Stop running the Navy like a touchy-feely corporation and I bet anything that it turns back around. Exhaustion my ass.
“Exhaustion my ass.”
Deployed 50% most definitely leads to exhaustion.
Of course any submariners wife would know that.
My son was so depressed by the unnecessary overwork that I feared for his mental health. My respect for him for his survival of Power School and the rest of his hitch is very high.
I can relate...partying hearty in Olongapo or Subic City until the wee hours of the morning exhausted me!
The Navy world wide is at an all time since pre-WW1 low as to number of ships of all types. When a ship is taken out of rotation another must cover. Even Lifers have seen their entire 20 years in a Navy under equipped, undermanned, and underfunded even if they have 20 years in.
9/11 and the carrier readiness fiasco taught Congress and Presidents nothing.They fired two Captains over issues caused by lack of funds and moved on addressing & fixing nothing. You must have funding to have readiness. BTW when the ships are in port sailors often attend schools then afterward when the ship does work ups for pre-deployment are ready.
With that said the PC social experiments have no doubt also done damage and should all be ended for the good of all services and national security.
I heard the former commander of the USS Cole being interviewed this afternoon on WMAL radio in DC local drive. He said that ships crews are under strength. He gave the example that current destroyers are supposed to have 3 sailors per watch as human lookouts. Current crew shortages has caused there only to be one per watch, and that one is on the stern. Thus exhaustion is plausible to me, when you have a shortage of sailors on each crew.
I remember during the Carter years, the artillery battalion I was in could only fully man 5 of 6 self-propelled howitzers in each of our artillery batteries. When we when to gunnery, we had to take all of our guns and ran them with 5 man crews instead of the required 7 so that we had to take all of the guns to the range.