When will the US Navy switch to the metric system?

[LoBlo]

Eventually the USN has to get with the program and go metric... anyday now right?

[Schatten]

I don't see it happening anytime soon. Soon being defined as any time between right now and when the sun finally burns out. After that, maybe.

[Letum]

The expense of changing every single dial, computer system, training manuel, strategic plan and optical device as well as re-training personnel would be immense!

[geetrue]

Do you know how much work it takes to get a ship in and out of dry dock?

The chocks have to be just right ... the displacement ... the length ... the beam.

No way will it ever be done ... Not in the US Navy ...
Maybe the USA, but never the Navy.

P.S. I forgot this part, "Tell the OOD to pump 2,000 liters to the fwd tanks. I feel a little heavy aft" "Eye, eye sir"

[Bort]

I think that will happen right before the rest of the US goes metric-which is...never.:lol:

[lesrae]

So, do you mean the whole Navy is still imperial, ie inches and feet? Or is it just weights and measures

[Schatten]

So, do you mean the whole Navy is still imperial, ie inches and feet? Or is it just weights and measures

Yep everything.

[SUBMAN1]

That's a pretty funny idea! Considering a majority of the naval world and all of the aircraft world use the imperial system, I'd have to agree with the post above - about the same time the sun burns out.

-S

[The Noob]

We have to put an end to this madness and finally use ONE system. This is confusing. Metric system FTW! :rock:

[Schatten]

How is it confusing? I'm pretty sure the US sailors aren't all that confused by inches and feet...

;)

[LoBlo]

I think that will happen right before the rest of the US goes metric-which is...never.:lol:

Actually I work in the US medical field and we've switch to totally metric a while back. Drug dosing, body weight, lenght, scientific publications, etc are all communicated in kg, liters, cm etc. About the only time you see Imperial is the occasional temperature reading is sometimes still recorded as Farenheit but most of the time Celcius in my hospital.

Transition really wasn't that hard afiak. I remember back in engineering school, most class assignments, problems, and test were metric too.

Probably wouldn't be a hard transition for young sailors... just tough on the old foogies that are used to their way... and they are the ones that run the show. They could always start the transition with the newest ships being build (VAs, LCS, etc). :)

[nightdagger]

Eventually the USN has to get with the program and go metric... anyday now right?

What program? If I'm not mistaken most programs in the US are on the imperial system;)

[XabbaRus]

Hey I know plenty of older people in the UK who have a problem with metric.

[Abraham]

I guess every self respecting navy uses the imperial system, apart from an occasional 20 mm Oerlikon, 40 mm Bofors or 76 mm Otomat.
Since navies are traditional and since there is no pressing reason for change, why should they change?

Personally I think the imperial system has a certain charm. I use it when I'm sailing (though not consequently) and I learned to SCUBA dive using the imperial system (which I use consequently).
Fps and psi for me!

[Sailor Steve]

Ships and planes measure their speed in knots. This is true for every country, even France.

[Torpedo Fodder]

Ships and planes measure their speed in knots. This is true for every country, even France.
And there's a reason for that: 1 nautical mile is equal to 1 arc-minute of latitude. For this reason alone I don't see that unit of measurement going away.

[Tchocky]

I still think kilometres per hour is easier than furlongs per fortnight :)

[Chaotic42]

Ships and planes measure their speed in knots. This is true for every country, even France.
And there's a reason for that: 1 nautical mile is equal to 1 arc-minute of latitude. For this reason alone I don't see that unit of measurement going away.

They could use UTMs instead of Geographic Coordinates.

[Schatten]

They could use UTMs instead of Geographic Coordinates.
That wouldn't exactly simplify things because you'd have to train people how to use those exclusively as well. If having to go metric means adding that to the situation, and the idea of going metric was to simplify things...well I don't see it being any simpler at all.

Medical use is metric yeah, but those sort of guys usually aren't doing your navigation or picking the right size shell out of the magazine so not really comparable. If your corpsmen are doing those things you have bigger problems than wondering exactly how many km it is to the next Starbucks...

Basically I'm going with the old "if it ain't broke don't fix it" standby.

(and if people from countries who use metric can't understand it, but our guys can, then that doesn't classify it as "broken" in my book either) ;)

[Letum]

I hate the mixed up gun measurements.

At one point the UK had different guns in service that measured in:

UK inches,
USA inches,
continental cm,
continental mm,
UK pounds
and continental Kg

:doh:

[Spoon 11th]

Aviation in general uses messy mixture of metric and non-metric units. Finnish air force switched from metric to imperial in 2004.

[bookworm_020]

The US Army uses a lot of metric measurments, due to NATO. The Navy can get away with it as there is little connection between ships in hardware.

The US is one of only three countries that still don't use metric. I don't think the rest of the world will convert to suit America! I know there was a stink in the US when ex-pat Aussies found that shipments of vegiemite were being destroyed at the border, due to the fact they didn't have imperial weights on them! Yet the Carmello Koala's got through despite them only haveing the metric weight on them!

[SUBMAN1]

I think that will happen right before the rest of the US goes metric-which is...never.:lol:
Actually I work in the US medical field and we've switch to totally metric a while back. Drug dosing, body weight, lenght, scientific publications, etc are all communicated in kg, liters, cm etc. About the only time you see Imperial is the occasional temperature reading is sometimes still recorded as Farenheit but most of the time Celcius in my hospital.

Transition really wasn't that hard afiak. I remember back in engineering school, most class assignments, problems, and test were metric too.

Probably wouldn't be a hard transition for young sailors... just tough on the old foogies that are used to their way... and they are the ones that run the show. They could always start the transition with the newest ships being build (VAs, LCS, etc). :)

Now here is a good reason to switch. I want to make sure the doctors from any nation all agree on the exact same dosages, etc. when working on injured troops. Someone was thinking here and this is a good thing.

-S

PS. For ships / aircraft, it will still be a cold day in hell though before they switch. Besides, if all of your enemies are on Metric, it makes it harder to intercept communications accurately! :p

[GlobalExplorer]

If having to go metric means adding that to the situation, and the idea of going metric was to simplify things...well I don't see it being any simpler at all.

Well you can only say that because you have never worked with it. In the metric system almost all calculations are based on powers of 10 (1 millimeter is 1 m / 1.000, kilogramm is 1000 gramm and so on). Another advantage of the metric system is, that units are compatible in very different areas of physics. for example unit for pressure is kg / m² , acceleration is m / s², this works the same with electricity, energy like 1 joule = 1 newton * 1 meter , 1 watt = 1 joule per second, just for examples, of course that's much easier to work with.

I think imperial units are "cool" in a way, and Britain and US will probably fight for them for another 1000 years, but objectively, the metric system is better.

There are exceptions however, and one of them is naval and geographic matters. Here nautical miles are better than metric units because they are based on the geoid, i.e. the earth's diameter / 360 degrees / 60 arc minutes = 1 nautical mile (1.8518 km). That means the earth has a diameter of exactly 21600 nm (which can be nicely divided), whereas in kilometers that's an odd 40075. So of course it's much better using nautical miles here than calculating with meters which are a totally arbitrary unit. For instance in 1 hour the earth rotates by exactly 900nm as compared to 1669.7916 km.

[Konovalov]

Last option for me. Hopefully never.

[Schatten]

GlobalExplorer, I was specifically saying adding the UTMs on top of the metric system wouldn't simplify anything. The metric system is easy enough on its own, but adding UTMs because you can't use any of your own charts anymore doesn't sound like a simplification but an adding to of training problems.

Well you can only say that because you have never worked with it.

Well I have managed to avoid dropping artillery on my own position using metric maps before...so I think I can say I have at least a passing familiarity with the metric system. ;)

[GlobalExplorer]

Well I have managed to avoid dropping artillery on my own position using metric maps before...so I think I can say I have at least a passing familiarity with the metric system. ;)

I see - well, then at least you could have blamed it on the metric system if something would have gone wrong!