Posted on 12/05/2020 6:46:27 AM PST by PIF
The Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan seems like a beancounter’s short-sighted plan: “We have more duty days now!”
Penny wise, pound foolish.
“Dry docks aren’t sexy like a new ship so the funding has not kept up with the demand.”
Dry docks are the most important asset for maintaining a robust navy. The Japanese screwed up by not destroying the dry docks at Pearl. I was USAF, but have many friends who were USN and USNR, and they said that a prime mission — if not THE prime mission — for our navy is to go after a foe’s dry docks and repaid facilities.
Never. Not at the end of a typical deployment, not ever. This is indicative of serious problems.
Ack!! Didn’t mind the USNS cargo ship so much, but a USN Burke class destroyer? I never saw anything like that in my 11 years Navy (75-87). What, they eliminated the Boatswains Mate rating? That was a big part of their job - to keep the outside clean of rust and debris, even on deployment when in foreign ports. With the 2 collisions and now this, what has happened to my Navy? Used to be the Captain would be fired if he let his ship deteriorate that much. Sheesh.
“Who cares about paint when there is buggery to be done?”
Another Obama legacy.
I know people might ridicule me for this, but...even the concept of mess halls.
I had to do a lot of mess duty during my first year or two in, and I hated doing it for the most part, but I learned a boatload from doing it.
It did have its benefits in that you could generally eat all you wanted and more, and that was great. And if you were sent to mess duty and worked alongside a buddy, that made it feel a bit less cut off.
And I did. learn about parts of the ship I didn’t normally have access to.
But the real benefit to me was, I didn’t want to do it. So I worked really hard to advance and get to a point I couldn’t be chosen for it anymore.
I think chipping and painting on a ship might also serve the same purpose.
I know they want people to become trained technicians at various specialties and spend all their time doing only that, and not chipping paint or slopping food, but...those things do have value in more ways than one.
Mike Tyson once said, "Everybody has a plan until I punch them in the face."
The punch in the face to O-FRP was COVID.
That's all it took. Sideline a carrier because of Covid, delay training and maintenance, and pretty soon the whole house of cards starts falling apart and now we're doing back to back deployments on rusty ships and waiving scheduled yard maintenance periods and for what? What war are we currently fighting?
“repaid” should be “repair.”
it seems this entire nation has lost its collective mind with COVID, a bug that is dangerous to a very small few and less than dangerous than the flu to most others.
Yeah. That whole thing with the Fitzgerald collision really made me step back. It made me realize the extent of the morale, training, and operational readiness had lapsed, just reading all that had gone on there.
Seeing that corrosion gives me that same feeling. I don’t like it.
I have long thought that the appearance of a place largely reflects the morale of the people who work there.
Not spotlessly clean. But neat. Tidy. “Shipshape”. (Funny, I looked up and saw my dad’s gift from his ship when he got orders, and the ship’s logo says “Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion”)
My office is neat. Not spotless, but...neat. Orderly. I go into some offices, and they look like a tornado went through...makes me wonder.
And seeing the corrosion on that ship makes me wonder.
I know corrosion control might not be their job anymore...I just don’t see how a vessel can operate that way.
I would be like going to war in a rented car, maintained by someone else.
I learned a very valuable lesson in my first year in the Air Force. I worked a remote NORAD site where if we go offline we wake the President, and a guy with 20 years on me and a whole lot of stripes was mopping the floor while I ran the mission. He said, “There are no lowly jobs here. We run the mission, we mop our own floors. Tonight, I need you to learn that mission. Tomorrow you’ll mop the floors.”
My gawd, look at the waterline. Think about a small boat with explosives like the USS Cole endured. With such deterioration depicted here, such a small boat with enough explosives could sink her if underway. Luckily the Cole was tied up at pier. Of course that didn’t help the sailors who died. As we used to say, this is “unsat”. I cry for my Navy. I thought Trump was correcting this stuff.
I have always thought that is how it should be done. (and thanks for your service)
It lets people know that mopping the floors has an important purpose...because it does.
A few years later when I had a trainee, I got to do the same for him. Same speech: “The mission comes first so learn it first. You’ll mop the floors next time.”
Are those barnacles at the water line of the destroyer?
Looks like a serious speed impediment and noise maker underway.
Bill Whittle put out this short video in 2019: The Human Landscape
It was a rosy look at the US military, but I get the overall point he makes and agree, so..I respect Bill Whittle so I think it is worth watching. Besides, the only real cure for bad morale is good morale...:)
Agreed. I was alluding to just that in a post above where there is a difference between the maintenance of military ships versus civilian ships.
I know that, in pre-posting it would not work on the Burke ship, but it did on the supply ship.
This is surface rust and not nearly as bad as it looks.
Sanders, chippers and paint correct this in 10-30 days depending on the number of men assigned.
All ships which stay at sea for several months look like this.
But it is a sign of too many days at sea without a port call.
Blame Covid.
Not military, but paint goes to hell quickly in salt on any vessel.
I’d be more concerned about how the rest of the scheduled maintenance activities are going. And the ablative paint below waterline.
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