Maintaining the well deck and other areas of an amphibious ship can be a herculean task for a ship's crew—often no more numerous than that of a destroyer, but with three times as much surface area to paint. New paints and application methods offer the promise of getting sailors back where they belong—training for warfighting.
In a news article that ran last fall, defense correspondents Tom Ricks and Greg Jaffe describe some areas in the Navy that "millennium fever" might have missed:
Throughout the 96,000-ton ship, from the signal bridge to the galleys three stories below the flight deck, sailors perform many of the same tasks their predecessors did 30 years ago. They stand watches that video cameras and remote sensors could handle. They chip and repaint heavily trafficked parts of the ship every three months, though commercial ships have found ways to make paint last as long as three years. And they scour floors with steel wool designed for dishes, not decks.
The days of galley slaves and impressed seamen have passed, but now—at the dawn of the third millennium—it still is hard for sailors to get off the ship. No longer chained to their oars or stranded on a ship that never comes into port, Navy sailors today are bound to the paintbrush, the chipping hammer, or the scullery. Maintaining required proficiency specific to their ratings, standing watches, and conducting drills—the work most sailors joined the Navy to do in the first place all too often comes in a distant third in the sailor's race against the clock.
In a General Accounting Office (GAO) survey of 1,000 servicemembers in "critical specialties," about two-thirds of Navy officer and enlisted respondents (65% and 59%, respectively) stated that they were dissatisfied overall with the military. More distressingly, only 37% of Navy officers and 15% of the sailors surveyed planned to stay after their current obligations expire.
When asked to cite their reasons for dissatisfaction, the survey respondents made it clear that the benefits of the military lifestyle were not good enough to counteract the poor working conditions and grueling deployment schedules. GAO found that nature of work circumstances accounted for the majority of the dissatisfiers cited by survey respondents (62%).
Ending "the Psychology of Conscription"
Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig points to the common perception that sailors' labor is "free" as the primary barrier to improving shipboard working conditions. The premise is that unskilled labor is replenished continually, resulting in a continuous flow of junior non-rated sailors as their predecessors leave the service at the end of their obligations. If the assumption is that most first-term non-rates are not going to reenlist, it is pointless to invest time and effort in their training and development. It is far easier to use them as a labor pool to do all of the things that are necessary to keep the ship freshly painted.
Navy recruiters still are working to overcome the perception that the Navy is a low-tech service, focused more on physical labor than technical knowledge. The reality is that the Navy demands that its sailors not only achieve and maintain proficiency in the most sophisticated weapons and engineering systems in the world, but also devote significant portions of their work week to unrewarding tasks such as preservation, space cleaning, and mess cooking. The challenge now is to reduce this burden through the use of new technologies.
Faced with the fact that some deploying units are leaving homeport with fewer than 60% of their full complement of undesignated seamen on board, the problem is not going unnoticed. The Navy is devoting significant funds and a lot of talent to the investigation of technologies, products, and maintenance strategies to help break this cycle. Through the Secretary of the Navy's Smart Work program and reductions in the Inter-Deployment Training Cycle workload, the Navy is changing the way it does business. These two programs highlight the facts that the sailor is valuable and hard to replace, and that the future of the Navy depends on retaining professionals.
The Capital Investment for Labor (CI Labor) program is an integral part of the Secretary's Smart Work program. Its charter is to invest capital to reduce the labor burden on sailors. CI Labor initiatives include high-durability, long-lasting paints that offer better corrosion protection; improved hand tools; using composites where possible; and reengineered components of high-maintenance equipment. There also are habitability initiatives under CI Labor that include reduced-maintenance stainless steel sanitary spaces and new deck tiles for living areas.
Perhaps the most significant sailor workload reduction initiative is the use of contractor paint teams to do all shipboard organizational preservation. These are teams of trained specialists who come to a ship at pierside and tackle the areas that eat up sailors' in-port time—boat davits, gun mounts, refueling stations, fan rooms, and the like; the labor-intensive work made more frustrating by the fact that it usually has to be redone in a matter of weeks. The paint team makes short work of these areas using advanced coating systems and specialized equipment that would be too cumbersome and expensive for the ship to own and maintain. The use of professionals to paint high-maintenance areas with long-lasting paint systems has the added benefit of reducing the depot-level work that currently is needed to keep corrosion at bay.
One Ship's Experience: the USS Tortuga (LSD-46)
In the amphibious community, one of the most taxing maintenance requirements is exterior preservation. A typical Whidbey Island (LSD-41)-class dock landing ship has approximately three times the exposed real estate (including the well deck) to maintain as an Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)-class destroyer with roughly the same work force. Compound this with the added corrosion damage caused by 100-mph, high-heat exhaust mixed with salt spray emanating from an air cushion landing craft, and the payback from investing in new paint coating technologies becomes a priority to reduce workload.
During a planned maintenance availability (PMA) completed in summer 1999, the Tortuga (LSD-46) used a three-part approach to reduce the average sailor's daily workload that employed some of the Navy's newest coating technologies. After only five months the command reported significant measurable shipboard workload reduction attributable to several efforts.
The most significant project was the application of one of the newest advanced coating systems recently approved by Naval Sea Systems Command: a high-solids, chemical- and heat-resistant, edge-retentive coating for the well-deck surfaces. The new coating previously was installed as a test on the well-deck overheads of several other amphibious platforms with very positive results.
The Tortuga expanded this initiative, and had the coating applied to areas that pose the most significant manpower drain: the well-deck bulkheads and adjacent weather-deck areas. This was the first time this system was applied to vertical surfaces, and even with the high heat and humidity complications of a summer application, the results were very successful. Notably, the complete preparation and coating application on the well deck was done over a five-week period at the Naval Amphibious Base at Little Creek, Virginia.
The coating system used in the well-deck area has a ceramic-like texture and boasts a ten-year service life, compared to typical conventional coating systems that fail after 12-18 months. Anyone who has spent time on a well-- deck ship will tell you that fighting corrosion in the well deck and surrounding weather-deck areas with their continual exposure to exhaust heat, saltwater immersion, and high-velocity spray is a grueling daily chore. Five months after the completion of this project, the ship continued to report zero maintenance hours dedicated to the areas treated.
An anti-stain, haze-gray coating for the ship's freeboard and superstructure was installed as well. This coating uses a chelating agent to transform running rust into a clear film, which is maintained easily with routine washings. The coating has developed a superior waterfront reputation as a labor saver because of its application on several other platforms after complete surface blasting and priming by an industrial activity. This project was the first attempt at application of the new anti-stain coating over an existing layer of conventional haze gray.
A corrosion-control specialist monitored the surface preparation, priming, and coating application of the anti-stain coating for quality-control purposes. The complete project took 12 weeks to complete, but the payback has been exceptional. As a result, the endless task of chipping, priming, and repainting to maintain the ship's appearance is nearly eliminated in the short term and reduced to a manageable task over the long term. Anti-stain paint is not a permanent solution to running rust—as the chelating agent eventually wears out—but it promises to prevent one complete re-coat over a two-to-three-year period. The Tortuga used to employ five junior personnel full time as a side-painting team to maintain the ship's exterior appearance. After five months, the ship still had not repainted any of the freeboard or superstructure.
Lastly, to round out the corrosion attack projects, the ship was selected to test new composite material vent screens in place of several exterior steel mesh screens. These new screens will never need painting.
Workload Reduction
Nothing short of proven in-service performance will convince the doubters. It is undeniable, however, that better paint lasts longer, composites do not rust, and improved materials extend equipment life. There is great potential for reducing sailors' workload. A few examples:
- It is estimated that an annual expenditure of 10,000 sailor hours was devoted to the maintenance of the Tortuga's well-deck overhead, vertical bulkheads, and weather decks adjacent to the well deck. The new coating system applied eliminates all overhead repair and preservation requirements, and reduces the routine maintenance to a periodic freshwater wash down. With the purchase of a pressure washer, this task is further reduced to eight sailor hours per month. As a result, the anticipated annual ship's force workload reduction for this project alone is in excess of 9,900 sailor hours.
- Data derived from ship surveys indicate that the average ship employs 5.6 sailors full time to maintain the freeboard and topside areas. That amounts to 11,200 sailor hours per year. If we assume a worst-case scenario of a two-year service life for the new anti-stain paint system, we still double the life of the conventional freeboard paint, which historically fails within a year. Doubling the service life will cut the required workload in half, conservatively saving an estimated 5,600 sailor hours per year.
- Ship surveys further indicate that steel vent screens are repainted an average of 1.75 times every year and repainting a screen takes about 3 hours, for a total labor requirement of 5.25 hours per screen per year. Composite screens never need to be painted, so all labor is recaptured. Applying these savings to the 45 screens on the test ship reduces workload by about 235 sailor hours per year.
- About 380 sailor hours per year are devoted to tile-deck maintenance, cleaning, stripping, and waxing on the Tortuga. It also was noted that it takes about the same time to reseal a polyurethane-coated deck as it does to strip and wax a tile deck. With resealing once a quarter, the immediate recognized workload reduction is 125 sailor hours.
With just these four improvements, the Tortuga could save nearly 16,000 sailor hours a year—time that can be invested in training, warfare qualification, watchstanding, and even liberty. Future CI Labor initiatives will have an even greater impact. A preservation team results in more than 17,000 sailor hours saved per year. Installing four reduced-maintenance stainless steel heads yields an additional 7,000 sailor hours per year. The end result is a total savings of more than 40,000 sailor hours, or about 150 hours for every sailor on board the Tortuga.
Smart Work in the New Millennium
"Work smarter, not harder" has become almost a cliche over the past several years. In the sometimes-disingenuous lexicon of the Pentagon, it usually means doing more with fewer sailors. CI Labor is more than just rhetoric or an exhortation to do better. It is an application of resources to deliver engineering solutions to reduce the work—and not the work force. Sea labor is the most valuable use of the Navy's resources, and CI Labor seeks to preserve it.
Crew cohesion is not dependent on chipping paint, scrubbing corroded heads, or working on watertight doors. Mindless work yields only lethargy. Enabling Sailors to spend more time on warfare qualifications and training engenders a professional and motivated work force. Sailors who can go home at night before 1800 to compensate for the many lonely days at sea are much more likely to view naval service as a viable career—and not a four-year sentence in correctional custody.
Captain Needham is the Director of Maintenance Process Improvement at Naval Sea Systems Command. Commander Burdon is the commanding officer of the USS Tortuga (LSD-46).