Mettallurgist Pleads Guilty To Fraudulent Tests On Submarine Steel

[Chiron]

Yep; some like to pretend we are Rome, but we aren't.

We are a lot closer to the USSR or CCP in how we operate and what our history is, compared to Rome.

But a lot of the US is not willing to admit that fact, because it hurts our national pride and self-image.

"Raises Eyebrows"

Late Roman Republic had legitimized warlords with private armies vying for power and buying the masses off. The end result wasn't collapse but an evolution of the Government to a newer form that formalized what had already happened without the prior pretenses and to minimize further civil wars.

We are more akin to late stage Carthaginian Republic with a dysfunctional deep state constantly backstabbing each other, a representative body that is ineffectual, and a nominal leader who is a non-entity. We have a navy that is rotting away, a military that is increasingly becoming irrelevant and dependent on undependable mercenaries to bolster its core elites, yet still can't keep its puppet states propped up. Our "Allies" are no longer what they once were and are utterly irrelevant to the scene of a rising new power.

Turning this around would require a thorough purge of the civil services and military plus a re-introduction of the draft to rebuild civic duty and make a political career dependent on civil service to the state.

To do that requires enough people to have 100% commitment to do it even at the cost of their lives. IE violent overthrow of the system. Of course there is no guarantee that will actually make a difference if a subsequent civil purge of loyalists to the old system is not done.

The other alternative given by Gab Founder Andrew Torba and the Amish is to simply exit the system altogether and build a parallel society not dependent on the current system. You then simply let this current system die under its own weight and occupy the vacuum. This is the approach I favor and I have set myself up so that the coming collapse has no effect on me as I am plugged into a parallel economy that is not dependent on the US economy. If need be I am willing to live without internet or phone systems. Yes it would suck as I have a large kindle library and enjoy online games, but if I could quit cold turkey smoking, drinking, and other vices and remain on the wagon for 15 years then it is certainly doable.

On the actual topic:

Is there a reason for the extra margin of safety for say deeper diving in a submarine fight (?), leaving aside something seriously went wrong if a USN Sub has to fight it out undersea.

 

[bintananth]

On the actual topic:

Is there a reason for the extra margin of safety for say deeper diving in a submarine fight (?), leaving aside something seriously went wrong if a USN Sub has to fight it out undersea.

No.

There's a limit beyond which things are no longer reliable. The maximum depth of a German WWII type VIIc was 1,300ft below sea level and those were not rated or tested for that depth.

The Seawolfs are publicly stated to be capable of 1,600ft.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

The CO, XO, and COB of USS Connecticut were recently removed due to "lack of confidence" even though the reason for their removal was the USS Connecticut hitting an uncharted sea mount during what was probably a high-speed blind transit through shallow waters with little to no margin for error.

This is not a modern issue; it follows historical norms that a ship collision is a career ender, period.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

A belated follow-on to this: Elaine Thomas was sentenced to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine. In my opinion, this is a ludicrously lenient sentence considering that she committed this fraud not once, but over two hundred forty times spanning her entire thirty-two-year career with Bradken Steel.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

The CO, XO, and COB of USS Connecticut were recently removed due to "lack of confidence" even though the reason for their removal was the USS Connecticut hitting an uncharted sea mount during what was probably a high-speed blind transit through shallow waters with little to no margin for error.

Note that this actually is connected to the Elaine Thomas matter; the Connecticut's hull was one of the sub-standard batches of Bradken steel which was fraudulently certified by Thomas.

On the other hand, bintananth is absolutely wrong in claiming the command team was unfairly removed; the Navy investigation found that the collision was completely preventable and happened due to sloppy navigation and watch-keeping practices, and that the crew failed to take corrective action even after a previous collision with a pier back in April 2021 which should have been a wake-up call that their ship handling was not up to standard.

 

[bintananth]

On the other hand, bintananth is absolutely wrong in claiming the command team was unfairly removed; the Navy investigation found that the collision was completely preventable and happened due to sloppy navigation and watch-keeping practices, and that the crew failed to take corrective action even after a previous collision with a pier back in April 2021 which should have been a wake-up call that their ship handling was not up to standard.

I said that before information about the April 2021 pier collision came out.

 

[Agent23]

US MIC at its best.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

A belated follow-on to this: Elaine Thomas was sentenced to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine. In my opinion, this is a ludicrously lenient sentence considering that she committed this fraud not once, but over two hundred forty times spanning her entire thirty-two-year career with Bradken Steel.

>Basically commits treason against the nation
>Does this 240+ times
>Potentially resulting in military lives lost
>Less sentence than owning a gun you're not supposed to have even if it's just in a safe somewhere

At this point I think we can point and laugh at the justice system, as if we weren't already.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

>Basically commits treason against the nation
>Does this 240+ times
>Potentially resulting in military lives lost
>Less sentence than owning a gun you're not supposed to have even if it's just in a safe somewhere

At this point I think we can point and laugh at the justice system, as if we weren't already.

I would argue it's part of the depressingly consistent trend that white-collar fraud type crimes are extremely under-punished.

(Remember, this is the country that hastily got rid of forced sterilization as a punishment for crime after SCOTUS ruled that it was perfectly Constitutional, but had to be applied equally to white collar crimes and not exclusively to 'lower class' offenses.) Criminal eugenics remains totally legal, just out of use for that *sole* reason.

 

[Sailor.X]

This is a pretty obscure thing that I only heard about today because it was in my news feed, but it's deeply disturbing.

Ms. Elaine Thomas, the director of metallurgy at a steel foundry in Tacoma which supplies steel castings for submarine hulls, has pleaded guilty to falsifying strength and toughness tests on that steel for at least two hundred forty cases, totaling at least half the foundry's entire submarine-grade steel production for the past thirty-two years. Apparently, this metallurgist felt that the Navy's requirements for submarine hulls were "stupid", so she decided that she wasn't going to actually run the tests, just file fake passing results. And apparently, no one else ever checked the results, so the fraud wasn't found out until 2017, when a new metallurgist whom this person was training as her replacement noticed discrepancies in the records. The company fired her and disclosed the existence of the discrepancies to the Navy, but then falsely insisted that its own internal investigations had shown there was no fraud involved.

The company ultimately settled with the Navy last year, paying $11 million in fines and penalties. The metallurgist faces up to 10 years in prison and $1 million in personal fines, although with the guilty plea the prosecution is recommending a prison sentence on the low end of the scale.

In conjunction with the guilty plea, she filed a statement through her attorney, which was partially quoted in the couple of articles on my feed: "Ms. Thomas never intended to compromise the integrity of any material and is gratified that the government’s testing does not suggest that the structural integrity of any submarine was in fact compromised. This offense is unique in that it was neither motivated by greed nor any desire for personal enrichment. She regrets that she failed to follow her moral compass – admitting to false statements is hardly how she envisioned living out her retirement years."

------

Honestly, that fucking statement makes me almost angrier than the original offense, because it's playing technicalities so hard that it verges on gaslighting. She didn't "intend" to compromise the integrity of the material -- because she merely falsely certified sub-standard materials as passing. No submarine suffered a loss of structural integrity -- because the hull inspections are done so carefully that sub-standard steel only caused excessive maintenance and refit costs. She wasn't motivated by personal enrichment -- she just incidentally enriched herself.

I feel like a suitably karmic punishment for her would be placing her in an submarine prison made of the steel she certified, which will then be dived down to its maximum rated depth and kept there for the duration of her sentence.

She should have gotten life in prison. If we lost any of those subs she would be guilty of 100 cases of murder. Crimes like this require the hammer of God to fall on them not a slap on the wrist.

 

[PsihoKekec]

Fall guys/gals usually don't accept the scapegoat role if life in prison is involved. There is no way her superiors did not know what is going on, the most likely option is that this was done at their behest to save the costs. But just like that one engineer the Boeing who took the fall for 737 MAX crashes, this points to a lie commonly agreed to. The scapegoat absolves the parent company of blame in exchange for post prison payout. Lobbying and bribes for Armed Services Committee is cheaper than doing your job correctly.

 

[Typhonis]

What could she possibly gain AFTER getting out?

 

[PsihoKekec]

Generous under table money settlement.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

What could she possibly gain AFTER getting out?

Money? New identity?

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Fall guys/gals usually don't accept the scapegoat role if life in prison is involved. There is no way her superiors did not know what is going on, the most likely option is that this was done at their behest to save the costs. But just like that one engineer the Boeing who took the fall for 737 MAX crashes, this points to a lie commonly agreed to. The scapegoat absolves the parent company of blame in exchange for post prison payout. Lobbying and bribes for Armed Services Committee is cheaper than doing your job correctly.

Your “fall guy” argument makes no sense as Bradken Steel was still fully liable for its employee’s actions and paid the Navy a massive amount to settle out of court, while Thomas gets nothing.

 

[PsihoKekec]

If she didn't take the fall, then her entire chain of management would be liable to go to prison.

 

[Pef]

The woman was an idiot. A submarine is not only going under water, it also surfaces. It might even surface in polar regions, where temperatures could go even lower.

Convert temperature: Fahrenheit (°F) and Celsius (°C)

-100 F is about -73 Celsius

How cold is the Antarctic?

Write a report, with guided questions, to answer the question: “How cold is the Antarctic?”

niwa.co.nz

lowest temperatures can go to -89 C

You don't want your submarine to shatter like an egg in that cold.

 

[Sergeant Foley]

This is a pretty obscure thing that I only heard about today because it was in my news feed, but it's deeply disturbing.

Ms. Elaine Thomas, the director of metallurgy at a steel foundry in Tacoma which supplies steel castings for submarine hulls, has pleaded guilty to falsifying strength and toughness tests on that steel for at least two hundred forty cases, totaling at least half the foundry's entire submarine-grade steel production for the past thirty-two years. Apparently, this metallurgist felt that the Navy's requirements for submarine hulls were "stupid", so she decided that she wasn't going to actually run the tests, just file fake passing results. And apparently, no one else ever checked the results, so the fraud wasn't found out until 2017, when a new metallurgist whom this person was training as her replacement noticed discrepancies in the records. The company fired her and disclosed the existence of the discrepancies to the Navy, but then falsely insisted that its own internal investigations had shown there was no fraud involved.

The company ultimately settled with the Navy last year, paying $11 million in fines and penalties. The metallurgist faces up to 10 years in prison and $1 million in personal fines, although with the guilty plea the prosecution is recommending a prison sentence on the low end of the scale.

In conjunction with the guilty plea, she filed a statement through her attorney, which was partially quoted in the couple of articles on my feed: "Ms. Thomas never intended to compromise the integrity of any material and is gratified that the government’s testing does not suggest that the structural integrity of any submarine was in fact compromised. This offense is unique in that it was neither motivated by greed nor any desire for personal enrichment. She regrets that she failed to follow her moral compass – admitting to false statements is hardly how she envisioned living out her retirement years."

------

Honestly, that fucking statement makes me almost angrier than the original offense, because it's playing technicalities so hard that it verges on gaslighting. She didn't "intend" to compromise the integrity of the material -- because she merely falsely certified sub-standard materials as passing. No submarine suffered a loss of structural integrity -- because the hull inspections are done so carefully that sub-standard steel only caused excessive maintenance and refit costs. She wasn't motivated by personal enrichment -- she just incidentally enriched herself.

I feel like a suitably karmic punishment for her would be placing her in an submarine prison made of the steel she certified, which will then be dived down to its maximum rated depth and kept there for the duration of her sentence.

Basically the fall girl for this tragedy correct?

 

[strunkenwhite]

lowest temperatures can go to -89 C

I suspect that few submarines would be surfacing in the middle of the Antarctic continent, rather sticking to the coastline. Same for deep Siberia.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

I suspect that few submarines would be surfacing in the middle of the Antarctic continent, rather sticking to the coastline. Same for deep Siberia.

They're actually designed specifically to bust through ice for good reason, Antarctic is a big empty place with only other submarines to deal with. It's a relatively safe place to surface for whatever reason.