The Navy's Engineering Duty Officer duds strike again!

If you read my blog at all you know how little respect I have for the Navy's Engineering Duty Officer program.  Although it has always amused me that the worst things that could happen to a man and the Navy both go by the same initials, ED!  Do you realize that since the inception of the ED Program, the Navy has not delivered a ship on time, on budget, and capable of doing it's mission?!  Look at the LPD 17 class ships, the LCS class ships,  even the much lauded but under performing Burk Class DDG.  Then look at the systems that have failed to make production, after billions of dollars have been spent on the star wars fantasies of some over educated, never been to war, in the rear with the beer and the gear, limp wristed, fat, shore duty sailors called ED's!  These degree heavy fools fail to look at HISTORY!  And we all know what they say about not knowing history.  Look at the remote controlled, mine hunter vehicle that was supposed to make the LCS class ships the best mine hunter/killer in the Navy.  It failed.  Not one ever returned to the ship.  Not one found a mine,  well enough destroyed on.  Did the Navy ED's ever hear about the D.A.S.H. program of the 1950s?  (Drone Anti Submarine Helicopter)  They should have.  It would have saved big bucks.  Now, the Navy's darling project, the Rail Gun is being scrapped.  The Navy ED community  bypassed on the Liquid Plasma Gun, even though it was production ready, to spend billions of dollars on a star wars fantasy weapon that required a bank of generators as big as the ship itself, to fire ONE ROUND!  Rapid fire was out of the question, it took a week to recharge the capacitors to fire the gun!  The ED answer, technology will catch up, someday.  We need a long range intermediate caliber gun, now!  By the way, intermediate caliber is above 5 inch!  We are talking 6-8 inch here.  The Army has 6-8 inch guns the tow behind trucks.  We had the MK 71, 8"/55 that President Carter scrapped.  Oh, he was a bubble head ED, I forgot.  The Liquid Plasma Gun had so many pluses that it was the hands down favorite for anyone who ever went to sea and fought.  The propellant came as a two part mixture and either part was non-flammable.  You could have used it for fire fighting!  When combined in the breech of the gun, it became a propellant, without the cost and effort of a powder tank or bags.  The charge could be altered to change the range of the gun and to compensate for the differing weight of multiple application rounds.  But, it was not star wars fantasy slick, like the Rail Gun.

We need to do away with the ED program, fire all of the ED Officers and Civilians that were ever ED's.  We need to take our Navy back and make it a fighting force.  Line Officers, it's time you all grew a set and spoke out!  No one listens to this old retired Master Chief.  At least, no one in the Pentagon!