Naval Design Question: Ten Years?

[dewline]

I can see it taking two years, but ten?

http://www.canada.com/News/canada/Canadian+warships+built+over+years/10752235/story.html

Comments

Why not?

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

It took Ottawa more than three years to build a pedestrian bridge over the Airport Parkway.

Re: Why not?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

I guess it's going to take Irving that long to recruit the design team, then.

Re: Why not?

[resonant.livejournal.com]

There aren't that many naval architects in Canada, and they're usually working at universities right next to shipyards.

My old naval architecture prof at what is now Dalhousie (next to the Halifax shipyards) could slam out a hull design in a matter of hours, get the tool room to hot-wire carve it out of foam and lay up laminate in a matter of days, and spend a week testing it in the wave tank. Even in the 90s with first-generation Pentiums, using primitive modelling software, ship design wasn't rocket science. Just skillful application of well-tried design principles.

If they went with bog-standard azipods for propulsion, a simple steel plate hull, and simple off-the-shelf armaments, they'd be able to launch within two years.

Of course, this is a job creation program as much as a shipbuilding program. Instead of buying off-the-shelf systems from Elbit and Raytheon, all the fittings will be made by Canadian manufacturers under license. Which will take time to allocate to little factories in as many different constituencies as possible.

Re: Why not?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Which isn't exactly a new practice when it comes to defence contracts in any halfway-democratic nation.

ObComicsFanboy: Looking at such things through such a lens of porkbarrelling parts supply chains, I wonder how difficult it is for SHIELD to get their Helicarriers built. Sure, Stark got to be the main contractor (partly because Reed Richards was too focused on pure exploration and R&D, and because Forge had the "mutant" tag on his national/planetary security file as a mark against him) until he decided he wanted out of military work...but even in those days, a lot of sub-contracting had to be going on.