCurdy breach, since curtailing the program led the per-unit cost to spike – initial development costs were spread over 10 instead of 54 vehicles – though the official said the breach is in name only.

Also in the Pentagon’s 2015 Selected Acquisition Reports, which outlined the RMS Nunn-McCurdy breach, are cost updates on several Navy shipbuilding programs. The reports include information on all acquisition costs – research and development, procurement, and program-specific military construction and operations and sustainment.

The Ford-class aircraft carrier program increased in cost by about 2.6 percent, mostly due to the addition of nearly a billion dollars in advance procurement funding for CVN-81 and $161 million in Ford Class Design for Affordability research and development investments. The report notes the increases were offset by about $252 million in efficiencies expected in the future Enterprise (CVN-80) and other cost decreases.

For the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, program costs increased primarily due to buying four more ships since the previous year. The LCS program increased in cost by about $7 billion, or 32 percent, from buying eight more ships and incorporating survivability and lethality enhancements into the frigate upgrade. On the Virginia-class submarines, cost increased about $5 billion, or 5 percent, due to buying an additional boat, adding additional Virginia Payload Modules into the planned Block V, developing an acoustic superiority program and other research and development efforts.

A second senior defense official told reporters that quantity increases do not count as cost growth – and though technically the research and development additions count as program growth, they are expected to lead to more capability or lower acquisition costs in the future and therefore do not reflect badly on the program.

[SteveDaPirate]

Glad to hear they are going to be giving the LCS a proper anti-ship missile instead of just Hellfires.

[JRT]

More news...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]41334[/ATTACH]
A Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile (NSM) is launched from the littoral combat ship USS Coronado (LCS 4) during missile testing operations off the coast of southern California on Sept. 23, 2014. The missile scored a direct hit on a mobile ship target. (Photo by Zachary D. Bell/U.S. Navy)

Navy to Deploy New Anti-Ship Surface Missile on a Littoral Combat Ship

Kris Osborn
Friday, 08 April, 2016
Scout.com

The Navy will soon deploy a new missile aboard its Littoral Combat Ship that can find and destroy enemy ships at distances up to 100 nautical miles, service officials said.

Called the Naval Strike Missile, or NSM, the weapon is developed by a Norwegian-headquartered firm called Kongsberg; it is currently used on Norwegian Nansen-class frigates and Skjold-Class missile torpedo boats, company officials said.

“The Navy is currently planning to utilize the Foreign Comparative Testing program to procure and install the Norwegian-built Naval Strike Missile on the USS FREEDOM (LCS 1). The objective is to demonstrate operationally-relevant installation, test, and real-world deployment on an LCS,” a Navy spokeswoman from Naval Sea Systems Command told Scout Warrior.

The deployment of the weapon is the next step in the missiles progress. In 2014NSM was successfully test fired from the flight deck of the USS CORONADO (LCS 4) at the Pt. Mugu Range Facility, California, demonstrating a surface-to-surface weapon capability, the Navy official explained.

First deployed by the Norwegian Navy in 2012, the missile is engineered to identify ships by ship class, Gary Holst, Senior Director for Naval Surface Warfare, Kongsberg, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

The NSM is fired from a deck-mounted launcher. The weapon uses an infrared imaging seeker, identify targets, has a high degree of maneuverability and flies close to the water in “sea-skim” mode to avoid ship defenses, he added.

“It can determine ships in a group of ships by ship class, locating the ship which is its designated target. It will attack only that target,” Holst said.

Holst added that the NSM was designed from the onset to have a maneuverability sufficient to defeat ships with advanced targets; the missile’s rapid radical maneuvers are built into the weapon in order to defeat what’s called “terminal defense systems,” he said.

“One of the distinguishing features of the missile is its ability to avoid terminal defense systems based on a passive signature, low-observable technologies and maneuverability. It was specifically designed to attack heavily defended targets,” Holst said.

For instance, the NSM is engineered to defeat ship defense weapons such as the Close-In-Weapons System, or CIWS – a ship-base defensive fire “area weapon” designed to fire large numbers of projectiles able intercept, hit or destroy approaching enemy fire.

CIWS is intended to defend ships from enemy fire as it approaches closer to its target, which is when the NSM’s rapid maneuverability would help it avoid being hit and proceed to strike its target, Holst added.

Holst added that the weapon is engineered with a “stealthy” configuration to avoid detection from ship detection systems and uses its sea-skimming mode to fly closer to the surface than any other missile in existence.

“It was designed against advanced CIWS systems. It is a subsonic weapon designed to bank to turn. It snaps over when it turns and the seeker stays horizontally stabilized -- so the airframe turns around the seeker so it can zero-in on the seam it is looking at and hit the target,” he said.

Raytheon and Kongsberg signed a teaming agreement to identify ways we can reduce the cost of the missile by leveraging Raytheon’s supplier base and supplier management, Holst explained.

Kongsberg is working with Raytheon to establish NSM production facilities in the U.S., Ron Jenkins, director for precision standoff strike, Raytheon Missile systems, said.

Kongsberg is also working on a NSM follow-on missile engineered with an RF (radio frequency) sensor that can help the weapon find and destroy targets.

The new missile is being built to integrate into the internal weapons bay of Norway’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Kongsberg and Raytheon are submitting the missile for consideration for the Navy’s long-range beyond-the-horizon offensive missile requirement for its LCS.

“The Navy has identified a need for an over-the-horizon missile as part of their distributed lethality concept which is adding more offensive weapons to more ships throughout the fleet and they wanted to do this quickly,” Holst explained.

The Navy's distributed lethality strategy involves numerous initiatives to better arm its fleet with offensive and defensive weapons, maintain a technological advantage over adversaries and strengthen its "blue water" combat abilities against potential near-peer rivals, among other things.

They are pitching the missile as a weapon which is already developed and operational –therefore it presents an option for the Navy that will not require additional time and extensive development, he said.

“The missile is the size, shape and weight that fits on both classes of the Littoral Combat Ship,” Holst said.

[JRT]

It looks like some revisions to the training and service manuals is in order.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...p-in-singapore

[jlvfr]

I guess the round ball didn't fit the square hole...

[tbm3fan]

Oh, I can think of someone who would have had a lot to say about this besides wanted to rip some a new hole. An engineering/training snafu.