Talk:USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB-3)

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Military history: Maritime / North America / United States / Post-Cold War

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A fact from USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB-3) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 15 December 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the USNS Lewis B. Puller (T-MLP-3/T-AFSB-1) (pictured) will be the first purpose-built afloat forward staging base (AFSB) support vessel for the United States Navy?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/T-AFSB-1).

Wikipedia

Background section -- Crewing

It looks as though this vessel will not be crewed by the same unions as the previous ships in its class: [1]. I would opt to not include crewing unions in the article because this information is so likely to change over time. An indication that it is crewed by civilian mariners in more than sufficient. M i c 07:11, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Background -- Cost

The current article seems to be misreading the Global Security source badly. It is taking the cost of the engineering change proposal to convert the 3rd MLP to an ESB as the entire cost of the platform. $134.9 m is the cost of the additional capability. The actual source [Global Security] does not seem to give the cost for the Lewis B puller aka the 3rd MLP ship, only for the change proposal. It does give the cost of the 4th ship as $**498m**. MLP 1 & 2 got $744,129,956 + a earlier $115 million contract for long-lead time items + a contract to Vigor for $35m for a total of $894m or just over $**447m** each. MLP 3 was added to the order later, which is why the source does not have the cost. And then came the change request. These costs are in line with the wiki article on the history of the expeditionary transfer dock.

tldr; cost in wiki article is badly wrong as misreading the cost of change proposal to convert 3rd MLP to ESB as the total cost. The actual cost of the 3rd ESB is of the order of $500m

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/mlp-afsb.htm

Barath s (talk) 03:33, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Barath s: feel free to update with a new source. Global security is no longer accepted as a reliable source on WP. - wolf 20:40, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If I had a source I would have already. I'm afraid I don't have an alternate source that specifies the cost of the Lewis Puller which I consider acceptable. Indeed even globalsecurity does not do so. (There is one unsourced number from a reddit comment which I absolutely cannot take as a source). The issue is that we know the number in the article is massively wrong and is not supported even by its own source. Or by common sense. I have alternate source for the 4th MLP https://news.usni.org/2014/12/22/nassco-awarded-498-million-second-afloat-forward-staging-base

I have an alternate source for MLP3 change requests https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/the-us-navys-mobile-landing-platform-ships-06525/

→::FY 2010: $120 million, all advance procurement. →::FY 2011 request: $380 million, all procurement (1 ship). →::FY 2012 request: $425.9 million, all procurement (1 ship + advance procurement). →::FY 2014 request: $135 million to complete the third MLP as an AFSB; $56 million for various research and development efforts, and $43.4 million for outfitting and post-delivery costs with the first MLP.

What I don't have is *any* reputable source for the cost of the 3rd mlp. So we're stuck right now, knowing that the MLP3 cost is in the region of $500m . Knowing that the cost in the article is wrong by a big amount, but not having the exact cost/source to replace it with

Barath s (talk) 13:02, 9 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I went with this. - wolf 23:12, 9 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]