Page 17: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2021)

capable ? eet.

For example, the authors show that

For each column I write, MREN has agreed to make a small donation to an organization of my choice. For this column I nominate the NGO Shipbreak- building good simple hulls, but wait- ing Platform https://shipbreakingplatform.org/. Shipbreaking is a dirty and ing to ? t fancy weapons until they are expensive mess. Reducing shipbreaking with titanium hulls reduces the mess. really needed is the better deal. And if the threat of war develops, the latest and greatest package can be ? tted quickly on existing hulls to dominate the battle space, instead of limping along with less than the state of the art.

The bigger the Navy (and USCG com- bination), the cooler it gets. It especially argues for building lots of USCG cutter hulls, but leaving them mostly unout- ? tted for naval combat. One can build 20 titanium USCG cutters for the life cycle cost of 10 steel hulls, and make them ready for sea, but only install one ship with the best weapons package.

The world will know that you can build something that can dominate the battle space, but there is no need to ? t all 20 with the latest and the greatest (which saves enough money to build a couple of additional hulls) if there is no imme- diate threat of war. Meanwhile the “en- emy” will know that when they start to rattle their sabers you will not have 10 (if built in steel) obsolescent hulls, but instead will have access to more than 19 hulls that can be ? tted with the hottest weapons much more quickly. This is a much better result than having 10 old “fancy steel” units and actually will de- fer cost until it is needed. This thinking already works with steel hulls, but if the hulls do not waste away it becomes even more cost effective and further strength- ens Dr. Daidola’s argument. So here we have three clever engineers who have developed two independent USCG pro- curement approaches, which each save incredible amounts of money, and, when combined, save even more money.

Is anybody paying attention in USCG procurement? I have long known and admired the USCG for its ability to do more and more with less and less. Why not use this bit of engineering to do even more? www.marinelink.com 17

MR #6 (1-17).indd 17 6/3/2021 5:10:57 PM