For decades the Navy has embraced the dogma that "people are our most precious resource." It is embedded in the phrase "quality of service," which encompasses both quality of life and quality of work. The focus on the 'latter is quite interesting because the dream of ensuring better work through human factors engineering and human systems integration in systems and platforms—captured in the slogan, "putting the human first"—continues to resemble the football that Lucy holds for Charlie Brown. It is filled with promise but gives no satisfaction.
Since the Jimmy Carter administration, if not before, most of us have believed we should design and build weapon systems to be operated and maintained easily and effectively by the people expected to use them. Concurrently, we had to leverage technology to support human effectiveness in the complex environments of modem warfare. We understood the need to minimize the nonmilitary workload so our people could devote more time and effort to preparing for combat.
In a few cases—such as the F/A- 18 Hornet—systems were produced that were far more reliable and maintainable than their predecessors. The advent of computer-aided design and manufacturing made it easier to inject reliability and maintainability considerations into system design. This was enormously attractive 20 to 30 years ago, when less than half our aircraft inventory was ready for war.
These ideas were recognized in highly visible programs of the 1980s—including the Navy's HARDMAN, a program that applied human factors to design and was advocated by then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral James Watkins. But, in general, these elephants labored mightily and produced mice. The incentives for program managers were to meet technical specifications and introduce systems on time and within budget. While senior defense managers talked about the importance of life-cycle cost, system availability, and manpower reduction, they could not reward or punish the people who made the decisions governing how systems would work. If people were our most precious resource, it was not reflected in the ways we designed and engineered systems, ships, and aircraft. A cultural change was needed—and it is still.
Talk of culture changes causes glazed eyeballs among those totally absorbed in the here and now. However, such steps are possible: one example is the broad acceptance of environmental standards by the military during the past two decades; another is the acceptance of women in military roles that had been closed to them previously. Nonetheless, changes of such magnitude do not happen without strong, unrelenting pressure.
The cost of people is high, especially if we want to attract the best and sustain their quality of life and work in ways that help us to retain them. And reducing the number of people needed to man weapon systems has major positive effects on recruiting, training, and related programs. But the incentive of cost reduction has produced little change in manpower requirements-in part because the pieces of the system needed to make reductions do not get to share the savings. Further, the Navy largely has failed to grasp the need to ensure that systems and platforms take into account humans as integral warfighting elements.
Although there are hotbeds of radical thinking, the signs are not encouraging that "the system" is changing to accommodate these needs. Inclusion of the latest and best flight safety systems in new aircraft (and retrofit into older models) would bring major savings by averting accidents and providing better diagnoses when they happen. However, the Navy is not putting these systems in aircraft in many cases, primarily because of short-term cost decisions.
Despite last year's cancellation of DD-21 in favor of a new surface "family of ships" program, the challenge remains to ensure that the Navy's goal of optimally manned next-generation warships is achieved. If not, it will be yet another case of bureaucratic backsliding that delays or prevents the building of safer, more effective ships with greatly reduced total ownership costs.
The solution involves more than technological innovation. We can do concurrent design with contemporary tools and practices. Cultural change is a thornier problem. Apparently, it is not sufficient for senior leadership to accept it and point the way—ask Admiral Watkins. Change must pervade the entire institution, all the supporting industry, and the laboratory base in and outside the Navy. Everyone who decides how dollars are going to be spent has to internalize the cost of manpower. Otherwise, development dollar stovepipes in the system, manpower drag-alongs of legacy systems, adherence to traditional training structures, lack of focus on life-cycle cost, unclear divisions of responsibility, and other defects that we have known about for decades will cause the system to keep on using people as if their costs were irrelevant.
Commander Pirie was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Installations and Environment from 1994 to 2001. During that time, he served as the acting secretary and the under secretary for several months.