Whats going on at Newport News?

A veteran Washington naval analyst, on hearing of the latest shipbuilding problem at Northrop Grumman's Newport News yard, paraphrased Ian Fleming in the novel Goldfinger; "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action."

Follow up:

He goes on to say, "If I were the Navy, I would be concerned to make sure there aren't more problems waiting to be discovered."

The Virginia shipyard builds nuclear warships for the U.S. Navy. It shares equally in building Virginia­ class attack submarines with General Dynamics Electric Boat, and is the only yard in the world capable of building full-size nuclear aircraft carriers. But both sides of the Newport News shipbuilding house have suffered embarrassments in recent months.

The submarine program's latest blow involves - literally - a nuts-and-bolts quality issue in the torpedo room.

In May, a welding inspector was caught falsifying reports, and since December 2007, the company has been working to revamp and upgrade its welding processes following the discovery that the wrong kinds of welding filler material had been used on some jobs.

The carrier side of Newport News also has had its problems. The shipyard had three carriers to deliver this year - one new ship and two major overhauls. For a variety of reasons, all three carriers were late.

So are these isolated events, or is there a more systemic problem at Newport News?

"I don't know if there's something going on, but it's certainly fair to ask the question," one Capitol Hill source said.

"Of the three things that happened [with the submarine program], they're all kind of different, all have different causes and effects. But certainly Newport News executives and the government should be asking if they have a systemic problem."

"My gut answer is: No, they don't," the source said.

"One of the problems with having a really robust quality control program is you find stuff and you have problems. The culture there has already been pretty robust."

The Navy's officer in charge of submarine construction agreed. "It's certainly a fair question," Capt. Michael Jabaley, program manager for the Virginia-class sub­marines, said.

"My answer is no, I would not call it a systemic problem at Newport News."

The scale of Northrop Grumman's shipbuilding, observers noted, allows the company more chances to encounter problems. Newport News builds all the aircraft carriers and half the submarines for the Navy, while the company's sister shipyards on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico - Ingalls at Pascagoula, MS, and Avondale at New Orleans - build all of the Navy's amphibious ships, about half of the destroyers, and all of the Coast Guard's new large cutters.

"We use a million pounds of weld wire a year and nobody else even comes close to those numbers," said Matt Mulherin, general manager of the Newport News shipyard.

But he dismissed the excuse that more ships means more problems.

"We don't allow ourselves that simple answer," he said. "We've certainly talked about a campaign where we want to be defect-free every day and everywhere."

Christopher P. Cavas, Defense News – 8/24