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> The Real Reason the US Navy Keeps Hitting Merchant Vessels
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>
>
> Words by Wes O’Donnell, Managing Editor InMilitary.com and Veteran, U.S.
> Army and U.S. Air Force
>
> Editor’s note: Last week, we secured an interview with a recently retired
> U.S. Navy captain who spent 20 years at sea and 10 in the Pentagon, working
> on process improvement projects. He asked to remain anonymous due to a
> number of political considerations and a need for privacy. For the purposes
> of this interview, we will call him Captain F.
>
> InMilitary: Thank you, sir, for sitting down with us and giving us your
> time. As you’re painfully aware, there have been a number of at-sea
> incidents lately, most notably the two separate collisions of the USS
> Fitzgerald and USS John McCain with merchant vessels. Sailors’ lives have
> been lost. There are conspiracy theories of Russian spoofing of GPS and
> other nonsense. Our most pressing question is: Why is this happening now and
> with such frequency?
>
> Captain F: First, the big picture. The nation, like every nation, has to
> balance guns and butter. Just a fact of life. Limited resources and
> unlimited requirements, needs and wants. Congress and the executive branch
> must lead that discussion based on the threat and the capabilities of the
> required force to meet those threats.
>
> After each war, although they do not term it as such (actually, they did
> after the collapse of the Berlin Wall), there is always a great deal of
> pressure to provide a “peace dividend” - or more precisely, to move funding
> from the military to social projects. I have been through two significant
> drawdowns in my service from 1974-2003.
>
> IM: The first drawdown was after Vietnam?
>
> Captain F: Yes, the first came after Vietnam when the Navy drew down from a
> high of about 900 ships - about 700 at the end of the war - down to under
> 500 ships. Additionally, the civilian leadership decided to shift from a
> conscription policy to an all-volunteer force.
>
> On top of that, there was significant unrest in the country after the war,
> things like the civil rights movement and the country was divided
> politically. Impacts of that shift in mentality meant that we were dealing
> with a different breed of young men that were coming into the service.
>
> It was mandated that we accept into the service a certain number of
> individuals who had a low aptitude for service, including those that were
> intellectually challenged, had drug use problems, and so forth. To a large
> extent, we became something of a social experiment.
>
> IM: It doesn’t sound like a very effective or efficient military.
>
> Captain F: There was a time in the ‘75-’79 time frame when we literally had
> a CO stabbed by a crew member. Officers could not walk through the ships
> without some kind of arms or guards after hours.
>
> The ships were deteriorating swiftly and the standards across the board were
> not being met. The largest conventional shipbuilding classes at the time
> were the Spruance Class Destroyers and the Ticonderoga Cruisers.
>
> Ships were failing routine inspections, particularly with respect to the
> 1,200-pound steamships, which were difficult to maintain and had been
> severely abused during the war. By the time the ‘80 election arrived, I had
> served two tours - one on USS John S. McCain (DDG-36), which was one of
> those ships that was failing.
>
> It took an enormous amount of work by the officers, particularly the COs and
> XOs, to get us deployed. I left that ship and helped to commission the USS
> Comte De Grasse (DD 974) in 1978. The change was astounding to me. While we
> worked hard, we also had a first-rate crew and wardroom personnel who were
> experienced. That was my first inkling of the underlying issues.
>
> IM: So the post-Vietnam drawdown had an impact that lasted for years.
>
> Captain F: Correct. Into the ‘79-’80 time frame, ships continued to fail.
> Oilers could not get underway because they did not have enough boiler techs
> to steam safely. There was a rise in collisions and groundings.
>
> Two things happened from my perspective that changed things around. One, we
> got a CNO (in ‘76, I think it was), who basically came in and said we are
> going to a zero-defect mentality. He instituted tougher standards, mandatory
> random drug testing, and held officers and CPOs accountable. We finally had
> leadership at the top.
>
> The second thing that happened was that Ronald Reagan was elected president
> and boldly said we were going to create a 600-ship navy because that was
> what the threat required. [They were] the two sides of the coin that allowed
> us to dig out - good leadership and more money.
>
> Think about the Navy we took to war 10 years after Reagan was elected; it
> performed well. Additionally, think about the things that the Navy was able
> to do - drug operations, Grenada, Panama, Libya, Lebanon, the Persian Gulf
> tanker wars, as well as all of the normal operations. This work culminated
> with Desert Storm and expelling Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.
>
> IM: You mentioned two big drawdowns. When was the second?
>
> Captain F: The second drawdown came after the Berlin Wall fell. President
> Clinton essentially sold everyone on the idea that he could reap a peace
> dividend in the ‘90s.
>
> We decommissioned a whole host of ships. Every ship I ever served on was
> gone by 2005. Spruance cans were built to last 40 to 50 years in a modular
> fashion and had the most up-to-date weapons systems on board, including the
> SQQ -89 ASW suite and the Tomahawk missile systems in vertical launch mode.
>
> The Aegis cruisers were built on essentially the same hull and were meant to
> last about 40 years as well. Most of them are now gone.
>
> John S. McCain (DDG-36) was decommissioned in 1978 and the new one was
> commissioned after the turn of the century. The FFG-7s, which were the
> smaller frigates needed to serve for escort duty, should have lasted well
> into the 21st century.
>
> The ‘90s saw the same traits as the late ‘70s and early ‘80s; the difference
> being that the major shipbuilding programs to replace the ships being
> decommissioned were pushed to the right. DDGs started delivering with speed
> in about 1990. They were to be followed by DDX and the LCS [Littoral Combat
> Ships]. Both were meant to be minimally manned units with high technology
> and built on a modular frame that could be adapted to circumstances.
>
> IM: We’ve heard of the “minimally-manned” theory, allowing technology to do
> the heavy lifting.
>
> Captain F: DDX was supposedly going to start delivering in 2012 and the LCS
> was supposed to start delivering in about 2008. Neither happened - both
> programs were troubled.
>
> So now we had a situation where you had decommissioned a large portion of
> the fleet. We are down close to 255 ships or so the last I looked, and we
> are still heading downward. On top of that, you were asking those ships we
> had to do jobs previously done by larger, better-armed and better-manned
> vessels.
>
> It did not take me long after I took command of Fleet Training Center
> Norfolk in ‘98 to realize that I was supposedly training the chiefs and
> first-class petty officers of the new ships and that I would soon be
> expected to train the lower rank 2nd class petty officers and below. In
> other words, we should have been taking into account the fact that each of
> those men was going to have to have the knowledge, skills and abilities of
> about six people in order to do their jobs. The DDX was originally meant to
> be manned by 75 people versus the 250 to 350 men found on either the DDG51s,
> Spruance cans or Tico cruisers.
>
> The LCS was even worse. They were expected to come into the fleet with a
> minimally manned ship of under 50.
>
> IM: There was a large drawdown in the ‘90s. Many military bases closed. This
> continued until 2000?
>
> Captain F: After all that was going on in the ‘90s, we also had a mandate to
> transform the Navy; build a better tooth-to-tail ratio and cut the personnel
> budgets. Think about it: if you can’t cut capital infrastructure such as
> ships, then the only place to look is manning.
>
> From my perspective in the training world, that meant we had to figure out
> how to cut the costs of training by doing it smarter and with technology. Up
> until then, all Navy schools delivered training the same way - blue smock,
> pointer and blackboards.
>
> The personnel command was meant to transform the way we assigned people to
> ships, considering the skills they had, to ensure that the right folks were
> assigned. That is how and why Task Force Excel came into being in 2000.
> Donald Rumsfeld came in as Secretary of Defense and instituted large
> transformation efforts.
>
> From the Navy perspective, the CNO was Vern Clark and he fully supported the
> transformation efforts. We did a lot of good work and instituted a lot of
> change.
>
> But as in all organizations, resistance to change can be powerful. In my
> opinion, to successfully get anything established, you should have at least
> seven years. We had that barely before the CNO retired, and a new one took
> his place and the resistance built back up.
>
> IM: So it’s a leadership issue?
>
> Captain F: What gave out was leadership. The admirals did not put their
> careers on the line and object about anything. They rolled over to save
> themselves. That is the big picture. From a more localized perspective, the
> direct in-line people, COs, XOs and MCPOs, also rolled over.
>
> There is no way on my ships that would have happened. We always had direct
> leadership. Leadership that was there, present and capable. I am willing to
> bet that those ships involved in incidents with merchants had all their
> sexual orientation, transgender training, and environmental training all
> completed at the expense of the safety and operational training.
>
> If you put the emphasis on social issues, you get a social force. If you put
> it on operational issues, you get an operational force.
>
> The mistakes I see in the latest incidents - I have read the actual reports
> on the Fitzgerald - were so simple and basic it takes your breath away.
> Technology can never replace humans in totality, especially when the law of
> gross tonnage applies.
>
> As CO, I would have been on the bridge in both those incidents. We would
> have had highly qualified officers and petty officers on watch.
>
> So if you can follow my logic here is what I conclude. There was a
> confluence of leadership failures:
>
> First, there was a failure by the nation and particularly the executive
> branch of the government to recognize that by using the armed forces as a
> social change agent, as well as denying them the tools (forces) to do the
> job, will always cause the forces to break. We are at the breaking point and
> it shows.
>
> Second, there was a failure in naval leadership writ large from the time we
> tried to transform the forces to meet the threat to today. Not enough senior
> leadership was stepping forward, ready to sacrifice themselves, so our
> sailors would not be.
>
> In addition, it has been obvious to me that SECNAV Mabus was able to
> transform naval leadership in a way to conform to his world view; [that he]
> fired or relieved those who did not conform to his views and promoted those
> that did. I think the top leadership is pretty rotten, although I am sure
> there is “good wood” in there somewhere.
>
> Third, the direct chain of command must have been weak - 7th Fleet down
> through the commodores of the squadrons - or these ships would not be having
> these problems. Either the standards are too low or they are worrying about
> other things. I suspect they are worrying about other things, such as the
> social experimentation going on and how they get through so they can
> continue to survive themselves.
>
> Fourth, the ship climate and command structures were obviously out of whack.
> COs don’t get to sleep in in heavy shipping waters, [that’s] just a fact.
>
> Fifth, while it might be convenient or popular to string some kind of
> conspiracy theory, the mistakes made were all simple things: basic ship
> handling, navigation and seamanship stuff. Destroyers do not get run down by
> merchants; they are faster and much more maneuverable. No, they were not
> hacked; they were not run down on purpose. They just were asleep at the
> wheel.
>
> Sixth, I am surprised and will continue to be surprised if some of these
> folks in leadership positions are not court-martialed. There is a good case
> for manslaughter in my mind.
>
> And lastly, we need to truly transform the services, not from a social
> viewpoint but rather from a warfighting viewpoint. Capabilities are
> available for us to reduce crew manning and use distributed systems, but
> like anything [else], we have to be serious about doing it. Perhaps that
> will be the one good thing coming out of all of this.
>
> The last thing I will say is that the Navy has a very difficult issue
> transforming. Since it is capital-heavy, it needs to do more to bring down
> shipbuilding costs, while at the same time work assiduously to transform our
> personnel into distributed nodes with authority, that is transforming the
> personnel force. That is a tall order and it takes people not only with
> leadership skills but also imagination and vision, which is a commodity in
> short supply.
>
> When I was the ACOS at OPTEVFOR, I was in charge of the testing for the
> entire surface Navy, so I had Tomahawks, harpoons, surface-to-air missiles,
> ASW, AAW and SW, as well as all of the platform-specific stuff.
> Interestingly, I also had the drone programs. I had them because the Air
> ACOS and company could not be trusted not to kill the program, because they
> viewed it as a threat to manned air vehicles and rightfully so.
>
> Our Navy should now be something like I described back in 2000 - lots of
> drones, surface, subsurface and air, being controlled by nodes which take
> the info back quickly to centralized areas for decisions on action. The
> weapons can be delivered by drones as well.
>
> Why we are still dropping iron bombs on top of targets before they are
> softened up is beyond me. Iron bombs have their place, and so do manned
> aircraft, but they are truly expensive to lose. We need to do better. We can
> do it better.
>
> IM: Again, thank you for your time and your insight. Most importantly, thank
> you for your years of dedicated service.
>
> Captain F: My pleasure.
>
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