Posted on 08/28/2017 10:21:40 PM PDT by Ace's Dad
Proceedings Magazine August 2017 Vol. 143/8/1,374
The discussion regarding the recent collisions of the USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and the John S. McCain (DDG-56) has moved beyond “how could this have happened” asked at a micro-level to the same question at a macro-level. Concerned perhaps with public perception, the Navy has leaped forward in drawing conclusions in a way that would, under other circumstances, be considered unseemly. Already a fleet commander has been relieved. Two investigations and two operational pauses have been ordered.
This furious activity is taking place while the investigation into what happened in the John S. McCain is barely started and before the Fitzgerald investigation has been released to the public. This suggests that key issues are already so evident there is no need to wait for the conclusions of unit-level investigations. It would appear the Navy’s leadership has decided these collisions were not simply two disconnected lightning bolts of bad luck striking Seventh Fleet.
The media is afire with experts, many of whom are former senior naval officers, all of whom are drawing conclusions. If they all know, then certainly current Navy leaders must also know the following:
► Training is (and has been) deficient for surface ships’ officers and crews for at least 15 years.
► The operational tempo (OpTempo) imposed on surface ships steadily is increasing, owing to a combination of declining fleet size; mission creep; diminishing average, unit-by-unit capability, as the littoral combat ships (LCS) come on line; increased tension in the Asian theater; and a relentless and steady demand for ships from combatant commanders.
► Ships home-ported in Japan are subject to a different standard from ships based in the United States.
Simply put, through no fault of their own, ships’ crews are stretched far too thin, and they are insufficiently trained, top to bottom. What has not been discussed, but which should be significantly more concerning, is the fact that if ships’ officers are not up to the fundamental task of safe navigation, how can they possibly be up to the task of complex warfighting?
While everyone suddenly seems familiar with these issues – at least enough to vault over process directly to the firing of a vice admiral – the element that has so far eluded discussion is the material condition of these ships. To understand the inexplicable fact that, every day, ships are operating in the most extraordinarily suboptimized ways, several factors need to be understood.
Individual-level training for both officers and enlisted personnel has been gutted. Testing and other performance-related standards were eliminated to improve throughput, reduce attrition, and make seniors happy. Follow-on training such as Communications and Engineer Officer of the Watch Schools were eliminated for new accession officers. B Double E and similar training were reduced for new accession enlisted personnel. As a result, new accessions showed up on ships not ready to be productive. Officer career paths were changed to the detriment of readiness, with long stretches ashore to meet other requirements like postgraduate degrees, joint credit, individual argumentations, Washington-time, etc…. At the same time, we combined executive officer (XO) and commanding officer (CO) training to the detriment of both, and Command Qualification Boards were pushed back for XO tours when officers already had been selected for command. Enlisted journeyman and master-level training (both formal schoolhouse training and informal in jobs such as shore intermediate maintenance activities [SIMAs]) was shredded. Senior officers and enlisted personnel no longer can make up for the shortfalls elsewhere because they increasingly don’t know their jobs either. General military training (GMT) and other similar requirements have exploded to the detriment of shipboard training programs.
Manning initiatives such as “perform to serve,” “top six rolldown,” and others decimated journeyman-level manning and expertise (and morale) across the force.
On the maintenance side, depot-level maintenance periods were decreased. Intermediate maintenance activity (IMA) periods were reduced; lifecycle maintenance requirements such as corrosion control, vibration monitoring, and other periodic and condition-based maintenance—were reduced or eliminated. SIMAs were eliminated or cut, to include ship-to-shop capabilities like valve barges. Level II (IMA) work was transferred to the ships’ crews, causing huge maintenance backlogs and untenable ship’s force worklists. Operational propulsion plant examinations, light-off assessments, and configuration status accountings were eliminated in favor of “death by a thousand cuts” from afloat training groups, with no forcing factors to ensure discrepancies were repaired in a timely manner.
Maintenance funding was taken from ships in maintenance and doled out to ships scheduled for inspection-and-surveys (InSurvs). The supply system and systems commands failed to plan for obsolescence and stopped paying for many replacement parts. At the same time, ships’ on-board stocks of replacement parts were reduced. As a result, casualty reports skyrocketed, and ships’ ability to be self-sufficient has disappeared. Funding for tech reps was curtailed or eliminated in favor of “distance support.”
The number one factor, though, is money. As a percentage of the Navy’s budget, funding for parts and repairs remains fairly static. Here’s the problem for the surface force: Neither naval aviation nor the submarine force will agree to operate without fully funded maintenance coffers. They—especially submariners—simply won’t. The reasons seem obvious. While a ship can be almost completely broken and still get under way, the cost of mechanical failure in a submarine can be catastrophic. Because the budget is flat and the fleet is aging, the community-by-community demand for maintenance funds rises against a fixed-size pie. The result is that if you hold the maintenance budget for submarines constant, or even increase it, the surface ships’ segment of the pie decreases.
All these things were pointedly discussed in the Balisle Report. This all begs the question of why nothing was done to remediate the problems. The problem is maintenance has no constituency. There are three agencies at work here: Congress, the defense industry, and the Navy. Congressman Tip O’Neil said, “All Politics is Local.” If military programs don’t provide local jobs, they are not of interest to our elected representatives in Washington. This is increasingly true in today’s charged, partisan environment. Maintenance has very little pay-off to elected officials. On the other hand, building new things, like submarines or aircraft carriers or new missiles or radars or aircraft, means jobs—i.e., votes. The net result is that Congress has no energy to increase funding for maintenance, especially if it comes at the cost of programs that provide local jobs.
The second element of this triad is industry. Anyone who imagines that the most important consideration in any publically traded company is not the stock price is laboring under a charming illusion. The profit margin for parts and labor associated with maintenance is trivial compared with while the margins for building big, new things. Just as Congress is not interested in fixing ships, neither is industry generally.
Finally, there is the Navy. Unfortunately, the needs of the fleet are many and varied. On the operational side of things, there is a cacophony of strident and competing voices, originating from a universe of different, competing interests. As it turns out, the various warfare communities of the Navy are set up in direct competition with one another in a mortal fight for funding. In this ugly competition, the surface community is the loser.
Whose fault is this? It’s mine and every other surface officer because we failed to say “no” we will not take these ships to sea until they are fixed and their crews are trained.
Captain Eyer served in seven cruisers, commanding three Aegis cruisers: the USS Thomas S. Gates (CG-51), Shiloh (CG-67), and Chancellorsville (CG-62).
Editor's Note: Part I of this feature was published Wednesday, August 23, on Proceedings Today . Part II of this feature was published on Thursday, August 24, on Proceedings Today.
Part of the issue is also staffing. New ships are highly automated just like commercial aircraft. Meaning the bridge during peacetime steaming may only have two people on it who believe their automatic systems no matter what. When something out of the ordinary happens they don’t know what to do...either because if poor training or poor thought processes. In the early years of computers people would believe an incorrect time if the computer showed it even though it was hours off.
I retired as an enineroom machinist in the late 80’s and even back then we had to sneak around and use non standard parts, broken tools, and modified machines. The social experiments had begun way back then with the acceptance of low asvab scores. I had to work around many incompetent people that I was not allowed to get rid of. I can only be thankful I don’t have to be there now.
I always look for what is not being talked about by the relevant authorities. Specifically, were human eyes on watch at the time of the collision(s) and where were they stationed on the ship? Perhaps the policy makers and top commanders think the public will accept ‘vague generalities’ about training, operational tempo, etc. We have seen 17 or so young American sailors lose their lives in the last four months in similar circumstances. I believe the proximate cause is to be found in the factual details.
“”A large lumbering oil tanker traveling at 20 kts””
Can anyone come up with a reason the USS McCain gets hit by a tanker doing 9.2 kts other than incompetence?
whereas the Navy has shorted training and maintenance, they have gone full speed ahead in all programs promoting social issues regarding deviant sexual behavior, women in unsuitable occupations such as the submarines and SEALS, and on and on. They have taken their eyes off the prize.
Maintenance might be a contributing cause of these collisions, but it is probably not a root cause.
Captain Eyers in his three part commentary on the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions made this conclusion in Part I. “”It is possible that we have arrived at a place where our COs are poor and inexperienced mariners, and that this situation was authored by none other than their own, the surface community’s leadership.””
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-08/collisions-part-i—what-are-root-causes
It is possible that Commanding Officers in the Navy are no longer qualified to be on the bridge.
Remember that in the Fitzgerald collision the Commanding Officer Benson was NOT is his ‘atsea’ cabin behind the bridge.
Maybe the reason the Commanding Officer is not called to the bridge when there are many ships close by, is that the CO is not qualified to steer the ship.
We have not heard anything about the whereabouts of the CO of the McCain at the time of the collision. Was he/she on the bridge?
“The number one factor, though, is money.”
Somehow the better part of $1 Trillion a year can’t get us a military that is ready to fight. That’s what I’m hearing.
If that’s the case, then more money won’t help.
I call BULLSHIRT on this whole article. This guy is a plant or a conspirator in the Fitzgerald/McCain coverups.
Get this guy some Whine to go with his cheese.
Give each ship a case of duct tape and JB Weld and they can fix anything. /s
Training?
“Look out that window. If you see a ship getting bigger and bigger in that window, tell someone.” /s
I am amazed at just how easy this is going to be, I mean getting the public to believe that these “accidents” were the fault of the inept, untrained crew.
Compared to the Flight 800 coverup, this is going to be a piece of cake.
These types of mishaps are rarely the result of one person or procedure going wrong but rather several systems and procedures degrading over time until finally the inevitable happens.
In Navy aviation maintenance, we talk about the "holes in Swiss cheese lining up."
It isn't lack of money as much as not enough money going to maintenance and training. Building new ships earn votes for congressmen. Fixing old ones doesn't.
hmmm ring knockers?
Indeed, the article mentions this:
GMT consists of stuff like suicide awareness training, alcohol abuse training, sexual assault and hazing prevention training, fraternization prevention training, financial management training, stress recognition training and, yes, transgender policy training.
And there's a lot of it!
The point still stands, methinks.
Apparently keeping our ships capable and keeping them out of the way of productive civilian shipping (the very LEAST they can do) is too hard for the Navy.
I think a lot of this stems from having women on ships, a big distraction for young red blooded men who should be doing thier jobs.
As a former enlisted "Green Striper," (PHAN) I agree. Heard it again as a Public Affairs officer at NAF Detroit in the Gulf war.
In 1974, as a newly-reporting Ensign, I hadn’t been fully trained as an underway deck watch officer either. BUT, I had a CO dedicated to that task. I was placed in a series of increasingly difficult situations until I was qualified for fleet ops. That paid off the day I prevented a collision at sea. Not bragging; just pointing out the benefit of an adequate training plan. Fortunately for the crew, that plan wasn’t diverted by SJW’s.
That's not what happened.
As the civilian economy tanked under his watch, Obama turned the military into a federal jobs program. A very good one where the fighting is done by a small handful while others enjoy an occupation with awesome pay and endless benefits and where the most dangerous thing they do is drive to work in the morning.
Indeed, there's a lot of people who shouldn't be there, who are only there for the TriCare.
My last work center had 20 people and five were single parents. They got to come to work late and leave early to deal with childcare issues, making work center training difficult. They didn't have to stand watch on weekends. When we needed to send individuals on detachments, their names were always stricken from the lists. When the unit deployed, they would be transferred to an administrative position that stayed ashore.
And yet they received competitive evaluations and were allowed to re-enlist.
I kept my mouth shut. The supervisor I replaced didn't and wound up with a career-ending "hostile workplace" grievance filed against him that saw him busted down in rank and kicked out with 17 years of service under his belt.
The point is that there is no conspiracy or electronic attacks that are causing these incidents. The blame lies squarely on the USN. As a Navy veteran, it is disturbing to see such ludicrous assertions by some on this thread.
And the single, (often male), reliable watchstanders (and the married who DID have a spouse and family) stood hundreds of extra hours while in port, then even more extra hours deployed so the single parents could leave. Makes those who are left even more tired, more resentful.
But the extra ever-gretaer “social training,” enviro-training, sexual training, sensitivity training, race-training, Muslim-training is mandated from Washington, and is done by the ones who want to get promoted.
They have not released OOD names in either recent collision. Many observers believe the OOD in both case were affirmative action selections. But we don’t know yet - yet the fact that they (press, Pentagon, AND Navy!) are hiding the ones actually responsible is revealing itself.
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