Customer Reviews

Running Critical: The Silent War, Rickover, and General Dynamics

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Author P. Tyler is very fair to all parties concerned. Excellent historical content, and thoroughness of research is evident in context. Historical accuracy is also excellent (I checked). Should be required reading for Political Science students and/or Military History buffs. This is one of the handfull of books that I've immediatly re-read after I finished it just to make sure I interpretted everything correctly. Content is very educational about mid to late US "cold war" policies. 5 stars.

Excellent narrative illustrating the complex nature of the Cold War era military industrial complex. Fascinating struggle between two strong leaders: Adm Hyman Rickover and Takis Veliotis of General Dynamics. Watch the action and the gamesmanship with billions of dollars at stake and watch how each combatant exposes the others weaknesses and see how the interests of the US people get lost in the battle.

This is a comprehensive account of the contentious genesis of the Los Angeles Class attack sub, a warship normally described as one of the most advanced in the world, but under suspicion here. Though this story will most likely appeal to those familiar with the terminology and technology of military submarines, it also has much to offer for those studying the military acquisitions process.

The Los Angeles class attack sub was borne of attempts to combat two implacable enemies - the Soviet Navy and America's own Hyman Rickover, the so-called father of the nuclear navy. Facing the combined soviet threats of submarine launched anti-ship missiles (previous Russian subs could only fire their missiles only after an elaborate process while on the surface where they were visible and vulnerable) and faster submarines equipped with more powerful reactors, American planners now find themselves desperate to reclaim an edge on speed. (Though setting the benchmark with the Skipjack class, progressive gains in the size and weight of latter subs using the same powerplant eroded this advantage). The switch to a newer reactor (actually one redesigned after use on the USS Long Beach, one of the world's first nuclear-powered surface ships) wasn't enough, and submarine vets had no choice but to make compromises, like reducing hull thickness and conseuqently reducing maximum safe operating depth. Conflict with the headstrong Admiral Rickover occurs when the winning design for the new sub is chosen by a firm other than General Dynamics, the established industry leader. Also complicating things is Takis Veliotis, a wily genius who is the only man who can stand up to greedy corporate reps eager to cut any corner and Rickover himself. Veliotis, unfortunately, has some of his own secrets to hide, resulting in his flight to Greece to avoid charges stemming from millions of dollars in kickbacks. What nearly dooms the program are the extensive compromises made to the construction schedules - resulting in ships being launched half-finished only to be quietly returned to the factory for completion. Millions of dollars in overruns are quietly overlooked, with the hope that a government bailout will convert these losses into profits. When that prospect begins to look unlikely, the corporate heads of GD begin turning on each other, while unskilled and unreliable labor, low morale and impossible construction schedules mix to spell the likely doom of the US submarine force.

This book tackled an unlikely subject - the LA Class is the backbone of America's submarine navy, not something you've heard described as essentially "Unsafe at any depth". However, the book is marred for two reasons - the author spends much more time concentrating on each specific transaction or exchange between characters (like Veliotis and either the head of GD or Rickover) without connecting these exchanges into a cohesive picture of a collapsing defense program. A more glaring flaw is the book being incomplete. "When it was over, there were just the submarines" but the submarines managed to operate at much higher safety standards than the Russian boats they confronted - the author never connecting these boats to the seeming time-bombs produced by GD. What had happened? Who can take credit for the success of the LA Class - or is even that perceived success an illusion? Even the supreme irony of speedy submarines is never addressed adequately, though the information was probably unavailable. Though developments in sub-launched missiles and their submarines themselves did substantiate the need for faster US subs, the threat of high-speed Russian subs was a cold war mirage. The Russians never gave much production priority to their high-powered reactors. Those installed in experimental versions of the November and Papa classes, and regularly in the Alfa class proved more trouble prone than realized. Though more compact than comparable western designs, these reactors were at least as loud, and, using molten metal as a coolant, had to be operated around the clock, even while in port, lest the coolant be allowed to "freeze" into solid metal and ruin the piping. Either of these two ommissions (the post-construction history of the LA class and the real threat posed by the Russians) is fatal to the subject. Nevertheless, I found it important reading. I'm hoping the author will revisit the subject again using the information he had no access to at first.

This book chronicles the political and corporate history of the 688 class nuclear attack submarine. There is much insight into the methods and manner of Admiral Rickover and also a lot of material on the corporate goings-on at Electric Boat during the construction of these boats. At the same time the Trident program was starting so it was a hectic era of sub construction in the USA.

The small amount of operational history is very interesting, such as the ruse which allowed the US Navy to estimate the top speed of mid-1960s Russian nuclear subs. Really the whole book is well written but a complaint at Sub-Log was the limited amount of design, technical and operational information. Much of the book is taken up with following the business and political leaders involved in these huge defense projects.

Very well done, insightful and recommended for anyone considering a career in management at a large defense contractor. An important book in how it documents one slice of American Cold War defense procurement.

Category: corporate and political narrative and intrigue

Heroes: ?? Electric Boat rank and file?

Boats: 688 class

Rating: 4 conference rooms (out of a total of five)

This is a comprehensive account of the contentious genesis of the Los Angeles Class attack sub, a warship normally described as one of the most advanced in the world, but one under suspicion here. Though this story will most likely appeal to those familiar with the terminology and technology of military submarines, it also has much to offer for those studying the military acquisitions process.

The Los Angeles class attack sub was designed to combat two implacable enemies - the Soviet Navy and America's own Hyman Rickover, the so-called father of the nuclear navy. Facing the combined soviet threats of submarine launched anti-ship missiles (previous Russian subs could only fire their missiles after an elaborate process while the surfaced) and faster submarines equipped with more powerful reactors, American planners were now desperate to reclaim an edge on speed. Though America set the speed benchmark with the Skipjack class SSN, progressive gains in the size and weight of latter subs using the same powerplant eroded this edge. The switch to a "newer" reactor (actually one redesigned after use on the USS Long Beach, one of the world's first nuclear-powered surface ships) wasn't enough, and submarine vets had no choice but to make compromises such as shaving hull thickness and consequently reducing maximum safe operating depth. War with Rickover breaks out when the winning design for the new sub is chosen by a firm other than General Dynamics, the established industry leader. Also complicating things is Takis Veliotis, an exec at Electric Boat who is the only man who can maneuver both his greedy colleagues and Rickover himself. Veliotis, unfortunately, has some of his own secrets to hide, resulting in his flight to Greece to avoid charges stemming from millions of dollars in kickbacks. What nearly dooms the program are the extensive compromises made to the construction schedules - resulting in ships being launched half-finished only to be quietly returned to the factory for completion. Millions of dollars in overruns are quietly overlooked, with the hope for a government bailout. When that prospect begins to look unlikely, the corporate heads of GD begin turning on each other, while unskilled and unreliable labor, low morale and impossible construction schedules collide and nearly doom of the US submarine force.

This book tackled an unlikely subject - the LA Class remains the backbone of America's submarine navy, and has never been described as essentially "Unsafe at any depth". However, the book is marred for two reasons - the author focuses on each specific transaction or exchange between characters (like Veliotis and either the head of GD or Rickover) without connecting these events into a cohesive picture of a collapsing defense program. A more glaring flaw is the book being incomplete. "When it was over, there were just the submarines" but the submarines managed to operate at much higher safety standards than the Russian boats they confronted - the author never connecting these boats to the seeming time-bombs produced by GD. What had happened? Who can take credit for the success of the LA Class - or is even that perceived success an illusion? Even the supreme irony of speedy Soviet subs is never addressed adequately, though the information was probably unavailable. Though developments in sub-launched missiles and their submarines themselves did substantiate the need for faster US subs, the threat of high-speed Russian subs was a cold war mirage. The Russians never gave much production priority to their high-powered reactors. Those installed in experimental versions of the November class and regularly in the Alfa class proved more trouble prone than realized. Though more compact than comparable western designs, these reactors were at least as loud, and, using molten metal as a coolant, had to be operated around the clock, even while in port, lest the coolant be allowed to "freeze" into solid metal and ruin the piping. Either of these two omissions (the post-construction history of the LA class and the real threat posed by the Russians) severely undermines the book.

Nevertheless, I found it important reading. I'm hoping the author will revisit the subject again using the information he had no access to at first. Given the plethora of submarine books based on conspiracy theories published after the cold-war, perhaps the time is right for a book about submarines of that era that aren't 3rd party accounts of some unprovable dark plot, but comprehensively inspect the industrial complex that built those subs in the first place. The author is already two-thirds of the way with this book.

It was a monumental showdown: Takis Veliotis, the ruthless, ambitious manager brought in to save the Electrtic Boat division of General Dynamics, the prime supplier of submarines to the navy, and Admiral Hyman Rickover, the brilliant, demanding perfectionist who helped create those submarines. Though they started as allies with the goal of excellence, they soon became bitter enemies. Each made the destruction of the other his goal. In the interim their actions (or lack thereof) helped shape defense policy at sea for a generation, through the technically advanced but flawed Los Angeles class of attack submarines. This book reads less like the examination of policy and politics that it is, and more like a thriller, which it becomes. Impossible to put down -- Tyler nails the facts and the personalities.

Patrick Tyler's book is centered on the relationship between Admiral Hyman Rickover, the longtime director of the Navy's nuclear propulsion program, and General Dynamics/Electric Boat. The book is at its best in its description of the unique demands of submarine construction and in the author's description of abuses of power, including Rickover's demands for special favors from the vendor. But if you're going to focus your book upon Hyman Rickover, who built an engineering program and who, to quote Rickover's antagonist Elmo Zumwalt, "never built a lemon," it would be nice to have the engineering basics right. Tyler's book is at its weakest here. His claims that Rickover was holding back reactor design echo those of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who backed the installation of an oil-fired propulsion plant into CV-67 (the USS John F. Kennedy), which was commissioned in 1968. Like Tyler, Robert McNamara believed that Rickover's conservative engineering approach was constraining advances in naval nuclear propulsion. The flawed result, in McNamara's case, was the delivery of a oil-fired carrier to the United States Navy in the late 1960s.

Similarly, Tyler sees Rickover's devotion to the pressurized water reactor design as flawed; in fact, Naval Reactors' safety record, based largely upon the PWR design, has been stellar. He faults Rickover for ignoring the potential of the sodium-cooled design of the S1G and S2G reactors (with the latter installed on the USS Seawolf), when both plants were plagued by severe performance problems. Finally, most painfully, Tyler lauds the performance of Soviet submarines, noting their power density advantages compared with US reactor plants. The USSR's prioritization of plant performance at the expense of reactor safety is addressed in a footnote on page 97; basically, the differences in shielding weight didn't fully account for the power advantage. Certainly, the book, published in 1986, is a product of the Cold War era, but I believe that Rickover's (again) conservative approach in radiation shielding and exposure was the right one.

I think that Tyler's book is at its best in describing the executives and managers at General Dynamics and the Electric Boat shipyard. While missing the mark on Admiral Rickover's management of technology, the author does rightfully describe Rickover's excesses, arbitrary behavior, and repeated overreach, which were enabled by his supporters in Congress. But by the time Running Critical was published, President Reagan had signed an Executive Order term-limiting the head of the program to a single, eight year term. Many of the abuses of power cited by the author were real and significant, but they are unlikely to be repeated.

My take is that Patrick Tyler is a good investigative reporter and I found his description of the General Dynamics leaders and the company's boardroom quite engaging.

Running Critical is a masterful piece of investigative journalism. It is rigourously researched and extremely well written. The author, a proven journalist, has no axe to grind. Now, 35 years on, the story as he relates it stands up well, based as it is on hundreds of exhaustive interviews with the key people involved and on the Veliotis tapes. A captivating and balanced history of a key part of the so-called Cold War, as well as a documentary of corporate personalities and tactics at the highest levels, together with straightforward and unembelished accounts of how men (no women other than secretaries and wives!) at the top levels of government and the private sector interacted in the panic-stricken rush to catch up with the USSR in the development of nuclear submarine technology.

First of all, there is an incredible amount of inside information in this book. I cannot imagine how he was able to get the principals to sit down and give their stories. If I am a General Dynamics exec, Rickover, SecNav Hidalgo, or anyone else besides now-exiled Veliotis, I have absolutely zero to gain by doing it. The story is just too embarrassing.

I agree with the other reviews so far, but will add just one deficiency that has not been mentioned so far.

There is information at the beginning about how GD Chairmen Lewis pushes down EB cost estimator Barton's 688 bid with the expectation of making up the delta between the underbid by asking the government to cover its costs later under the guise of change requests. At the time, the loss per boat was pretty minimal, so it was not a hard gamble to swallow.

However, the 688 cost begins to snowball under the original EB General Manager and seems to get even worse under the GD CFO turned EB General Manager MacDonnell before the overruns seem to moderate in the 1980s under Veliotis. For whatever reason, the ship yard practices that caused these overruns are glossed over in the book.

The EB management all-along keeps up the charge that its the government's fault due to some ~30,000 change requests. But the author seems to follow Rickover's reasoning that these changes were too small to motivate a $1billion overrun. However, he doesn't go into what exactly was causing the overruns. Lazy or incompetent yard-staff? Material shortages? Too many people tossed on one boat getting into each others' way and ruining per-worker productivity?

Or was even Barton's disregarded estimate too low? In any case, that information is missing. If anyone here can point me to the answer, I'd be very curious...

A great book. Should be read by all military officers. Should be read by all rooticians.

It gives a picture of strong personalities and weak consciences.

It paints a picture of a DOD and a DON that don't know how to monitor their contractors.

It fails to point out many of the most important lessons to be learned, e.g., big problems are not born big, they are born small and are nursed by incompetence, lack of transparency and lack of integrity.

The administrations of several presidents presided over this shameful mess. What is the extent of the problem?