Navy Competes for Resources at Home, against Asymmetric Threats Abroad
The U.S. Navy Chief of Naval Operations Adm. The document presents Richardson’s priorities with four “lines of effort” to strengthen naval power at and from the sea; achieve high velocity learning at every level; strengthen our Navy team for the future’ and expand and strengthen our network of partners. It isn’t an earth-shattering document, and perhaps is most telling for what it doesn’t say, as opposed to what is says. The document makes a strong case for forward presence, which has been the raison d’etre for the U.S. Navy for decades.
Catastrophic Equipment Failures of VFD and HF Systems
Commercial and military users of electric propulsion systems have experienced failures of the variable frequency drive (VFD) and harmonic filter (HF) systems because the system design, including the VFD, did not have adequate self-monitoring and protection. On a ship, a variable-frequency drive (VFD) can be used to control the speed and direction of rotational motors, such as pumps, propellers and azipod systems. In some cases, these failures have resulted in catastrophic equipment failures causing arcing, fire and explosions of capacitors. In September of 2010, the Cunard Carnival cruise ship RMS Queen Mary 2 (QM2) was underway in the Mediterranean when an explosion occurred in the aft main switchboard room resulting from the failure of one of 12 capacitors in a harmonic filter…
Freedom Gets Underway
The U.S. Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship will be commissioned in ceremonies at , on Nov. 8, 2008. LCS 1, christened Freedom, is the first of a new class of high-speed, modular and reconfigurable focused-mission ships. LCS is designed to counter threats including mines, quiet diesel submarines and fast, armed surface craft in the littoral or coastal regions of the world. Built by Lockheed Martin at Marinette Marine of , , Freedom recently completed builder's trials on , where the ship's diesel and gas turbine propulsion plant was tested along with communications, navigation and mission systems. The Navy is building two different designs for LCS, each designed and built by different industry teams. The 378-ft. Freedom is a semi-planing monohull.
