A Question for Sailors

[dmccarty]

That's called Stack-Ranking and yup, it plays out exactly like you've described. Had many good coworkers on high functioning teams leave companies and join us because while their work was solid they couldn't compete with other people on the team who would live at work. I also know many companies where the bottom 9/10 were mandated to be let go even if their work was up to par. I'll give you one guess how that impacts morale.

The good news is that most places now seem to be coming around on the idea but sad to hear that it's still institutionalized in some cases.

Ranking is also used as an excuse, and legal cover, to fire people in expensive western countries and send the jobs overseas...

Recently, I had one day where I was having to calm down a guy who was rightfully ticked off at management and another guy who has been working too much, not pacing himself, putting to much pressure on himself, and had broke down in tears. Twas a very productive day.

The managers do not have a clue what ranking does to morale and PRODUCTIVITY. When people spend many hours of the day wondering if they will be fired soon, their area sold off, and dealing with mental angst, they are not getting work done. The management that makes these decisions are clueless.

When I think about this stuff, I think of a scene in a Bruce Lee movie where he is trying to teach a student to see. The student is supposed to looking into the distance to see but the student keeps looking at the tip of a pointed finger. The student is looking but missing what should be seen. Management is like Bruce Lee's student. They are focused on the tip of the finger and missing what should be seen.

Later,
Dan

 

[Slowpoke Slim]

Back to the USN.

Yesterday evening the Wall Street Journal posted this story about the readiness of the USN, Investigators Repeatedly Warned Navy Ahead of Deadly Collisions - WSJ. The WSJ is behind a pay wall so people might not be able to read the report.

Congress and military officers have been warning about the operation temp and training issues and the GAO has issued three reports over the last few years on the subject.



This is what I have been reading for years and I think it is to blame for the USN accidents that have been happening.

The USN has been following the business worlds mantra of Doing More With Less which means less gets done, and if there is not a change in the organization, things that are important simply do not get done. One ends up prioritizing what has to be done, but if there are five things to do, but one can only do three, that means two things are not done no matter their importance. Dong More With Less really should be called Doing More With Less While Leadership Thinks Things Are OK.

To make it worse, the USN has taken the stupid ranking system that Welsh was using at GE where officers are ranked for performance. If there are 10 officers on a ship, the CO will rank them from 1 to 10 with 1 being the highest. Now all 10 officers might be really good, but the ranking system forces the CO to list the officers from bad to great even if there are no bad officers. The officers at the bottom are in trouble though they might be good officers. I have lived with this sort of stupidity for decades and have seen how destructive it is for an organization. At first, this process works to get rid of the deadwood, but eventually there is no deadwood, and the organization starts loosing very valuable people who simply cannot be replaced.

The USN is operating with less than half the ships but at the same tempo, if not higher, than when the Navy had 600 ships. I have heard "leadership" say that the quality of our ships allows the USN to operate with less ships which is just bovine scat. You can not have one ship in two places.

Then the navy is forcing sailor to work 15 hour days vs 12 and I think 12 is nuts. I think this is part of the Do More With Less non sense. The leadership sets the schedule with not enough people and resources to really accomplish the mission but the crew gets it done. The crew knows that things did not work well but they got er' done anyway. The leadership says, well that worked, lets see if we can do it again. The crew pulls it off but the ship and crew readiness is slowly degrading over time. Then the leadership says Do More with Less yet again. And the crew pulls it off but at a cost the leadership does not see. This continues until the breakages and failures eventually get to a point that the leadership finally notices. I have watched this at work for years and I think the USN is now getting to the same point.



USN ships are running aground, hitting seamounts, colliding with other vessels, getting hit by other vessels, etc, not because of hacking, but simply because the ships are not being maintained as they should be and the crews are untrained and TIRED.

Later,
Dan

This.

Lock the thread.

You fella's go and put away your tinfoil hats (and colanders).

The Navy is overworked, understaffed, and under trained. Hopefully, with this latest accident, things will get shaken up from the top down, and some of these systemic issues can get corrected.

 

[Garandman]

//The USN has been following the business worlds mantra of Doing More With Less which means less gets done, and if there is not a change in the organization, things that are important simply do not get done. One ends up prioritizing what has to be done, but if there are five things to do, but one can only do three, that means two things are not done no matter their importance. Dong More With Less really should be called Doing More With Less While Leadership Thinks Things Are OK.

As a former Army officer, I don't quite agree. The Air Force and Navy senior leadership have opted for new technology over manpower time and time and time again. Remember it was Dwight Eisenhauer who first raised the danger of the "Military Industrial Complex."

The Air Force has the B52, B1, and B2 bombers, the latter being maintained for a mission that no longer exists. Their brass keeps trying to mothball the A10: then we have a conflict and the A10's inflict 70-80% of all ground damage with few casualties and the bar gets reset. The Navy is spending vast sums on manned fighters while all our opponents are investing in missiles and UAV's. The Marine Corps has been whining for 70 years about how underfunded they are, but has a $35 billion Osprey program:, a buddy towed two of his Amtraks throughout the invasion of Iraq, and carried an M9 pistol but didn't have any magazines.

The Army isn't immune from this as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle program showed. But Navy leadership has persistently chosen technology over msnpower. .

As far as the training goes, the LT I spoke with said Surface Warfare officers receive as little as eight weeks of training* before being sent to the fleet, where they are expected to get up to speed via OJT. But the manpower levels and operational tempo keep that from happening. He further stated that ship handling and navigational skills are set as a very low priority for junior officers by their commanders.

* Army Infantry officers attend a 16 week basic course, and many go on to eight weeks of Ranger training and other schools as well.

 

[dmccarty]

As a former Army officer, I don't quite agree. The Air Force and Navy senior leadership have opted for new technology over manpower time and time and time again. Remember it was Dwight Eisenhauer who first raised the danger of the "Military Industrial Complex."
...

As far as the training goes, the LT I spoke with said Surface Warfare officers receive as little as eight weeks of training* before being sent to the fleet, where they are expected to get up to speed via OJT. But the manpower levels and operational tempo keep that from happening. He further stated that ship handling and navigational skills are set as a very low priority for junior officers by their commanders.

* Army Infantry officers attend a 16 week basic course, and many go on to eight weeks of Ranger training and other schools as well.

Actually, I think we agree. :laughing::laughing::laughing: The Navy and Air Force do have very expensive weapon systems, especially compared to the Army, but they also have too keep up with the technology or they/we loose. The M1A Abrams is getting upgrades but the Army is not building new tanks because there simply is nothing really better than what already exists. That is not true for the Air Force, and less so the Navy. The Navy has certainly wasted money on the LCS program which seems to be a very fast target ship since it really does not do anything it was designed to do with any efficiency. And the LCS was first deployed with 50 sailors as part of the Do More With Less mantra. Eventually, the Navy figured out that 50 was not enough and they now have 75ish crew on board.

Expensive weapons systems that eat up the budget do impact how many people one can have operating said systems and this does seem to hit the USAF and USN more so than the other services.

The USN has been doing stack ranking, like the business world, and the damage this has done to the officer corps has been discussed in the USNI Proceeding magazine as well as other places. It is a very corrosive process.

What you said about training a USN officer receives for ship handling and navigation is what I have been reading for years. Some level of OJT is to be expected, and Navies have a history of teaching on board, but it has gotten out of hand which I blame on the more with less mentality. The more or less mentality extends to the Pentagon and civilian leadership which is where the real problem exists.

Later,
Dan

 

[buickanddeere]

The LCS, the Navy's own private version of the F35 financial black hole . Simple works, the more complex a device , the lower it's Operational Readiness.

 

[dmccarty]

Interesting article on the career paths of merchant marine officers and US Navy officers.

Separate But Equal - A Look At Officer Training In The US Navy And Merchant Marine – gCaptain

Later,
Dan

 

[Garandman]

The LCS, the Navy's own private version of the F35 financial black hole . Simple works, the more complex a device , the lower it's Operational Readiness.

There's a very funny document called, "The snake doctrine," that compares how different branches would approach the task of killing a snake.

Examples:

Military Intelligence: "four of six "snake activity indices" read low."

Special Forces: Win hearts and minds of indigenous snakes. Train them to kill problem snake. File amazingly creative expense account.

Marines: Find a snake and kill it. Locals complain to US embassador it was the wrong snake.

SEALS: Attack snake at dawn, kill snake though two SEALS are wounded. Sign movie deal, "Snakes at Dawn."

Rangers: solitary Ranger crawls in at 2am while snake is asleep, kills snake, and withdraws to cook it and share with squad. Army refuses to confirm or deny.

And Navy: "Gives PowerPoint presentation to Congress on why the Littoral Combat Ship is the most cost-effective approach to killing snakes." :laughing:

 

[Garandman]

Sadly: Remains of all 10 missing USS John S. McCain sailors recovered - CNNPolitics

McCain investigation continues: Personnel Chief Tapped to Lead USS John S. McCain Investigation; Navy Leaders to Testify on Collisions Before Congress - USNI News

 

[dmccarty]

Just saw this article in the Wall Street Journal, U.S. Navy Says Most Seventh Fleet Warships Lacked Proper Certification - WSJ, that says the the majority of the destroyers and cruisers in the 7th Fleet lacked certification for seamanship:

As of late June, eight of the 11 cruisers and destroyers in the Seventh Fleet, and their crew members, weren稚 certified by the U.S. Navy to conduct 杜obility seamanship, or basic steering of the ship, according to U.S. Navy records provided to two House Armed Services subcommittees. The Navy also said that seven of those ships had expired training certification in the areas of cruise missile defense and surface warfare, which test a crew痴 ability to defend a ship or to conduct attacks.

The article does NOT say if the Fitz and McCain had "mobility seamanship" certification but they did say,

Neither the Fitzgerald nor the McCain were certified for the majority of the mission operation requirements that the Navy periodically evaluates.

The Seventh Fleet痴 destroyers and cruisers generally met certification in other areas such as maintenance, communications, navigation, explosive safely and search and rescue.

The basic message is/was:

The U.S. Navy has acknowledged cutting back on certification procedures in the face of growing demand, according to past GAO reports.

The Navy repeatedly has said that increased demand on the Seventh Fleet has resulted in cutbacks on training and certifications. That pressure has only increased in recent months with each North Korean missile or weapons test, as the fleet conducts more exercises and patrols with the same number of ships.

This has been going on for years, the USN got away with it for along time, but eventually it caught up with them. I have read similar things regarding readiness of USAF and USMC air units. I would guess the same applies to USN air units as well.

Later,
Dan

 

[dodge man]

I've read a similar theme about airline pilots. They know all the ins and outs with all the complicated systems on a modern jet, but they don't know how to fly by the seat of the pants. In other words they are great pilots that don't know how to fly. There have been a couple of crashes where the automated systems at an airport were shut down and there was a crash because the pilot couldn't land without them. Kind of the theme I read here, sailors that don't know how to sail.