The truth is finally coming out…
The Navy’s manning shortages are curbing the service’s ability to repair its ships while at sea, according to a watchdog report released Monday.
Sixty-three percent of executive officers — a ship’s second-in-command — surveyed reported that insufficient manning made it “moderately to extremely difficult to complete repairs while underway,” according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday.
Full article, HERE from Navy Times and HERE for the GAO report.
BLUF-
This goes all the way back to sequestration and the impacts of ‘rightsizing’ crews under that. Reduction in ship manning was done to ‘allow’ more work to be done during maintenance availabilities with shore based sailors… Yeah, right…
And the pièce de résistance that made it even ‘better’ was the reduction in the underway days, forcing crews and commands to cram even MORE qualifications into less and less time, plus tying ships up at the pier where they had to use ‘systems’ online to conduct training pierside rather than underway (hence no maintenance).
Of course the other ‘little’ issue of sequestration was the cuts (back in 2010) of over $450 million in shipboard maintenance budgets…
The OPTEMPO/PERSTEMPO requirements (e.g. how often the ships/crews were supposed to be at sea) pretty much went out the window as there was no reduction in the amount of operations the Navy was expected to perform, including operations and exercises with foreign Navies…
Today, things are even worse, with the Teddy Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group having to leave 7th Fleet uncovered to go to 5th Fleet to ‘cover’ the contremps between Israel and Iran. They were already 7 months into a 6 month deployment, and now they have NO idea when they are going to get home!
So much for retention in THAT CSG…
Sigh…It’s sure as hell not my Navy anymore. But I don’t blame it on the kids, I blame it on the CNO/SECDEF et al who have created this ‘cluster’…
Kicking the soapbox back in the corner and going to find my BP meds.
To quote that great philosopher Bender Bending Rodriguez:
“Well, we’re boned.”
The last president who even seemed to care about the Navy was Ronald Reagan, I think. It is worse than sad that things have gotten this bad.
NFO, I learned a few years ago to stop worrying about the Navy. Our time has gone by the wayside and there is very little that either you or I can do. So, I adapted the old “not my circus, not my monkeys” attitude and I feel so much better now. Used to be, when some idiot came up with a “new” way to do things (which invariably was done before) I would get all bent out of shape, ranting and raving about the Old Navy. Now, I just sit back and watch and I feel much better.
I do like that bloggers such as yourself do keep a lot of the idiocy in the limelight. Shame the bastards and hold them responsible.
Can you say “gundecked” ? That is what is going to happen to maintenance . Granted there is gundecking a lil bit , and “never touched it , ran the tag outs , had a few smokes , tagged back in and signed off the MRC as done” gundecking . The latter gets people killed and hurt at worst , and ruins the equipment and shortens lifespan of said equipment which ain’t cool either . NFO you have an idea of the type of equipment I worked on , deck shit , too long to list , we worked closely with A-Gangers , kinda co-owned a lot of equipment . The only thing I know about planes , aside from which was which , is that they will bang the F out of your head if you are weaving your way through the hangar bay about half asleep , and tripping over a chain attached to a deck padeye will give you a nasty non skid rash on whatever body part makes first contact with the deck . Sometimes a twofer , hit plane with head , grab head in pain , then while uttering cusswords , trip on peck and hale , and do a deck dive , much to the amusement of airedales .
But, back to the point , we had many things , that could not be accomplished underway , usually annual checks , that did require shipyard assistance , barges ,cranes, JLG’s, scaffolding etc. As far as OPTEMPO goes , everything got done , but our manning levels were adequate . The precomm ship I was on ,shit we were fat with bodies , good ones , they seemed to be hand picked , stellar, smart. During Desert Storm , also , we were getting the 2 year enlistment guys , handfuls , they were getting flown in by CODS, one or two at a time , pull into Dubai , there’d be two standing on the pier with a lost expression and a seabag .
I have heard that manning levels are disastrously low , I never experienced that , that is devastating to think about . We bragged about “accomplishing the impossible with absolutely nothing” , it was a lie and a brag . To think poor fuckers out there in the fleet are trying to really do it is saddening and brings a lump to my throat , and no shit a tear to my eye. I love the Navy , my son made the fifth generation of my family to serve in the Navy . Hard to watch it go to shit , through no fault of the guys who bust their ass . Long winded again , apologies , but the Navy is something I’m passionate about .
The six ‘challenges’ are caused by failures of:
Doctrine
Training
Policy
Training
Policy
Policy
Since these are all senior management (formerly leadership) areas of concern, I must conclude that the Navy is falling apart because the Admirals want it to.
“the other ‘little’ issue of sequestration was the cuts (back in 2010) of over $450 million in shipboard maintenance budgets”
An issue of sequestration or an issue of top brass prioritizing shiny new toys over maintenance in order to meet the sequestration requirements? I was generally in favor of sequestration (try typing that word three times in a paragraph) because I was willing to give up a bit of military spending in order to force all the BS programs to cut themselves as well (10% of 13% for the military, 10% of the rest for everything else). Wish it had been followed up by real targeted cuts but all in all, would have preferred to have kept it.
Hey Old NFO,
“Recruitment” was “glossed over” You noticed that? TPTB ain’t gonna touch that one, THe Navy can’t get enough “bluestater” Americans to join the ranks and the “RedStater’s” that is the staples of all the services their kids ain’t joining up. So the ranks ain’t filling up. They fill the time of the kids with B.S courses*CoughDEI*Cough,Hack* rather than things that are necessary like Maintenance and Damage control. The squids were famous for having the ability to fix dang near anything on a ship, especially the senior chiefs for the “institutional knowledge” they had. Now I wonder how much is there now that many of them have been forced out because they won’t tow the political line. I’m an Army guy and my branch is sucking worse than y’all are.
Sounds like we are ready to go to war with China, a naval war. Is there a place where I can sell USA short?
All- You raise good points, no question. Boats, up until 2015, I was still working with Fleet sailors across all communities running testing, so I saw the ‘results’ real time. Hereso- The issue there was the ‘color’ of money that was cut. Yes, we took hits in R&D $$$ of around 20%, but the OPN (maintenance $$$) got ‘held back’ to support operational requirements, e.g. bunker fuel costs that skyrocketed over 100%. So the powers that be had a choice, get underway, or fix the boats. They chose to get underway to ‘preserve’ operational commitments, rather than saying “We cannot support X operational requirements.”
I don’t remember which carrier it was (you probably do) a friend of mine was on it during the Vietnam war and they ‘set a record’ for longest deployment, or some such. They were out at sea for a ridiculous amount of time, off the coast of Vietnam.
When they finally got liberty in Australia, HALF the crew jumped ship.
IIRC, it was the Nimitz during the Carter Administration.
Congress just doesn’t get it. Too many AOC’s.
My granddaughter’s boyfriend is assigned to a sub in Bremerton that can’t be certified to dive. If/when it is certified, how much confidence will the crew have going on patrol?
“Certified to Surface” should be high up in the mission goals, Shirley…
At a tangent, sir, this goatrope isn’t helped at all by what appears to be a degradation in the Chiefs Mess and the Leading POs.
Don’t know how far the rot runs, but this is the most disheartening leadership failure I’ve heard of in a while: https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/09/03/how-navy-chiefs-conspired-to-get-themselves-illegal-warship-wi-fi/
So much for EMCON and OPSEC. Can we re-open Portsmouth for this, pretty please? The entire goat locker of Manchester needs to be busted back to General Prisoner, and given permanent rate: Maker of Boulders Into Sandgrains…
It goes higher than the CNO and the big Joint and Fleet Commands. The fish rots from the head down, and the head is brain-dead and doesn’t even have the nuclear launch codes. He was wearing a Trump hat on camera. I (obviously) have no problem with the Commander-in-Chief wearing a Trump hat, but there is a bitter irony. We’re pushing $36 trillion in debt, and there is no money for ships or maintenance – just for DEI training for what fleet personnel remain.
The leadership quality (which filters down to the CPOs) determines the quality of the Navy, and we’ve seen some disturbing trends. Retention based on declared gender and race is no way to run – anything.
Can’t cite the source (might have been a Mike Rowe podcast, or Victor Davis Hansen, but the claim was made that the one demographic that was “noping” on the military, was straight, white, middle-and-lower class males. The same demographic that was over-represented in casualty stats from Afghan, because they disproportionately opted for jobs at the “sharp end”.
Now why would that be?
Couldn’t possibly be because the military had gone Woke……
Yeah right! Getting blamed for everything, while getting denied promotion because DEI…… Who could object to that.?
The Navy needs another Admiral Willis Augustus Lee (aka Ching Lee).
Go find this on YouTube:
Published by: The Fat Electrician
Title: Olympic Sniper Turned Battleship Commander – Willis “Ching” Lee
I’d link it here, but WordPress will auto-embed it instead of just providing a link.
The video id is: cu9Mi0ury38