Over the years I have been very impressed with the quality of military personnel shortly after separation from service. I’ve made it a habit whenever possible to hire veterans. I have a wide assortment of former service members and MOS’s that either work for me currently or have in the past. My family’s direct experience with the military is mostly a naval aviation I believe that the aviation personnel are some of the best trained and well disciplined of the veterans; such as yourself. I do have a young former sailor working for me that was rated in nuclear power and he is the most meticulous and best record keeper that that I have ever seen. The other interesting person is a former Marine, his specialty was demolition of combat vehicles don’t know what MOS that is but he’s a very meticulous person also.
As far as this incident with the McCain goes and the OP in this thread I reread the admirals summary of the incident. It seems very clear that there was a very severe shortage of proper training and the subsequent assignment of unqualified personnel to various tasks particularly on the bridge. As it says in the incident report splitting of the functions driving the ship were not well defined and clear. This is a problem with the advancement of technology where human factors are not necessarily taken into account for design and operational purposes. In my work I spend a great deal of time automating various processes as part of that we devote a lot of energy to how the machines and the people interact and believe me the people still find ways to defeat various safeguards and features in the system(s).
The sad thing in this case is that people were injured and died. I hope the Navy learned its lesson(s) and improves training and functional experience of sailors particularly in the surface fleet. As they say, every rule is written in blood.
If I haven’t said it before, thank you for dedicating part of your life to military service.
Merry Christmas!
I feel much the same way that you do-if I have to hire someone or provide input on an applicant, I view prior military service as a plus off the bat.
I know there was deployment saturation with that vessel, but I just don’t know how you could scrimp on that type of training. For God’s sake, it isn’t like chipping paint! I sure do hope they take something positive from this tragedy.
I remember in training that a CPO said to us new Plane Captain trainees (I paraphrase): “You are going to think that some things you have to do are stupid, unnecessary, or inefficient, and that you have a better way to do it. Don’t. Many of the things you learn were paid for in blood.” That was an odd thing for a teenager to hear...
And you are spot on when you said people still find ways to defeat various safeguards and features in the system(s). They aren’t malicious most of the time, or even lazy. They simply think they have found a better way, and it turns out not to be!
Thank for the discourse over the years, FRiend, and Merry Christmas to you and yours!