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Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Fired Another One!

The Captain of the LCS Billings, which hit a parked car moored ship, has been removed from command by the Navy.  It was the standard reason: “due to loss of confidence in his ability to command”. 

This may be setting a new record.  The ship wasn’t even commissioned, yet!  The poor (in multiple senses of the word!) Captain was relieved before the ship was even a commissioned.

Now, I have no problem with relieving a Captain who can’t handle a ship, however, with the multiple recent groundings and collisions it’s crystal clear that the Navy isn’t training its Captains to be proficient ship handlers let alone master mariners.  That being the case, why fire the guy for being a poor ship handler?  Isn’t poor ship handling exactly the level of ship handling we’re training for?  And, having relieved him for poor ship handling, why do we think the next guy is going to be any better since he’ll have received exactly the same deficient ship handling training?

I feel for these Captains, a little bit.  They’re poor ship handlers.  They must know they’re poor ship handlers.  There’s little they can do to improve their skills.  It’s no wonder they almost literally hold their breath through their entire command tour, just praying nothing goes wrong because they know they aren’t qualified to deal with ship handling problems (they’re not qualified to do basic navigation and ship handling, let alone anything unusual!). 

So, what’s the Navy’s solution to poor ship handling?  Is it more training, like any of us would think?  No, it’s to fire the Captains and move on to the next poor ship handler and then wonder why these things keep happening.  Remember, the definition of insanity is to repeat the same actions and expect a different outcome.  That’s what the Navy is doing by firing these Captains for deficient ship handling:  they put another deficient ship handler in place and expect a different outcome – that’s insane!

If the Navy is serious about getting rid of every substandard ship handler in command of a ship, we won't have any Captains left!

There's a practical side to this, too.  The Navy invests a LOT of time, money, and resources into developing Captains and then to just throw that investment away because a Captain fails, through no fault of his own (lack of training is not his fault), is incredibly wasteful.

Hey, listen, Navy.  You can fire people or you can better train them.  Firing isn’t working since we keep running into things.  Just for shits and giggles, why not try better training?

17 comments:

  1. I don't get it. Until the ship is commissioned, she is not a Navy ship and not under the PCO's command. She is still the responsibility of the builder, and she "Steams" with a builder crew and Master. Or have things changed?

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    1. As you know, prior to commissioning, the ship is the PCU Billings, not USS Billings. And, yes, once builder's trials are over and the Navy has accepted delivery (but prior to commissioning) there is a crew and Captain.

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    2. Steve, The ship is placed in commission prior to departure from the yard. This happens after the ship has been fitted out with all material and tech docs needed for operation, it has passed a habitability inspection by the ISIC/TYCOM, sailors have moved aboard, and the TYCOM has sent a team (the Afloat Training Group, or ATG) to do a Light-Off Assessment for engineeering, test their ability to fight a main space fire, and examine the crew in other areas (Like NAVIGATION!!) to determine that they have the basic proficiency to take the ship to sea. We may have delivered a ship to a homeport with a commercial crew in the past, but I can't remember doing that over at least the last 30 years. the commissioning in a place of choice with a ceremony is just for show (we're the Navy, we like our ceremonies!). The ship is already in commission. There has been some talk lately about designating them as being "in service" when we fail to deliver the full capability, but either way they operate like Navy ships with a USN crew and CO. The governing instruction is OPNAVINST 4700.8K, 15OCT2014. Completely agree with lack of training, we are not developing Master Mariners, we are setting them up to fail.

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    3. Hm. Different than when I was PCO Merrimack, when things were as I stated. Not a change for the better, I'd say.

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  2. Now if the Navy was as prompt is firing program managers for fielding barely working systems, that would be progress.

    CNO Marx said, the first collisions were a tragedy,
    we have now reached farce.

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  3. Hey, we absolutely do have a phenomenal ship handling training program. It's called sending officers to do an exchange program with the Royal Navy for a few years and then letting the Brits beat some sense and skill into them.

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  4. Skipper! Greetings, Happy Fourth, Gents. An article from Zero about our beloved F-35, lots of cogent points and also indicative of why there's no offense in Naval Air anymore.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-02/f-35-poster-child-pentagon-boondoggles

    In the F-35 we have a compromised platform across the board. It's not a good fit for carriers, nor the Air Force. Joint-Service applications fail for all services. They learned that 60 years back with the F-111 and produced the F-14 for the Navy, F-15 for the Air Force, both were examples of excellence. The F-18 was compromised as it consolidated two functions across three services. Because it wasn't the bomber the A-6 was, nor the fighter the F-14 was, it's a lousy tanker, not much of an ELINT/VAQ bird. Throughout its service life, it has always been less-than. One size fits all fails all, if you ask me. They get too cute by about half and screw everything up. The Ford/F-35 combo is a disaster.

    Ah well, there are fireworks and BBQs, be of good cheer Gents!

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  5. They're probably too busy with sensitivity training, sexual harassment training, gender integration and all the other fashionable politically correct Wokester stuff to focus on seamanship, navigation, warfighting and all the other stuff that actually matters.

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  6. " Hey, listen, Navy. You can fire people or you can better train them. Firing isn’t working since we keep running into things. Just for shits and giggles, why not try better training?"

    That would be fine if the navy had not spent years systematically minimizing crew. The LCS is the extreme example where often nobody can be trained to do a job because there was never anyone put on board to do it and fail from lack of training. Lack of old school deck watches seems to figure in the collisions quite a bit for the USN - again not enough crew, persistent failure to have redundancy.

    @Blueback

    "They're probably too busy with sensitivity training, sexual harassment training, gender integration and all the other fashionable politically correct Wokester stuff to focus on "

    I think that is a misleading dichotomy. Lots of US corporations do that and still manage to competently deploy their work forces. US pilots in the civilian sector likely have diversity and workplace sexual harassment training but are not running into each other on the tarmac (in their planes) at the rate the USN is.

    War fighting training is expensive. Shooting a lot missiles and drones, and ammo ,and decoys, all about, organizing a large enough clear zone to do it in, etc. The navy simply does not as constructed now want to waste money for its new toys on that kind of thing. I mean do the math lets assume that every year every navy ship fired all its guns at a sustained rate while maneuvering and at least 5-10 missiles and faced some combination of maybe 3 drone missile attacks, maybe some slow decoy drones mimicking planes also various decoys to simulate subs or torpedoes, or small boats. The cost would huge. Why the navy might have to gasp conclude that a well trained fleet might only be 250 ships...

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    1. "do the math ... The cost would huge."

      You're laboring under the misconception that what we do now is good and right. You say the cost would be huge. What you should be saying is that the cost to not train as you describe would be even greater in lost ships and defeats when we go to war. What you should be saying is that the cost of damaged and sunken ships from groundings and collisions is even greater.

      You also seem to think that we can't afford better training. I've already laid out exactly how we can not only afford that kind of training but have money left over. In a nutshell, we stop the useless, ineffective world-wide deployments and return to missions (remember that post?). Now, you do the math on the operating costs that would be saved. The savings would be huge! We could afford to train extensively and still have money left over.

      Here's something for you to ponder since you seem to think it's impossible to conduct large scale training: how did we manage to conduct gigantic Fleet Problems for twenty years without running out of money?

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    2. The Triple E Class cargo ships require 13 crew,
      Perhaps not quite as complex a vessel as the LCS, but if 13 men can crew a ship sufficiently to not crash in to parked cars....

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    3. "but if 13 men can crew a ship sufficiently to not crash in to parked cars...."

      To be a little bit fair to the Navy, it's a bit different sailing slowly along the sailing lanes (which are probably the same ones they've sailed many times) in the proper direction and another to go cutting across lanes as the Navy seems to routinely do. The former is inherently lower risk and the latter is inherently higher risk.

      Also, there are lots of dents along the hull of almost any commercial ship. They do bump into things but they're big enough to just shrug it off and keep going and we never hear about it.

      That said, there's a world of difference between 'bumping into' things, gently, and colliding violently and running aground which is what the Navy does. I try to be fair to the Navy but I can only defend their ship handling a very small amount!

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    4. @Domo

      But those ships by in large don't do damage control.

      https://gcaptain.com/the-worst-containership-disasters-in-recent-history-in-photos/

      They sink. And like the LCS they expect to pull into a port for maintenance, sucks if that port got blown up in a war.

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  7. Just a question, Who was in charge of the Billing at the time of the collision, was it the crew (ie officer of the deck) or was it a local Pilot

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    1. We haven't heard yet but from the Navy's perspective it's irrelevant. The Captain is always responsible whether there's a Pilot on board or not.

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  8. Given the current of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the wwind at the time, I would fault the Canadians pilots and the tug captains at the time as causing the wreck. They left a ship untenable. Past those assholes, the ship captain should have put put the peddle to metal and got out out of there and worried about some scraped paint when he got home. To hell with Canucks and get your crew and ship home. That way , he might have saved his career, but since he didn't , oh well, Another leader without balls gets removed.

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    1. As you well know, the Captain is ALWAYS in charge and responsible. No matter how inept the tugs/pilot may have been (and there is no evidence, as yet, that they were), the Captain ALWAYS has the right and duty to take over if an unsafe situation is developing.

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