True, but the two ships should fill the "work gap" between ending DDG 51 and restarting it. If they can in a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise they start losing the skilled personnel and they are difficult, if impossible to replace. The timing is shitty, as many of the most skilled workers are 40-70 yrs old. They start hemmoraging them and we're fucked. And not just us...BIW lends out workers to the other shipyards for assignments and teaching work. The industry can't afford to lose BIW.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3740731&c=SEA&s=TOP Even so, there are rumblings at BIW about layoffs. As always it's wait and see.
Can't Zel and the guys start building Wordforge a frigate, Johnny Cash style? Then if they get laid off we can all turn to piracy on the High Seas.
Yeah, SeaRAM block 2 should be getting mixed in about now. Several advantages - they are basically modularized, replacing CIWS on a 1 for 1 basis, so they are easy to deploy. They have an 11 mile range vs hundreds of meters. CIWS with AEGIS were often defeated in sims by Sunburn missiles, because it's intercept envelope was just 2.5 seconds. That is no time for error! And its guided both by infrared and radar, switching out between which ever one provides the best lock on a millisecond basis. It's pretty damn impressive. Oh, and as far as the Brits taking on the US Navy, that was true for several hundred years, but stopped being true in 1944. However, any fleet that has boomers is one that gets my serious respect!
BIW is laying off 92 people. Zel just misses the line and as of Oct 10 will be 13th from the bottom of the list. A second layoff will probably nail us...so here's hoping that doesn't happen. Rumors say it might in March...but things can change a lot in a short time with these things.
Well I'd say that clinches it then. Zel and the others that are low on the totem pole need to get cracking on building a boat for Wordforge. Then we can go steal a bunch of T72s and set ourselves up as a world power.
I need about 50 volunteers to travel with me to Georgia, get Russian Passports, and then make our way to Murmansk. The Typhoon class is said to be highly automated and we've got a few nuke bubbleheads at WF...
HMS Dauntless is just sitting next to the dock getting ready for a sea trials in early November. No crew and fuelled up.