Sea Trial Proves Tough Test for New Destroyer
ABOARD THE DESTROYER WAYNE E. MEYER - There was no broom at the masthead as this new Aegis warship made its way back up the winding Kennebec River to the Maine shipyard where it was born. No "clean sweep" signifying all its systems had been fully tested. While there was satisfaction that the ship had performed well enough to be accepted as the U.S. Navy's latest Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the 442 sailors and civilians who had just put the Meyer through four days of sea trials knew it had been a substandard demonstration.
The missiles weren't fired. The gun test was stopped after five rounds. Software problems plagued a combat systems test. A leak partially flooded a compartment.
"It's a B effort from an A-plus student," was how one officer characterized it.
The subpar results surprised most of those on board.
"For a long time [General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works] have been the standard," Capt. Robert Bonner, head of the 21-person Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) team on board, said of the shipbuilder. "They always seek to outdo themselves." Bonner said that while the Bath, Maine, shipyard has a high reputation for the quality of its work, the Meyer's sea trials were being run about a month earlier than scheduled, a factor in some of the defects noted by the INSURV team.
"A lot of the items were written up because of the early delivery," Bonner said. "When they move it to the left they incur risk." But finding problems is what sea trials are all about, he said.
"You won't hear us saying a lot of positive things," Bonner noted. "My job is to find out what the problems are." Asked if there was any reason not to accept the ship, Bonner was adamant.
"Absolutely not," he declared. "They'll fix what's wrong." The ship got underway from Bath on June 9, leaving the pier for the first time with no fanfare, as if it were thoroughly routine. At the mouth of the Kennebec River, a three-gun salute was fired at ancient Fort Popham - a Bath tradition for decades - and the destroyer rose in the swells of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Meyer was not yet a Navy ship - that would come after the trials were completed and the ship was accepted by the government. Instead, the destroyer was the property of Bath Iron Works, driven by a crew of veteran shipyard workers and a smattering of contractors. The Maine state flag flew from a yardarm and the Bath logo was emblazoned on a funnel. A civilian master was in charge of the ship, giving orders to a helmsman clad in jeans, sneakers and a Boston Red Sox ball cap.
Shipyard engineers ruled in Central Control, the hub of the ship where the engines are controlled and most of the hull, mechanical and engineering systems are monitored.
Civilian engineers ran most of the ship's systems, while the INSURV team and a host of other inspectors from the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and other Navy organizations checked to see that everything functioned as it should, or noted what didn't work by issuing trial cards.
Nearly 80 people were on board writing trial cards, said Capt. Dean Krestos, NAVSEA's supervisor of shipbuilding (SUPSHIP) in Bath. "Nothing is taken for granted." Each evening in the wardroom, Bonner presided over a meeting of about three dozen INSURV and SUPSHIP members, shipyard representatives and specialists to go over the day's trials. He received reports about topside deck fittings, combat systems, machinery, navigation, communications, computers, supply, habitability, noise and light emissions. Team members checked fit and finish items, looking for such problems as condensation, perspiration, rust, improperly applied paint and loose bolts.
The machinery trials in particular came in for praise. "Nice full power [run]," Bonner noted at one meeting. "It was tight."
2-for-1 'Super Trial'
Bath, along with Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, has been building Arleigh Burkeclass destroyers for more than 20 years. The Navy agreed a few years ago to merge the traditional builder's sea trials - carried out by the shipyard before the Navy officially inspects the ship - with Navy acceptance trials, after which, if successful, the Navy takes legal custody of the vessel. The resulting "Super Trial" combines the shipbuilder's checks with the Navy inspection.
Bath's recent Super Trials have earned a series of superlatives, so hopes were high for the Meyer's four days at sea. The first day out went well enough, with the ship performing a two-hour run at 50 percent power and running at a steady 26 knots. That evening, an inspection was made of the main reduction gears, the large, expensive gears that transfer power from the gas turbines to the shafts that turn the propellers.
A special paint called Dykm (di-kem) was applied to portions of the gears prior to the tests, and after the speed run, engineers carefully opened hatches in the gear casing to examine the blue and red paint stripes. Scratches or abrasions on the paint would tell whether or not the gears were properly meshing. Bryan Goss, a main propulsion auxiliary operating engineer for Bath, was one of several engineers putting mirrors up against the gear blades to check all sides for scratches.
"It looks perfect," he said.
Also performing the crucial inspection were engineers from General Electric - the company responsible for the gears - and INSURV. Extreme care was taken when opening the casing, since any foreign object that fell into the gears could wreck the machinery. A cloth awning was rigged over the casing to prevent anything falling from above, and all those getting close to the open hatches removed anything that could fall off, including watches, ID badges and pens. The gears were pronounced fit for the full-power speed trials yet to come. But before the speed and maneuvering tests, the schedule called for the ship's weapon systems to be wrung out. First up was a gun shoot. After deleting a 20mm Phalanx Close-In Weapon System from new ships about six years ago, the Navy has once again specified that its new destroyers carry the system. The rapid, staccato bursts of the weapon could be heard throughout the ship, signifying a successful test.
But the shoot scheduled for the ship's single 5-inch gun didn't go as well. Engineers pored over the mount after a single, simulated extended-range guided munition (ERGM) round was fired. One engineer reported there were concerns over the gun breech not closing properly. After some adjustments and a delay of several hours, another ERGM round was loosed, then three standard rounds.
Engineers later reported the gun hoist wasn't working properly, and the rest of the shoot was canceled. Those aboard thought it had been about six years since a destroyer gun trial was cut short.
In between gun shoots, the Super RapidBlooming Offboard Chaff (SRBOC) system was tested. Dummy SRBOC canisters filled with concrete were successfully fired from each of the ship's six six-canister launchers. The rounds splashed into the ocean several dozen yards away from the ship.
The attempt to launch each of two Standard SM-2 surface-to-air missiles was frustrating.
"This is no simulation, everything is full up," said Krestos, who explained that the Aegis combat system would need to track and develop a targeting solution for flying drones launched by a contracted Gulfstream aircraft. For the exercise, a P-3C Orion maritime surveillance patrol aircraft flying from Brunswick, Maine, was on station to provide range safety checks, and the chartered research vessel Oceanus stood by to recover the drone. Sailors from the Meyer's Navy crew manned the combat systems, and technicians stood topside to collect telemetry from the missiles. But the launch was delayed several hours by system glitches.
The target range then needed to be cleared of planes and ships, the aircraft carrying the targets needed time to launch and fly to the operating area, and the target drones needed to be warmed up. The late morning attempt was postponed when discrepancies appeared in the missile system's ability to correctly identify weapons in individual launch cells.
No-Go on Missile Firing
Later in the afternoon, the missile shoot was attempted again. Finally the go-ahead was given and a target drone was launched. The ship prepared to fire, but the computer failed to OK a weapon release. The technical team made some adjustments and calculations, and the drone was sent around to make another approach to the ship. In it came again - and again no launch OK was received. Without a full set of diagnostic tools on board, disappointed technicians canceled any further attempt to shoot a missile.
Cmdr. Nick Sarap, the Meyer's prospective commanding officer, later said his crew was disappointed about the aborted missile exercise. "They were doing the heavy lifting in practice to make it happen," Sarap said.
The top shipbuilding official onboard also was frustrated by the missile failure. "It's unusual not to have a successful missile event," said Bath shipyard president Jeff Geiger.
Many on board felt the failure of the missile launch was even more ironic, given that the ship's namesake is considered by the Navy as the father of the Aegis combat system.
Later, a different kind of system failure caused a problem deep in the ship. A priming line from a sea chest in the No. 3 Generator Room leaked through a flange, causing flooding up to the deck plates. One wag noted it was an opportunity to check the compartment's de-watering system.
Capt. Pete Lyle, NAVSEA's Burke-class program manager, said a similar problem occurred early this year on the destroyer Truxtun, built by Northrop Grumman at Pascagoula, Miss.
"It's not a workmanship problem, but a design issue," Lyle said. "We have the fix designed and already scheduled to install." Despite the glitches, the Meyer's speed and maneuvering trials seemed to go well. Although a thick fog wiped out any sense of a horizon, the warship sped along at better than 32 knots, heeling as much as 12 degrees as the helm was put over hard left and then hard right.
Later, the destroyer performed a "crash back" - a maneuver in which the ship is rushing forward at full power and, with the push of a lever, put into full reverse using the reversible-pitch propellers. In relatively calm seas, the Meyer went backward at 14 knots for a half hour with no apparent ill effects.
Despite the problems, most of those on board seemed to feel they were riding a wellfound ship. Krestos and Bonner each said they were confident the weapon trials and other tests would be successfully accomplished by the ship's crew after they leave the shipyard and head for Philadelphia, where the Meyer is scheduled to be commissioned in the presence of its namesake Oct. 10.
"This is the best this ship will ever be. It will degrade over time, just like a new car," said Clint Robbins, Bath's trials master. "We try to push the envelope to get the cost down, but still deliver a pristine machine." SUPSHIP agreed the trials were successful. "By the metrics we look at, this is just as good a trial as the last one," Krestos said. "This is what we do and why we go to sea."
E-mail ccavas@defensenews.com .
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