The Canadian Cyclic System

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All Royal Canadian Navtj ships and their crews pass through four pre-planned periods, each of four months duration. At the end of the 16 months, a new cycle begins. Hull routine? It may be, but, like the country s military unification it could serve as a model for every other Navy in the world.

It sometimes seems as if the U.S. Navy, hav­ing gone to the cost effectiveness technique as a method for determining military require­ments, considers itself in the forefront of man­agement sophistication. This is not so.

By any criterion of effective use of men and machines in combination, our Navy is waste-

Admiral John E. Alford, U. S. Navy, this board, formally designated the Secretary of the Navy Policy Board and Task Force on Personnel Retention, sought solutions to the serious loss of manpower which is afflicting our naval service. The scope of its inquiries were broad; its findings were sound. The

ful, even acknowledging the dubious rationale that military operations necessitate inefficient manpower practices.

What, then, should we do? Essentially, we must schedule ships (and squadrons) to per­mit a progressive increase in training and readiness during the entire cycle between overhauls, and we must have stabilized crews that stay with the ships between overhauls.

It can’t be done? It has been done. The in vivo model—the Canadian Cyclic System— is close at hand to study and to evaluate.

The failure of the U. S. Navy to solve its manpower management problem may have resulted from relying on stop-gap solutions to piece-meal problems rather than finding— as has the Canadian Navy—a co-ordinated set of solutions which will make optimum use both of their people and the fighting units in which they serve.

Let us, then, quickly examine two of the U. S. Navy’s oblique assaults on the problem.

Alford Retention Board. The title almost de­fines its charter. Under the direction of Rear board recommended 82 proposals which should, when implemented, enhance a career in the naval service and thereby reduce the loss to civilian life of that category of person­nel it most critically needs, the trained tech­nicians. A significant recommendation is number 24: “Provide in BuPers master tape [file] the capability to list and control at least five NECs [Naval Enlisted Classification] for each enlisted man.” But what the Alford Board did not recommend (and it was not precisely within its purview to do so) was that personnel control and distribution of every person in the Navy must be centrally directed from the Navy Department. In patent recog­nition of this requirement there is an in­creasing trend to rating control by BuPers. But so long as personnel distribution is keyed only to filling vacancies in the ships, rather than providing stabilized crews, the best that can be accomplished is to spread dissatisfac­tion evenly throughout the Fleet. In addition to the distribution of personnel, the U. S- Navy never has adequately solved the prob-

by Captain Seymour Dombroff, U. S. Navy

for

^any ship only while under the operational

lem of advanced training for people serving 'vith the operating forces. If a key member of ^a crew is sent to an extended course at school, the ship must operate without his services during that period. So we have two unsatis­factory alternatives—either do not send

People off to these long courses or accept a lower degree of readiness brought about by Personnel absences.

_ Blue and Gold Operations Concept. This tech- taque of employing forces was developed by Vice Admiral K. S. Masterson, while serving ^as Commander Second Fleet. Essentially, every unit under the operational control of the Second Fleet is placed in one of two teams. f ^or a prescheduled period during an operat- ^lnS quarter, one team meets all the underway ^c°rnmitments while the other team remains ^Undisturbed in port for maintenance and ^Schooling. A ceiling is placed on the number °f underway days that can be assigned to the ^Ur>derway team.

The concept is a step in the right direction , ^ecause it permits orderly scheduling by the ^lridividual ship or unit commander and allo­^Cates adequate in-port time for maintenance '^lI1d training. Unfortunately, it only applies to ^a limited number of ships at any one time, and ^c°ntrol of Commander Second Fleet

All fleet and type commanders have guide­lines for the operating parameters of Fleet units, but the sum total is ineffectual. After a ship completes her overhaul and refresher training, she then becomes fair game for any subsequent assignment regardless of changes in readiness brought about by personnel changes. Each Fleet unit turns over about 50 per cent of her crew annually so that drastic perturbations of readiness levels constantly occur. To state it another way for emphasis, once refresher training is completed, there is no orderly progression of increased readiness for U. S. Navy ships, and in fact the reverse probably applies.

Our problem lies in the fact that too many activities influence the scheduling. At every level from the Fleet commander to the opera­tional and type commander, the schedulers can point to restrictive commitments from higher authority, and because frequently it is easier to meet unreasonable scheduling direc­tives than to challenge them, it is a natural consequence that the emphasis is placed on meeting operational commitments rather than attaining optimum readiness. This is an acceptable procedure only if we can count on a continued peacetime regimen.

It is appropriate to give acknowledgement for our Navy’s achievements in development of the Redops report system which provide shore based commanders with an automated and efficient tool for gauging the material and personnel readiness of the forces afloat. Also noteworthy are the Planned Maintenance System work study techniques (borrowed from the Royal Navy), the Barney study, and the Star program. Our Navy has even studied the Canadian program, as evidenced by the Personnel Research Laboratory’s study, “New Concepts in Shipboard Manning, an Analysis of the Canadian Navy Approach.” It is an excellent piece of work which considers the

Canadian user/maintainer concept, as well as their “Assisted Ship Replenishment Program (ASRP).” All this not withstanding, we still make unacceptably poor use of our personnel.

Compared with the U. S. Navy, the sea­going military forces of Canada are small. The Canadian Navy or Maritime Command as it is designated under the Reorganization Act, is antisubmarine oriented and its backbone con­sists of about 20 destroyers in various phases of modernization. In addition it has one air­craft carrier, HMCS Bonaventure, and, cur­rently, two Oberon-class submarines. There are also various support ships, including HMCS Provider, and 13 minor ships, such as minesweepers and harbor defense craft. The Navy is capable of mounting and supporting operations far distant from Canada.

Although the ultimate impact of the single service concept, now being implemented in the Canadian armed forces by the Minister of Defense, cannot be assessed or predicted, at present the officer corps is the peer of the most qualified and dedicated of the world’s naval services. The enlisted personnel may be equally rated.

Despite these assets in people, the Canadian Navy in the early Sixties faced the same criti­cal manpower problems the U. S. Navy still faces today. Confronted with an increased re­quirement for experienced and trained tech­nicians to operate the new sophisticated equipments, the Canadian Navy also experi­enced an increased loss of qualified personnel to civilian life. It was seriously questioned whether the Navy could survive as an effec­tive instrument with the personnel trends then in existence. A determined effort to correct this situation resulted in the Cyclic System.

The Cyclic System has its roots in the Tisdall Committee, which in 1959 made rec­ommendations for major changes in recruit­ing, training, promotions, and advancement in rating of the men in the Canadian Navy. The analogy in time to the U. S. Navy’s Al­ford Retention Study Group is intriguing. The Canadian Navy decided to review these changes after being in effect for five years.

Accordingly, in 1964, the Naval Board convened a personnel structure review team, under Rear Admiral William Landymore, to make a progress report. The team was also

A graduate of Oregon State University in 1941, Captain DombrofF served in the USS Heywood from 1942 to 1944. During the Korean Conflict, he was the executive officer of the USS McGinty. From 1954 to 1956, he was commanding officer of the NROTC unit at Columbia University and, from 1957 to 1960 he com­manded, successively, the USS Miller (DD-535) and the USS Decatur (DD-936). From 1960 to 1962, he was Head, Evaluation Department of the Key West Detachment of the Operational Test and Evaluation Force. He then commanded Destroyer Division 322 before becoming Assistant Chief of Staff Readiness ASWFORLANT from 1963 to 1966. He commanded Destroyer Squadron 36 prior to his present assign­ment as Head of ASW Branch, ASW and Ocean Sur­veillance Division, OPNAV.

directed to make any recommendations that might improve the Navy’s efficiency.

Chapter 43 of the team’s report contains language that will have a familiar ring to those concerned with manning the U. S. Fleets:

It has been the custom to prepare the an­nual plan for the employment of the fleet by allowing for refit, major exercises, and cadet training as the first priorities for time alloca­tions. After these matters were catered for, the plan was then completed by including all other commitments. It was always constructed to cover a period of one year.

Although attempts were made to provide some manning stability, it is clear from the number of drafting changes experienced in each unit of the fleet that these attempts were not successful. Shortages of well trained tradesmen added further to instability.

The Cyclic System to be described here has as its basis the close alignment of personnel re­quirements to the planned employment of the fleet. In other words, personnel training re­quirements dominate the planning. At first glimpse, it may seem to many to be a very pe­culiar and unorthodox way to treat an opera­tional fleet; that is, to treat it as one long train­ing operation. Under study, however, it is be­lieved that the most skeptical will find that a well-planned fleet cycle based on personnel requirements, will give not only manning stability but also will allow each operational unit to become more effective.

All Royal Canadian Navy ships and their

crews are programmed for a period of 16 months, the present duration of a complete cycle.” The cycle period has four phases, ^each four months in length. (See Fig. 1.)

Phase I is titled “Maintenance and Cours- ^lng-” Ships in this phase undergo refits (over­hauls) or are alongside undisturbed for main­tenance. Crew members attend courses of less than 17 weeks in duration without reliefs, ^en are moved in and out of ships to form stabilized crews for the next three phases. IP'S trovers enter each phase not on an indi- ^Vldual basis but in squadrons. Figure 2 shows ^he status of ships among the four phases dur- ^lng the first year of Cyclic operation.

Phase II is the workup period which corre­^sPonds to the refresher training which is Undergone by U. S. Navy ships. No personnel ^are transferred into or out of the ships in this Phase. Phase II begins with trials and then Proceeds with training exercises which pro­gress in variety and complexity under the ^supervision of the squadron commander. Attention is paid also to inter-ship co-ordi­ⁿated evolutions. During this phase, normally,

The Canadian Cyclic System 67

a long cruise to a foreign port is scheduled.

Phase III is the fleet phase. Ships in this phase are considered in the highest state of operational readiness. They participate in major fleet exercises and are the source which provides ships for emergencies. As in Phase II, there is essentially no transfer of personnel during the fleet phase. In the event that an operational emergency requires more ships than are available in the Phase III status, then ships from Phase II are called upon. If still greater augmentation is required, then the ships are drawn from forces in Phase IV.

Phase IV is called the Personnel Assistance Phase. During this period ships are operated at a progressively decreasing tempo. They engage in cadet (midshipman) training cruises and participate in local festivals and certain trial projects. Also during this phase personnel are sent off to the school course that requires more than 17 weeks in atten­dance. Personnel absent for schools provide the berthing spaces for the trainees.

Obviously, one of the main goals of the

Figure 1 CYCLIC PHASES

Figure 2