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By Mark Thompson/Washington Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2008
www.time.com...
"The maiden voyage of the taxpayer's newest nearly $2 billion warship stalled for two days in August. That's when the stern gate of the USS San Antonio — needed to roll vehicles on and off the nearly 700-foot vessel — wouldn't work. The Navy eventually got the gate fixed in time for the vessel to leave Norfolk and sail to the Persian Gulf, where its mission is to hunt down smugglers. But now the San Antonio has been forced into port in Bahrain for at least two weeks of repairs to leaks in the hefty pipes feeding fuel to two of its four engines. Hinting at the seriousness of the problem, the Navy has just dispatched a team of 40 workers —including engineers, pipe-fitters and welders — to Bahrain to make the San Antonio shipshape. "Forty technicians — that's ludicrous," says Norman Polmar, an independent naval expert. "It means the problems are major, because the ship has mechanics, metal smiths and other people on board as part of the crew, and they're supposed to take care of minor problems." And you thought McHale's Navy was cancelled back in 1966.
The San Antonio is the first in a new class of amphibious ships — blue-water buses — each of which carries 350 sailors and is responsible for ferrying 700 Marines and their gear to global hot spots. And the ship's sad plight represents in miniature all that is wrong with the way the Pentagon buys its weapons. The pattern of haste and waste accelerated in the Cold War's wake, and simply exploded following 9/11. It highlights the challenge facing President-elect Barack Obama as he contemplates retooling an Industrial Age military — primed for state-on-state warfare — into the more agile force better suited for 21st Century conflicts of the type now being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq."
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