Few U.S. Navy officers today are capable mariners. The continued neglect of shiphandling skills means that in the future Navy ships such as the USS & Bulkeley (DDG-84) may have to be driven by qualified civilians.
Since the founding of the U.S. Navy the words of John Paul Jones have been a guiding tenet: "An officer of the Navy should he a capable mariner." Thucydides in 404 B.C. preceded Jones with similar observations, "Maritime skill is not to be cultivated by the way or at chance times." and. "A collision at sea can ruin your entire day."
For more than 50 years the primary text used by the U.S. Navy for learning the basic requirements of the capable mariner has been Russell Sydnor Crenshaw's Naval Shiphandling. The book supports John Paul Jones' statement by explaining that the demonstrated ability to control the movements of a Navy warship is essential to a career officer's reputation, professionalism, and promotion. The 2005 Naval Institute Press text, retired Navy Captain James Barrier's Naval Shiphandler's Guide, states that, for as long us there have been navies, shiphandling has been one of the most important professional skills and a source of pride and personal satisfaction.
What may have been apparent to Thucydides and Jones through Crenshaw and Barber seems not to apply in a 21stcentury Navy in which maritime skill has little or no bearing on career success. Rather than earning respect as a capable mariner, many of today's captains complete a full tour without demonstrating that they can handle their ships.
For decades, through many revisions and variations, the fitness report used by the Navy carried seamanship as one of the important professional categories evaluated by the reporting senior. Today, as an indication of the movement away from the importance of maritime skill, seamanship is not included in the Fitness Report and Counseling Record and the recently announced program. XO/CO Fleet-Up, will result in shorter tours for commanding officers, making those officers available for what are apparently more important slaff jobs ashore.
As maritime professionalism has become less important in the Navy, so have opportunities for officers to develop shiphandling skills at sea, and Barber points out that the most important and valuable advancement in this training has been the introduction of shiphandling simulators, valuable aids in learning the art and science of shiphandling.
Shiphandling Simulators
The first full mission bridge shiphandling simulator was made available for U.S. Navy use at the Surface Warfare Officers School (SWOS) in Newport. Rhode Island, in 1986, 20 years after merchant ships had been using similar training systems and more than 75 years after aviators had made flight simulation a formal part of their training and qualification programs.
Before the SWOS use of a shiphandling simulator. Navy officers had to learn how to operate ships by hands-on or on-the-job training, since opportunities in real ships were rare. The introduction of shiphandling simulation at SWOS was followed by Navy-contracted simulation for the Pacific Fleet at San Diego. California, in 1993 and for the Atlantic Fleet at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1998. Fewer ships, lower operational tempos, and more officers on hoard along with less interest, different operating patterns, and greater emphasis on caution, have resulted in fewer opportunities for young officers to drive their ships. Shiphandling simulators with experienced instructors at major Navy bases have become the primary means of teaming to be capable mariners.
Aviation training is a prime example of the need, value, and proper use of simulation. After receiving instruction from a very experienced pilot in a flight simulator, the student-pilot learns to he an aviator by actually flying under instruction by another very experienced pilot in a real airplane. After earning gold wings, the young pilot then commences to really learn by logging hours of actual stick time. Then, even after accumulating hundreds of hours, pilots return periodically to flight simulators where, again, very experienced aviators put them through further training.
Not so in the surface Navy where young officers qualify as Officer of the Deck and earn the Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) badge by demonstrating a few basic and simplistic processes. Whereas the aviator goes through rigorous training, demonstrates that he can fly, earns his wings, and then accumulates many hours of flight time before he is considered a capable pilot, the surface warfare officer does minimal preparation, converts prompting into orders without understanding why, earns his SWO badge, and then may not drive again.
The shiphandling simulator training facilities available for the Navy in San Diego and Norfolk are commercially owned and operated, each under a separate contract awarded through a competitive government procurement process and meeting rigid specifications. Each contract specifies that facilitator/instructors must be former commanding officers with at least two sea commands and ten years of sea duty, or licensed master mariners. Most have had more than the required commands and sea time, all have experience in actual close shiphandling with various ship types and additional experience instructing in shiphandling simulators. These instructors are clearly well qualified and experienced to teach shiphandling to Navy officers, basic, intermediate, or advanced.
But at Newport, SWOS has terminated the contracted simulator services, opting instead to use home-made arcade-type games that do not meet standards established by the International Maritime Organization. The most powerful navy in the world uses third-rate shiphandling simulators at its surface-warfare school and has notified the Pacific and Atlantic Fleet shiphandling training facilities that their contracts will be terminated.
Qualifications
About 300 commissioned vessels are in the U.S. Navy today, and a few are commanded and operated by competent, professional, and confident officers who would meet the international standards that ensure the safety of life at sea, even though those who operate government vessels are not required to meet these standards as are masters and mates of merchant ships of the world. These standards have been established by international conventions to which the United States has not only agreed, but has been in the forefront of promoting, urging, and encouraging application to world shipping. Very few U.S. Navy ship captains or officers are capable mariners, qualified by international convention and national law, experienced by way of requisite injob time-at-sea, nor do they have the confidence that comes only by practiced seamanship evolutions. Valiant and capable combatants they might be, let us hope, but professional mariners they are not.
"Navigation, Seamanship and Shiphandling Training Requirements Document," issued by the CNO Surface Warfare Directorate on 15 June 2002 states that this document "is consistent with the specifications and requirements of the 1995 Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) for Seafarers, which came into full force in February 2002, and the LJS Code of Federal Regulations, Chapter 46." The document also states, "Additionally, though warships are exempted from the STCW requirements, as a Party to the Convention the U.S. had agreed that 'persons serving on board such ships (will) meet the requirements of the Convention so far as is reasonable and practical.'"
One of the key provisions of the code is the requirement that seamanship, navigation, and shiphandling competencies be demonstrated, evaluated, and documented, and although this is recognized and repeated in the Training Requirements Document, the CNO Surface Warfare Directorate has not complied with this agreement.
Competence
Navy officers' ability as mariners is tried every time a U.S. Navy ship gets under way, operates at sea, or comes into port. In practice today, almost every port departure, entry, and pier landing is done by a civilian ship's pilot using tugs. Navy ships use "valet parking" in their own home ports as well as in distant ports of the world.
Most U.S. Navy ship captains are "sea buoy to sea buoy" operators, but they know little of accepted practice at sea, where merchant mariners have learned that a gray hull with a U.S. flag is a dangerous amateur bully that often does not understand or follow accepted safe maritime practice. Few Navy ships use proper VHF bridge-to-bridge voice radio procedure.
Most U.S. Navy ships are not equipped with internationally certified and required systems such as the Automatic Identification System (AIS), Electronic Chart and Information Display System (ECDIS), and Automatic Radar Plotting Aid (ARPA). Navy ships are not equipped, and the people operating those ships are not in compliance, with international conventions and U.S. national laws that apply to every merchant vessel.
Only a few U.S. Navy ship captains are competent in basic shiphandling and seamanship, are confident in getting their ship under way, operating at sea, and bringing their ship into port, anchor, buoy, or pier. Most have little or no experience with mooring lines, anchors, mooring buoys, or controlling their own use of tugs. Although most say. "In my ship the junior officers do all the shiphandling." few junior officers are given the repetitive opportunities necessary to achieve genuine capability. In most Navy ships a brand new ensign has the conn and serves as a "parrot" of someone more experienced, such as a pilot, so that the ensign thinks he or she is shiphandling.
Making a landing by putting a ship alongside a pier is only one shiphandling evolution, often the most demanding, but using that as a measure of experience, an informal poll revealed that on taking first command, most COs had previously made about four actual landings, most in different classes of ships, most more than eight years before, and most parroting someone else. A mariner does not learn to put a ship alongside the pier in four parroting tries, and some COs have never actually handled a ship making a pier landing. With this minimal-to-no experience level, commanding officers are entrusted with powerful, expensive, and sophisticated vessels that operate in heavily-trafficked professional sea-going environments and are also expected to train junior officers in the seamanship skills that most COs do not possess.
Plans
Instead of the high-quality training at the contracted simulator facilities that have provided virtually the only valuable shiphandling training for more than 15 years, the Navy is buying (not leasing) shiphandling simulator systems from a foreign source, without appropriate software, ship models, or scenarios, without defined maintenance commitments, without instructor qualification specifications, and without any concept of curriculum or use, because the Navy thinks it will cost less.
The Navy plans to put desk-top and helmet simulator devices on board ships so that young officers can learn shiphandling in offduty hours using self-paced programs. It will be far less effective than the shore-based contracted simulators with highly experienced instructors because shiphandling cannot be taught without capable mariners as instructors. Surely it will cost less, and just as surely it will be far less effective. Reading a shipbuilding book would cost even less.
With plans for less expensive programs, the Navy will relearn the old adage. "You get what you pay for." but in this case the Navy will end up paying more for less quality training. Overall, the situation shows a lack of Navy understanding regarding the real costs and benefits involved in providing high-quality training in shiphandling. as aviation learned long ago.
Real Costs
Prior to the contracted shiphandling simulator training services in Newport. San Diego, and Norfolk, the Navy purchased simulators for training LCAC (landing craft air cushion) crews at amphibious bases at Little Creek, Virginia, and Coronudo, California, at a cost of $27 million. These training systems are government-owned and are operated by a contractor for a per year cost with instructors experienced in that one craft. Consideration of initial cost amortized over the life of the simulator, maintenance, upgrades, and operating costs with usage lime shows that the LCAC simulator costs the equivalent of more than $1,500 per hour for training four crewmen in this single craft system.
At every major naval air station, high-technology, realistic flight simulators provide valuable training to naval aviators with experienced instructors. Including initial costs, amortization. and operating expenses, the cost of this training comes to about $4,000 per hour for one aviator in one type aircraft. Navy accounting procedures for LCAC and aviation simulators disregard the sunk costs of procurement and modernisation, and consider only annual operating costs as these come out of another budget pocket.
When the Navy contracted for shiphandling simulator training services in San Diego and Norfolk, there were no purchase or start-up costs for the government. The contractor bore all capital investment and initial costs, and the Navy has paid an hourly rate for scheduled use. Up to 12 personnel can he trained al a time, in any ship class and in any port or scenario, with accurate hydrodynamic ship models operating in any environmental conditions, in two shiphandling simulators that meet international standards. The most highly qualified and experienced facilitator/instructors provide a level of training that cannot be equaled, and the cost of this shiphandling simulator training to the Navy is about $700 per hour.
In simulation, the highest value of training comes with realism. The more realistic the simulator, the more valuable the training. But realism is expensive. Aircraft simulation is expensive because it must have realism, including actual cockpit motion and an accurate, smooth visual display. The LCAC simulator is essentially an aircraft simulator with deck motion, which is why it costs so much.
The contracted shiphandling simulator services that have been provided to the Navy for the past 15 years are truly a training bargain, including two complete simulators properly staffed with experienced instructors, so thai two separate scenarios or separate ships can be operated at the same time, or two ships can be operated together in the same scenario, at the one hourly rate. Every other comparable training service costs more and/or delivers less. One surface force commander years ago said, "If we prevent one accident it will more than pay for ten years of shiphandling simulator use."
The Future
In most navies of the world (U.S. exempted) and in every merchant maritime service in the world (U.S. included) ships' officers are either deck or engineering. Only in the U.S. Navy is an officer expected and required to be capable of both responsibilities. Yet in the training and preparation of officers for shipboard duty leading eventually to command, time allotted toward learning to be a capable mariner is less than one-tenth of that devoted to combat systems and engineering. Perhaps the future U.S. Navy is moving toward following the lessons of the world's maritime services and will eventually operate ships with separate deck and engineering officers.
Today, logistic support ships that used to be commissioned vessels of the U.S. Navy are operated by the Military Sealift Command, with licensed civilian masters, mates, and crews. More than 100 ships that provide the essential underway replenishment services, the "beans, bullets, and black oil" that keeps the Navy at sea, are operated not by Navy officers and enlisted personnel, but by civilians qualified by license, experience, and training. A former amphibious warfare ship, the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19), has been reconfigured and is serving as the flagship of Commander, Seventh Fleet in the Western Pacific and Indian oceans. The Blue Ridge carries a complete command center with necessary communications, processing, display, and hotel facilities positioned on hoard a ship operated by qualified civilians.
The concept of MSC-operated ships has been successful, so the Navy may continue the (rend toward disinterest in seamanship, navigation, and shiphandling and move further toward the use of licensed merchant mariners as ship chauffeurs, allowing professional career Navy officers to focus on combat systems.
If valet parking, sea buoy to sea buoy, and chauffeured driving is no in the future, and it should not he. the Navy must establish a clearly defined program with the objective of producing capable mariners using internationally certified shiphandling simulators and curricula with qualified and experienced instructors. If not, a future Navy may see warships operaied by full-time civilian masters and mates who will drive the vessels to the scene of action so that combat systems can perform. Perhaps then John Paul Jones would roll over in his crypt if it is, indeed, expecting too much that an officer of his Navy should he a capable mariner.
Captain Landersman, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, is a former convoy commodore and teaches shiphandling in simulators. He is a graduate of the Naval War College and National War College and has written numerous articles on naval operations.