Composite submarine repairability failure

Congress, frustrated with the SSN-21 (later Seawolf) program and still chasing the leapfrog idea even after the titanium-sub case had collapsed, zeroed the Navy's $100M design budget and redirected it to DARPA to design an all-composite submarine. After the Secretary of the Navy lobbied back the $100M, DARPA retained its parallel funding and convened a three-day Reston, Virginia workshop with metals and composites communities. The composites group's conceptual design featured large hatch doors for equipment removal — exposing the fact that the aerospace composites community (which had not yet flown an all-composite aircraft; the V-22 Osprey was the first) had no understanding of submarine interior geometry or the constraint that composite hulls cannot be cut and repaired. The Patrick Henry's hull patchwork was shown as the cautionary case.

However, that didn't mean — I guess I can tell you part of the story. I don't think I told you the rest of the story after that meeting in the early 80s where the aerospace industry thought heavy section titanium was a quarter inch or three-eighths of an inch, and the Navy thought it was one inch or four inches. It was a complete disconnect. About four or five years later — about '85 or '86 — Congress was still concerned about this titanium submarine, even though the word was coming out that they were a problem, they weren't the world's solution for the Soviets. Congress was still interested in leapfrogging, and they wanted to go to all-composite submarines. So they zeroed the SSN-21 budget. That was the design budget for the SSN-21, which later became the Seawolf.

After Congress zeroed Captain ("Admiral"-self-corrected-to-"Captain") Fireball's $100M Seawolf design budget and gave it to DARPA for "something beyond titanium," a three-day Reston VA workshop convened composites proponents. Congress later restored the Seawolf money while keeping DARPA's. Tom files it alongside Star Wars and the National Aerospace Plane as defense fantasy untethered from physics.

The Navy wanted to build an all-composite submarine after the Alpha sub. Many people in the Navy went up to the Hill and told Congress, we'll build a titanium submarine. Congress said, no, we're not going to be second. They took away from Captain Fireball the $100 million design budget for the Seawolf in the mid-80s. Congress zeroed it and gave the money to DARPA to design something beyond titanium. A bunch of admirals went up to the Hill, and Congress gave back Captain Fireball his $100 million for design. They also kept the $100 million for DARPA. I went to the workshop with a bunch of other people in Reston, Virginia. It was a three-day workshop. In some of the other videos you'll hear the stories of that. But the composites guys came in, and they must have been some of the people in the defense department thinking about what you can do when you're not limited by science or physics or chemistry — when you can just conceive of the inconceivable.

Brief reference — Navy built some all-composite ships and found "they didn't work so well"; steel's modulus advantage at large scale.

They didn't believe that at the Navy either. They thought they were going to build all-composite ships in the future, and then they built some and they found they didn't work so well. They found the modulus of steel had a certain advantage when you made big things. That's the old story of the Visby, the Swedish corvette, the world's largest composite ship — you can only take it out in good weather. Don't take it out in a storm. That's good as long as you have an agreement with the other side that they'll only do battle in good weather, right.