(1) Typically, such accidents and in-service failures occur on their own. They are called “unexpected,” though in most cases, they were predictable and could have been avoided. They cost Canada over $50 billion annually, plus require increased costs of equipment, maintenance, energy, and production losses. Proper or at least satisfactory investigations of such accidents and failures are very rare if they ever happen at all. No university has trained specialists in the field.

(2) Shipilov’s success in resolving a structural cracking issue on the lower-right fender of novel DVH Stryker vehicles in February 2017—which had been troubling the U.S. Army for several years, affecting the vehicles’ availability—was instrumental in securing a $258 million contract with General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) to upgrade 116 flat-bottom (FB) Strykers to the improved DVH configuration for the U.S. Army in June 2018. This upgrade was designated the “DVHA1 engineering change proposal (ECP) vehicle.” In 2019, the U.S. Army awarded another contract to upgrade up to 2,525 FB vehicles to the DVHA1 ECP configuration. Furthermore, a new contract worth $2.48 billion was awarded in June 2020 to produce even more upgraded DVHA1 ECP vehicles. Around the same time, in August 2019, the Canadian government awarded a C$3 billion contract to supply the Canadian Army with 360 light armored vehicles (LAVs) built on the same DVHA1 ECP platform as Stryker. In July 2022, Canada sent the first 39 of these 360 vehicles to war-torn Ukraine. In January and June 2023, the Biden administration sent 115 Strykers to Ukraine as part of its military aid. In November 2023, the Canadian government signed a new C$165 million contract for an additional 39 LAVs to replace the donated ones. In total, Ukraine received 154 Strykers.

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(3) The subsequent audit in September 2021 by the DoD Office of Inspector General, which was requested by the House Armed Services Committee, recommended: “that the Commander, Naval Air Forces, assess the actions implemented to address corrosion and determine whether these actions resulted in fewer instances of corrosion, reduced costs, or improved readiness.”

 

(4) In this role, he was supervised by the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yuri S. Osipov, and Vice President Evgeny P. Velikhov, who was the science adviser to the President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, from 1990–1991.

 

(5) Shipilov’s comments on metallic corrosion in seawater played a role (not necessarily the major) in justifying Yeltsin's formation of the Government Commission on Matters Related to Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea (“Yablokov Commission”) and preparation of a report, “Facts and Problems Related to Radioactive Waste Disposal in Seas Adjacent to the Territory of the Russian Federation” (a.k.a. “Yablokov Report”), which was discussed by Congress in 1995.

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(6) At the age of 21, as part of his Engineer’s Degree thesis, he designed the first assembly line for manufacturing oil and gas drill bits with welded teeth reinforced with polycrystalline diamond (PCD) inserts. The assembly line, with newly designed equipment, semi-automatic technological processes (including welding), and machine shop layout, was recommended for practical application by a State Commission in 1981. Thanks to the success of this project, he was invited to join the USSR Academy of Sciences as a research intern, which was an exceptional achievement for an engineering graduate.

 

(7) This crack growth monitoring technique was patented in 1987. The world’s second setup with the same high resolution of about 0.001 mm for crack extension was developed only in the early 2000s in the U.S. The achieved level of accuracy has led to numerous breakthroughs in the field. In 2011, “for outstanding advances in the development of crack-growth characterization techniques usable in a variety of corrosive environments and their application to environment-induced cracking and related fracture phenomena,” Shipilov was elected a Fellow of NACE International, a distinction held by less than 0.5% of nearly 38,000 NACE membership. In 2017, he, with two of his summer (co-op) students—C. Brownfield and M. Wimmer of the University of Tennessee—designed a much more advanced piece of equipment to monitor crack growth in metals, which provides the world’s highest (average) crack advance resolution of about 10 nm, i.e., at least 100 times more precise than provided by the best (laboratory) experimental setups of this type in existence; notably, the achieved resolution is 2,500 times better than commercially available packages.

(8) Even today, 35+ years later, fundamental and precision research on environmentally assisted cracking (especially on corrosion fatigue) using fracture mechanics is limited to several laboratories worldwide. This is because of the high complexity of the equipment and experiments. Although dozens of doctoral degrees have been awarded in this field globally over several decades, Shipilov remains the only Ph.D. holder of Russian origin in this area of expertise.

(9) Between 1986 and 1991, a total of 34 steam generators had to be replaced due to this cracking. Their early replacement cost 5.5 billion Rubles (equivalent to U.S.$8.5 billion). If Shipilov’s advice had been taken promptly in 1988, the cost could have been less than half of what it was. However, if A.P. Aleksandrov had not requested Shipilov’s help in 1991 for work with the Russian Atomic Energy Research Center “Kurchatov Institute,” the cost would have been significantly higher... It is worth noting that in the 1940s, Aleksandrov played “a crucial and centralizing role in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons” as a deputy to Igor V. Kurchatov, the father of the Soviet program of nuclear weapons, often compared to Robert Oppenheimer of the U.S. In 1952, Aleksandrov was appointed by Stalin to supervise the development of the USSR’s first nuclear-powered submarine with a nuclear propulsion system, K-3 Leninsky Komsomol (NATO reporting name November).

(10) Both the possibility of hydrogen embrittlement of pipeline steels and the role of service pressure fluctuations in cracking and eventually rupture of cathodically-protected oil and gas pipelines Shipilov had all evidence to insist on have been repeatedly denied, e.g., during the NACE CORROSION’96 Conference in Denver, CO, and the 1999 NACE Northern Area Eastern Conference in Ottawa, Ont. A story about the subject is ready to be made into a thriller film and deserves to be known... For example, the manuscript of Shipilov’s paper (no. IPC00-0105) titled “Critical Assessment of the Role of Cathodic Protection in Pipeline Integrity and Reliability” was first submitted for publication in the proceedings of the 3rd International Pipeline Conference (IPC 2000), held October 1–5, 2000, in Calgary, Alta. However, the paper was rejected for publication by three reviewers. Two years later, the same paper (with no changes) was submitted to the 6th International Conference on Engineering Structural Integrity Assessment, held from October 7–9, 2002, in Manchester, UK. This time, it was accepted for publication but, surprisingly, not included in the conference proceedings. Conference proceedings (without Shipilov’s paper) were published before the conference and its copy was presented to each conference attendee as part of the registration package. During the conference, Shipilov’s presentation received the most attention from attendees and was the topic of all the following discussions. As a result, the organizers had to publish a new version of the conference proceedings, which now included his paper on pp. 155–161. This was probably the only case when two versions of conference proceedings had to be published: one without one of the 25 accepted papers and another with that paper included. The updated version of Manchester’s conference proceedings can still be purchased on FESI’s website. However, Shipilov—who was not informed of the second version of conference proceedings and learned about it only in the late 2000s from Italian and Ukrainian colleagues who referred to that publication—submitted the same paper again under the title “Corrosion Protection: An + or – in Pipeline Safety and Reliability?” for the 6th International Symposium on Risk, Economy and Safety, Failure Minimization and Analysis, held March 8–12, 2004, in Cape Town, South Africa. This time, the paper was included in the conference proceedings, which were published by the same publisher (EMAS Publishing, Sheffield, UK) as the proceedings from Manchester. To
summarize, it has been many years since then, and it is now unlikely for research that contradicts Shipilov’s main ideas from 1993 to be published as credible science in an academic journal or conference proceedings.

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(11) Escalating deterioration of water and sewer systems due to corrosion threatens a nation’s ability to provide safe drinking water and essential sanitation services. In addition, the cost of corrosion in the water and wastewater sector in the U.S. exceeds $70 billion per year. These two reasons explain Congress’ interest in this project.

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(12) No nuclear research center/team worldwide was ready in 2016 or is prepared now (in 2024) to conduct such complex and sophisticated investigations. The lack of a similar test facility did not allow the Cooperative IASCC Research (CIR) program—an international research effort that was established “to address IASCC in light water reactor components” and sponsored by member organizations from 10 countries since 1995—to achieve its goals “to develop a mechanistic understanding of IASCC” after spending countless millions of dollars. The test facility designed by Shipilov is currently the only one worldwide that could be used to evaluate the cracking susceptibility of reactor core materials and assess the residual life of most reactors in nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers in service with the U.S. and Allied navies, including Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).