USian for-profit defense contractors: âhold my beerâ.
First rule of headlines like this: reality is always worse than what they admit.
âintentionally faulty weldsâ
Any indications on what the intentions were? Who? Why?
DB2
The welds are faulty. The company is alleging âintentionallyâ to shift blame to âdisgruntled/Communistâ workers, rather than the companyâs shop or hiring practices.
Steve
How do you determine if a weld is âintentionallyâ bad from just someone who is bad at what they do?
JimA
You listen to fox news thatâs how.
Like I said, company shop and hiring practices. A guy who just completed âwelding 1â at a community college will be cheaper than someone who has been welding for a decade, and is really good at it. Put the cheaper welder on the job, and the âJCâ keeps more of âhis moneyâ. Convince DoD that the bad welds are sabotage, not the companyâs fault, and DoD pays the âJCâ to fix it.
As I have commented before, wrt Boeing giving up commercial market share, while it moves HQ to DC, DoD will tolerate sloth and corruption that no commercial company would.
Steve
For US Navy subs anyone performing welding has to be certified to a very high quality level based on x-rays of the welds. IIRC the only higher level of qualification was doing underwater welding on a sub.
Anyone that qualifies to these levels would not produce a weld that would fail at the pier, IMO. But in any case all welds of anything nuclear or subject to piping or sea pressure are x-rayed by QA.
Mike
I have told the story before, on this page. While working at the pump seal company, it came to light that another seal company was providing âcertificationâ of itâs material for nuclear service, that wasnât worth the paper it was written on.
Steve
From the US Naval Institute:
Guertin [Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition] told SECNAV and CNO the workers did not follow proper techniques to weld the suspect joints with an early indication that some of the welding errors were intentionalâŚ
Based on the Newport News Shipbuilding assessment of the welds, the shipyard notified the Department of Justice over the issue.
DB2
Again, how is it possible to determine a bad weld was intentional? Does it spell out âsuckersâ! How can we attribute intentionality to something like a weld?
JimA
They intentionally didnât follow the correct procedure.
That is my question as well. We may have to wait for a DoJ report.
DB2
The ârogue underlingâ defense, that has kept Jamie Dimon out of prison for years, while he runs a criminal enterprise.
How did the workers not âfollow procedureâ? Because management was beating on them to work faster, faster, faster? How did all those Wells Fargo customers end up with accounts they never asked for?
Or, maybe, the welders were ordered to not follow procedure. Like the Southwest Airlines mechanics that pencil whipped required maintenance and inspections? Like the workers at the Boeing 78 plant in South Carolina, whose pencil whipping of required inspections was so rampant that the FAA started doing the inspections itself, because Boeing could not be trusted?
And what do the âJCsâ have to say? âintrusive, burdensome, big gummit regulation, that costs ME moneyâ
Steve
How do you know that? Everyone seems to be getting lost with explaining the economics, the JC crap, the pump seal history, and fox news idiocy.
What I want to know is how someone can look at a weld and say it was intentionally done poorly? Other than them writing the weld as âso long suckersâ or something equally asinine.
JimA
Great⌠you say that you have 2nd or 3rd hand info of alleged fraud, that could have actually happened.
I was on subs for several years and spent 1.5 years in a sub shipyard overhaul and I have first hand info on how serious the safety procedures were followed.
I had to personally authorize hundreds of repairs and sign off on some of them and others when complete.
After the shipyard completed their work and an enlisted crew member inspected it I would inspect as wellâŚclimbing into the reactor compartment, ballast tanks and all sorts of places. Believe me that the crew was personally invested in making sure the sub was properly put back together safely and correctly.
Once all parts of a system had the few or dozens of work items complete an independent QA team reviewed the most critical system work then authorized the shipyard and crew to jointly run, observe and document various tests, such as pressurizing plumbing systems, cycling valves and various other operations, as allowed by the current conditions. I personally did dozens of these.
With all critical work completed we refloated the sub and ran tests for a few months at pier side while other, mostly cosmetic work was completed.
Finally we went out for sea trials in which very controlled tests were done, including things like hovering silently at test depth, emergency blow to the surface, tripping off every pump and insuring 1st, 2nd and 3rd backups cycled on properly. Of course the many secret capabilities of the sub were tested as well. The whole time we had standby surface ships that had copies of all test procedures and we were in constant comms via underwater radio (really a sonar) to clearly keep them in sync with our status.
Yes, there could have been fraudulent work and/or documentation by the many suppliers. But the safety record of us subs is quite good. And is that pump company still in business?
Mike
Yes, though it has been absorbed by Smiths Group in the UK. The seal company I worked for was bought out by Duriron, which was since merged into Flowserve.
It is good to have redundant systems.
Speaking of Boeing. Seems the manual says that, if the rudder jams, pilot and copilot both push on their pedals really, really, hard. The NTSB says "what happens if the rudder comes unstuck with both guys pushing on their pedals really hard? Would it not be a better idea to solve the problem of the rudder sticking, instead?
Not being a journeyman welder myself, I would think you cannot read the mind and establish the intent of the welder by looking at the weld. As you said, this thread is speculating on the motives of the company in immediately trying to point a finger at the welder.
Steve
Indeed. We will have to wait for more information, perhaps from the DoJ.
DB2