Grrrr...
This...is criminal at best...
Shipuilder Newport News Shipbuilding, Va., informed the Department of Justice of faulty welds that may have been made intentionally on non-critical components on in-service Navy submarines and aircraft carriers, USNI News has learned.
HII reported to the Navy that welds on new construction and in-service submarines and Ford-class aircraft carriers were made not following welding procedure, according to a Tuesday memo from Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Nickolas Guertin to Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.
Guertin told SECNAV and CNO the workers did not follow proper techniques to weld the suspect joints with an early indication that some of the welding errors were intentional. Based on the Newport News assessment of the welds, the shipyard notified the Department of Justice over the issue.
Full article, HERE from USNI.
And from a second article... Yeah, right...
In a separate statement to USNI News, HII said that while the shipyard workers had violated the welding rules, they did not have “malicious intent” to damage the submarines or aircraft carriers they were working on.
Full article, HERE, also from USNI.
Excuse me, but if you're screwing up welds ON PURPOSE, that is malicious intent as far as I am concerned, because your s**t work can kill a sailor or entire crew, depending on what happens on that ship in combat, or a sub on patrol.
This is the LAST thing the Navy needs right now, especially in light of what is going on in 5th Fleet with Israel, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Iran.
Grrrr...
Well, the CYA has already begun. And the folks that I know that work at Newport News and Huntington are suspiciously absent from any social media…
I'm not shocked anymore, sadly. My time in the AF taught me that contracting officers never do their job well. They see so far ahead that they're planning for their own post-retirement jobs while letting shoddy crap slip through. F-35, B-29, and so many other vehicles/weapon systems slipped right through that should've gone back to be finished up. Instead the young men and women have to deal with shoddy crap being pushed at them while being told to make it work while proven systems that don't produce the big bucks anymore, A-10s, are chucked aside. Kind of like the recent choices by hospitals to use remdesivir ("Run-death-is-near") to treat COVID when ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine(sp?) was already available and proven effective. 🤷♂️
With luck, we'll find out who was making those crap welds and who in QA and management were letting them slip by. 🤬