Submarine Virginia begins 1st full deployment

[bobdina]

Submarine Virginia begins 1st full deployment

By Andrew Scutro - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Oct 17, 2009 9:25:19 EDT

The attack submarine Virginia left its Groton homeport Thursday for its first full deployment. No further information about where the ship is headed or exactly how long it’s expected to be at sea was available from Submarine Group 2 in Groton.

Virginia, the first of the Navy’s newest class of attack boat, was commissioned in October 2004. It was declared operational in March 2007. It has been out on several short deployments, but not the full six months or more that’s standard in the undersea fleet.

The Virginia-class subs are different from predecessors in several ways, most notably the absence of a traditional periscope. Instead of a view seen by only one person, a mast-mounted video camera allows the crew to see what’s above by looking at one of several monitors in the control room.

In addition to Virginia, the Navy operates Texas, Hawaii, North Carolina and New Hampshire. Plans are to eventually operate 30 of the class. New Mexico is expected to commission in early 2010.


http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/10/navy_virginia_deploys_101609/

[ghost]

Very cool. The Virginia class subs are some impressive pieces of machinery.

[Reactor-Axe-Man]

If the Kamehameha was any indication, the reason why Virginia hasn't done a full deployment until now is because of one to three things:

1. It's new and has new capabilities. The process of figuring out exactly what you can do with the thing takes time, and everyone with stars on their collar has their own pet idea to test.

2. It's a showboat. Because it's new and unique, everyone wants to watch. It spends more time being shown off then actually doing anything useful.

3. It's a piece of shit. The lead ship of any class invariably has teething problems that only get noticed after the thing's in commission. Follow-on boats will benefit from all of the lessons learned, but it's still hell for the original.

I haven't heard anything serious about Virginia's reliability, so I'm going with mostly 1 and 2 with a small side of 3.

[ghost]

If the Kamehameha was any indication, the reason why Virginia hasn't done a full deployment until now is because of one to three things:

1. It's new and has new capabilities. The process of figuring out exactly what you can do with the thing takes time, and everyone with stars on their collar has their own pet idea to test.

2. It's a showboat. Because it's new and unique, everyone wants to watch. It spends more time being shown off then actually doing anything useful.

3. It's a piece of shit. The lead ship of any class invariably has teething problems that only get noticed after the thing's in commission. Follow-on boats will benefit from all of the lessons learned, but it's still hell for the original.

I haven't heard anything serious about Virginia's reliability, so I'm going with mostly 1 and 2 with a small side of 3.


Thanks for sharing.

I suppose rule 3 definitely applied when the San Antonio class ships were commissioned. Although, I'm not even sure if they have fixed the problems...