Britain's Royal Navy warships are breaking down because sea is too hot

[NWCorona]

Source: CNN

Britain's £1bn ($1.4bn) warships are losing power in the Persian Gulf because they cannot cope with the warm waters, MPs have been told.

Six Type 45 destroyers have repeatedly experienced power outages because of the temperatures, leaving servicemen in complete darkness.

During the Defence Committee hearing on Tuesday, MPs questioned company executives about the warship failures.

"The equipment is having to operate in far more arduous conditions that were initially required," Rolls-Royce director Tomas Leahy said. Managing director of BAE Systems Maritime, John Hudson, supported Leahy's comments, adding: "The operating profile at the time was that there would not be repeated or continuous operations in the Gulf."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/09/europe/britain-royal-navy-warships/index.html

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Sounds like bean counters on the committee got their way and this is the end result.

[montanacowboy]

1. Climate Change brings and end to War

hahaha, that should be the title

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Think again. It triggered the uncivil war in Syria. . . . nt

[7962]

13. Thats nonsense.

Trying to overthrow Assad started the Syrian civil War.
It all started with peaceful protests. And when the govt treated them heavy handedly, the protests became violent. Its BEEN about trying to overthrow a dictator, not climate change.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. The peaceful protests were due to climate change

The Assad government always was heavy handed, always was torturing. That did not change, that was not new.

[7962]

19. Except the same drought affected Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, etc

and none of them went crazy. This drought wasnt even that old before the uprising started.
Certainly water has always been an issue in the ME, but this uprising has been long coming

[Bernardo de La Paz]

22. Read carefully. I wrote "triggered" and I meant exactly that.

Do not doubt that climate change destabilizes the world.

[leveymg]

27. No doubt, intelligence agencies recognized regime change opportunity partially due to climate change

and took it.

However, the narrative of that comic book is overly simplistic as it ignores the role of rising regional ethnic and religious strife stoked by the money, arms and ambitions of regional elites and outside intervention.

There were other triggers common to the near simultaneous and virtually identical regime change process in Libya and Syria, including exile group propaganda, the role of radical Wahabbi clerics in organizing mosques as centers of armed resistance, and sophisticated agents provocateur who used third-force sniping to spark revenge killings by both the police and rebellious crowds, leading to all-out urban warfare.

Coordinated violence was part of the revolutionary process in both Libya and Syria. The idea that only the regimes employed lethal force is a myth cultivated by propaganda such as this comic.

[mahina]

29. Thank you for that.

[LanternWaste]

24. Post hoc ergo prompter hoc.

Post hoc ergo prompter hoc.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

26. "propter". And No. If you assert something, try to make a case for it. No logical fallacy here. . nt

[jtuck004]

21. No, it just means the taxpayer labor that paid for the first ones was wasted, and now more

will be taken to pay for the incompetence of a new set of politicians superpredators.

[forest444]

2. It also sounds like contractor fraud

of the kind we see so much of in our own MIC.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. Misleading headline.

The sea is not 'too hot', it's that they were designed to operate in the north Atlantic, and here they are fucking around in the middle east, for months and months, which is not at all like the north Atlantic.

The sea in question is the correct temperature. Rather, the ships don't belong there.

[Kelvin Mace]

5. Seems to me that a warship should be able to operate

in a wide range of temps. I mean, if you fancy yourself a "sea power" then that would kind of be the minimum requirement.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. Sure, but it comes at a cost.

In this case, operating expense. Probably have the same sorts of trouble deep in the arctic circle, for durations longer than the designers planned for.

It affects maintenance schedules, safety buffers, etc.

[Kelvin Mace]

10. Absolutely,

but if you can't afford to be a "sea power" you might want to start spending your money on something more sensible, like renewable energy infrastructure.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. Yep.

Maybe this is how war becomes obsolete?

One can hope.

[Kelvin Mace]

12. Indeed, my friend,

indeed.

[sofa king]

20. Once average daytime temps go over 130F....

... The human brain forgets to breathe, and war in the area ends. So does human life.

[7962]

14. True, but some are made MORE for higher or lower temps.

Many ships that operate in the far north would never hold up in the heat of the ME; they're made to withstand cold. The extreme example would be an icebreaker. And the opposite is true for ships made for warmer temps; they would have little protections from extreme cold.
Many autos sold in the north come with no A/C. But if those folks move south, they're screwed!!

[Kelvin Mace]

15. An icebreaker is a pretty specialized ship

for a specialized climate.

I would expect my submarines, aircraft carriers (and support ships), cruisers and destroyers to be able to operate anywhere, if I am going to claim to be a sea power. If not I need to dial back my ambitions and expenditures.

[packman]

4. Ahh, Were the Brits expecting operations in the Arctic -

"The operating profile at the time was that there would not be repeated or continuous operations in the Gulf."

I guess no one on the Maritime Board picked up a newspaper

" I say, Old man, what is this fuss in the Gulf area?"
"Oh, nothing to be concerned about , Old Bean, just a bunch of nonsense?"
"Well, Let the Yanks handle that"
"Rather. We got that brouhaha with the penguins and walrus crowd to fret about."
"Bless me. Thanks to the Board we got the ships to handle that"
"Rather well done- Excellent planning"

[askeptic]

6. someone forgot: It's not about defense, it's about empire

which is sort of amazing, given England's record of empire...

[Sunlei]

7. see the war contractors,-only 20 billion a year they provided air conditioning for tents in gulf war

they didn't have any 'power problems'

[IronLionZion]

16. There are pretty much always operations in the Gulf

this seems like they would have found a way to fix it by now. Or they are having longer missions with less maintenance/repair budget. Military operations require a lot more support than some people might think.

[felix_numinous]

23. Machines and people need to stay cool

at some point global warming is going to effect their function unless we adapt.

[Angel Martin]

25. How is that the UK

had ships operate the Gulf in WW2 (and before) just fine but in 2016 they can't do it ?

[Nihil]

28. Worlds apart: No computers, no air-con, much lower power radar + sonar + ...

... meant that the WWII ships didn't have anything like the electric power requirements
of the current generation.

They ran diesel generators to give them enough juice for lights and the radio (wireless telegraphy!)
kit. The generators of that time wouldn't even power the main radar of a Type 45 if everyone on
board was working in the dark.

(Mind you, the crew had to make do with fans to push warm air around rather than anything
approaching the air-conditioned electronically-pampered luxury that today's matelots whinge about
)