U.S. Navy
The Navy in 2012 finds itself caught between its declaration a year ago that minimum manning was a thing of the past and the fiscal constraints imposed by the government's belt-tightening. The author, a surface warfare officer in the USS Freedom (here in its high-speed trials on Lake Michigan in 2008) maintains that minimum manning did not fail per se, that it was inadequate training that forced the Navy to abandon the concept. Herein he proposes a training pipeline he believes could reduce manpower needs and yield other benefits, too.
U.S. Navy

Maximizing Minimum Manning

The Navy can get more from less. Using fewer but better-prepared engineers will cut costs and improve readiness. The key is in the training.Few days passed during 2011 in which the words “deficit,” “budgetary constraints,” and “fiscal responsibility”—in context with the Department of Defense—weren’t in the headlines, ominously raising the prospect of deep cuts in Pentagon spending. With the failure of the supercommittee in November, the Budget Control Act dictates a reduction in federal spending of $1.2 trillion over ten years, which could mean billions lost to the Navy. Just before this issue went to press, House and Senate conferees agreed to lop $43 billion from overall DOD spending for the current fiscal year. Whatever final numbers eventually are agreed on, they will not alter one fundamental truth: The Department of the Navy must start finding ways to cut costs while improving mission readiness.
By Lieutenant Johannes Schonberg, U.S. Navy
January 2012
Proceedings
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The Navy’s effort to trim spending through the concept of minimum manning showed promise in theory until material assessments revealed a downward trend in mission readiness. In January 2011, then-Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert declared that “minimum manning is over.” That was followed by then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ announcement that 6,000 sailors would be reallocated back to the Fleet. While minimum manning was an attractive notion, cutting manpower alone does not work, as the recent past shows. The answer, however, is not to declare minimum manning a failure. It was minimum training, not minimum manning that forced those sailors back to the Fleet.

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Lieutenant Johannes Schonberg

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