DD-21's design teams and technicians are sparing no expense in crafting a revolutionary new ship. The way the Navy mans its ships must undergo a revolution as well.
In placing sailors on ships, the Navy's next surface combatant-the Zumwalt (DD-21) class-will be a departure from current procedures. The actual breakdown still is under development, but because manning a new surface combatant in many ways is less about the platform than it is about manning policies and precedents, DD-21 is an excellent case study to address this cultural issue. Starting with a broad-brush analysis of roles and missions, we can arrive at rough manning levels, in the process revisiting some paradigms in the transition to a ship with less than one-third the crew of a current combatant with similar missions.
The first "fact" is that the crew will consist of no more than 95 sailors, of which 22 belong to the air detachment. The second "fact" is that the ship will have a commanding officer. After that, everything is assumption.
Assumption #1: Officer and chief petty officer manning will follow precedent.
Officers: DD-21 will have a commanding officer, and he or she will be a commander (0-5); if not, maintaining the current surface warfare career path will be difficult. An executive officer also is a safe assumption. The operations officer will serve as navigator; the engineer officer, a combat systems officer, and a supply officer will head the remaining departments. Divisions will be led by junior officers but will be limited to one per department. Historically, the wardroom has made up about 10% of the crew, and this probably will hold for DD-21. Running total: 9.
Chief Petty Officers: As technical experts and mentors, chiefs will be an integral part of DD-21. Assuming one per department, a senior enlisted (combined with one of the departmental leading chiefs), and some division officers, they will fill many of the roles traditionally held by officers. The DD-21 chief petty officer mess will consist of seven chiefs, including one senior or master chief. Running total: 16.
These assumptions may not hold, of course. Other navies (e.g., Great Britain) have specialized officers and chief petty officers who are either tactical watchstanders or technicians and do not perform division officer functions. Advances in the supply system may eliminate the need for a supply officer on DD-21; enhanced connectivity may enable all supply functions to be performed from shore. There will be competition between warrant officers, limited-duty officers, and unrestricted line surface warfare officers for the few available billets; the need to develop junior and mid-grade line officers must be balanced against the technical expertise and leadership of a warrant or limited-- duty officer. Considering the recent perturbations in department head manning, this could be a contentious subject.
Assumption #2: Roles and missions drive manning.
The manning of Navy ships normally is determined using an analysis of the ship's missions and maintenance requirements. These are translated into man-hours and then fed into a standard model with an output of required manning by specialty. Somewhat simplified, DD-21 core competencies will be: shoot, steam, communicate, control damage, and support. There are other factors, such as maintenance and training, but underway watchstanding historically has been the driver for the majority of manning issues. Unless otherwise indicated, a required watch station (assuming normal condition III steaming) implies three sailors. New technologies and advances in humancentered engineering will maximize the individual's ability to process and act on information, and flex teams will allow some relief, but the bottom line is that to have a watch station manned 24 hours a day with an alert human being, three individuals are required. Significantly, this number does not account for onboard trainees, personnel in transit, or those or in pipeline training.
Shoot. The combat information center will be required to man watches for ship defense, local area air defense, and land attack, as well as control helicopters. In addition to the officers and chiefs mentioned above, assume one watchstander each at computer console and for each of the following mission areas: air operations (helicopter/combat air), gun operations, missile operations, and underwater operations, two support personnel, and one supervisor. Watchstanders required: 21. Running total: 37.
Steam: The engineering plant will be highly automated but still will require some supervision and maintenance. One supervisor, one mechanical and one electrical specialist, one roving watch, and one monitor for auxiliaries and damage control systems is a fair assumption. Total: 9. Running total: 46.
On the bridge, an officer of the deck, a combined helm/lee helm, and a combined quartermaster/signalman probably are the minimum. Assuming the officer of the deck is an officer or chief, add six watchstanders. Running total: 52.
Communicate: Despite automation, complex communications suites will require watch teams of at least one operator, one technician, and one supervisor. These experts also will maintain many of the ship's computer systems. Total: 9. Running total: 61.
Damage Control: The recent attack on the USS Cole (DDG-67) highlights the importance of damage control and force protection. Both are vital to ship survival and present special challenges to a reduced crew. They really must become all-hands responsibilities, and quality training must be provided to ensure that a small crew can meet the higher standards that are sure to result from lessons learned from the Cole bombing.
For manning purposes, however, a flyaway damage control team, available for emergency repairs and emergency response, will replace the standard repair locker organization. This will be a combination of traditional damage control and repair ratings and electronic repair technicians able to quickly control most situations short of major conflagration. They also will run the repair shop and auxiliary maintenance. Total: 7. Running total: 68.
Support: The crew must be fed, paperwork completed, and supplies managed. This accounts for the remaining five crewmembers. Running total: 73.
These assumption could have some flaws as well. Operation and maintenance of the DD-21 combat system could require more people. On the other hand, many large merchant ships and private yachts cruise the high seas with unmanned engine rooms and only one or two watch-- standers on the bridge. Although there may be some overlap with officer and chief functions, as well as overlapping watchstanding and maintenance duties, the relative numbers approximate those now in the fleet. Of course, in addition to battle, a warship has other demands: many unique evolutions require specialized teams with additional training. Some suggestions: during underway replenishment, use a laser range finder from the golf pro shop and a walkie-talkie instead of a phone and distance line tended by six sailors. For helicopter operations, leverage automatic firefighting systems instead of a 15-man fire team. For boat operations (Do we really need a boat? Submarines operate on the surface a lot, and they don't have boats), a jet ski could serve as a reliable platform for the rescue swimmer. For entering and leaving port, lines could be maintained on the pier vice on board, eliminating the need for multiple linehandlers. In all these types of operations, risk must be assessed and either accepted, eliminated, or reduced and managed.
Assumption #3: What DD-21 sailors will not do.
Some tasks have no place in the daily routine of DD21: cutting hair, laundry, handling money, deep cleaning, painting, administration of pay and personnel issues, and Combined Federal Campaign drives. In fact, the collateral duties list-a ten-page document on a typical destroyer-- must get a hard scrub. Between watchstanding, training, and maintenance, there will not be time for many of the other things that traditionally occupy our sailors under way. Design improvements in racks and berthing, low-- maintenance decks and heads, anticorrosive paints and improved application techniques must be leveraged to minimize maintenance. Prepackaged meals will minimize food preparation and cleanup. Automatic teller machines and Smart Cards will eliminate the need for cash and many personnel-related transactions. Much of the "low-tech" labor will be need to be outsourced when the ship is in port to allow the crew to attend to other duties and have some time at home with their families. Training will be shifted to web-based and embedded lessons, and a significant part of qualification will be incorporated into the en route training pipeline.
Assumption #4: If they don't do it, somebody else must. Necessary functions that cannot be performed by ship's crew at the reduced manning levels of DD-21 must be shifted elsewhere, most likely to the shore establishment. Some issues that bear scrutiny:
Maintenance: Major changes in the shore maintenance establishment must be made to accommodate the lower number of shipboard technicians; a larger percentage of jobs will be outside the scope of man-hours available on the ship. This extra support must be funded if minimum manning is to work. One possible solution: some crew members (above the 73 already accounted for) could be assigned to a "support group" either ashore or on the big-deck ship in the battle group, to conduct remote computerized troubleshooting and other related duties. This will, of course, drive up overall crew size. Other repercussions could include reduced pride of ownership, a shift in the balance between sea and shore billet availability, and gapped billets ashore.
Manpower Management: Small crew size and relatively high training requirements for each crewmember present special problems here. For DD-21, many mission-critical billets will be "one deep," and the (currently) typical gap of weeks to months to replace an unplanned loss will be unacceptable. There will be no one to pick up the load for a substandard performer. Couple this with long, expensive training pipelines for all the new technologies and you have a recipe for trouble.
In addition, turnover rates during the interdeployment training cycle will be exacerbated by the small crew size; team building will be tough. Recent initiatives to lock-in even a carefully targeted 10% of the crew in "critical billets" several months prior to a battle group deployment have failed. Perhaps the answer is a pool of "ready spares" in designated specialty areas, to replace the occasional injury, pregnancy, or disciplinary case. These individuals could be combined with the maintenance crew mentioned above-again at the cost of numbers creep. Other possible solutions: portions of the crew could rotate off the ship during maintenance periods for a training phase; watch teams could be detailed as a group for an entire tour, with a planned overlap for continuity.
As for berthing, a typical ship goes through a cycle at precommissioning in which crew size swells by 10-15%. Some junior personnel in excess of the required watch stations will be required to allow for growth and qualification, and there always will be riders such as technicians and VIPs. Hence, a berthing capacity of approximately 110 racks probably is needed.
DD-21 almost certainly will be mixed gender, and this may force a closer examination of policies concerning pregnancy and sea duty. Today, when a sailor becomes pregnant, she can continue to work on board until the 20th week, but no replacement requisition is generated until the sailor actually detaches. Allowing a requisition to be generated as soon as a sailor becomes pregnant would allow more lead time for training a replacement. Restrictions on distance from emergency medical care could create sudden gaps in cases of short-notice underway tasking.
Duty and In-port Issues: Virtually every ship on the waterfront is in eight-section duty and striving for ten or better. Assuming the commanding officer, executive officer, and air detachment do not stand duty, and 10% of the crew will be on leave or in school at any given time, each duty section will consist of a less-than-robust six to eight sailors. Even with the recent restructuring of security and damage control requirements, most ships have at least three sailors on watch at a given time, often plus a pier sentry, duty driver, and pier sweepers. The idea that the current shore establishment, also significantly undermanned, will absorb these requirements is unrealistic. Innovative Smart Pier solutions that encourage cooperation among ships on the pier for messing, damage control, and security hold much potential, but there is still a long way to go. Many navies do not stand duty-a hard concept for those of us who grew up in three-section duty to swallow, but again the entire concept is driven by risk and must be subjected to a rigorous cost/benefit analysis.
Rethinking the Process
Minimum manning has been tried before; a key lesson is that a straightforward discussion of all the issues-even the unpleasant ones-during the planning phase will save a lot of frustration for the commissioning crew of DD-21. The officers and sailors who will serve on the Zumwalt-- her commanding officer probably is in department head school right now-must be part of the process.
Some solutions already exist, just waiting to be examined; blue and gold crews, flex watchstanding, and Smart Ship/Smart Pier concepts hold possibilities for reducing individual workload and increasing efficiency. Recent initiatives to reduce inspections and ship visits during the interdeployment training cycle also are steps in the right direction. However, these ideas are all evolutionary. For the next-generation surface ship, the standard manning model will not suffice; the way we man ships must undergo a revolution.