Chapomatic

The submariners just had named the next Virginia class boats, with many in the water already. The Coasties just put a new class of ship in builder’s trials. Osprey’s finally deploying.

At the time the Centurion class was mooted, later to become the Virginia, another department had Surface Combatant 21. SC21 became DD21, DD(X), Zumwalt. That’s a lot of money and effort spent and how many of these are in the water, I ask? Should there not be at least guideline criteria as to when to take an axe to something like that and start over? We kind of have one for programs that are being built–it’s called Nunn-McCurdy, alhthough N-M has been around long enough to have folks reroute around it sometimes. I don’t think there’s any equivalent for programs that keep staying in Step One territory decade after decade.

Reminds me of that guy my friend served with who looked hangdog one day. My friend says he had just figured out he spent his whole career working on programs, but none of the ones he was assigned came to fruition for one reason or another. I wonder if he was named CAPT Sisyphus…