[BITList] Idiocy

[FA]

Hugh,
When I was doing my time part of it was done on HMS Victorious which was 
in dry dock having a refit top 3 decks removed new engines and boilers 
fitted and 4 decks added the top deck being the first purpose built 
angled flight deck built out of 9" thick armour plate (which caused 
problems in its self). What I was leading up to though was as the refit 
took so long a lot of modifications to the installed equipment came out, 
and where duly implemented eg mark one one star became mark one two star 
until mark one four star was reach and then it became a mark two and the 
whole procedure repeated its self until mark four four star was reached 
at which time the whole lot was ripped out and replaced with a new 
model, As the advances in technology were proceeding faster than we 
could install them the whole project became self sustaining in it own 
right. After seven years of this nonsense (and the new boilers were 
starting to collapse) the Captain of the dockyard said enough, and that 
she had to sail in six months which she did as the most advanced 
obsolete carrier in the world at the time, cost to NATO a mere 27 
million pounds so I for one am not surprised by the latest performance, 
personally think that the answer would be to buy off the shelf much like 
we trade our cars in as one can never catch up in the shipbuilding 
industry what you think
frank

Today's Herald has a piece on the cost overrun of the yet to be 
completed aircraft carriers HM Govt caused to be built some years ago. 
For those not up to scratch with them, they were built all over the 
place (in the UK), and the various sections were wheeled to a place of 
final assembly and welded together.
One factor mentioned by the Herald as contributing both to delays and 
cost overruns was the habit of they who must be obeyed demanding hasty 
costings for sudden changes in requirements, eg, let's have a different 
type of plane, so give me a figure for the modifications by tomorrow at 
3.00.  The problem with this type of shit is that the actual work 
on such a matter would be made by the person investigating the changes, 
and by nobody else (I've been there myself a few times), and it could 
easily be that the news about the need for changes would not reach the 
drawing board until 4.30 on the day after next Tuesday, always supposing 
it wasn't raining.  There might then be a week of assessment and 
measuring, and acquiring information nobody else thought necessary.  The 
result might easily be that the top brass's bum's were out the window, 
and they needed to be told that fast and with words of one syllable. The 
trouble is, few if any of those presently employed are capable of 
calling a spade a spade and resisting the dreams of ignoramuses, and the 
result is as above.
Hugh.


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