Competition in the maritime commons is real, and the margin of victory likely will be razor thin. U.S. adversaries have comparable—sometimes better—systems, so, to win, U.S. competence and material condition must be superior. The recent U.S. Navy groundings and collisions, however, provide a wake-up call regarding readiness. The best way to honor those who died in 2017 is to improve shipdriving, maintenance, and training practices.
Set Up to Fail
The Navy’s “Comprehensive Review of Surface Force Incidents,” issued in December 2017 following two Seventh Fleet mishaps, blames the forward deployed naval forces (FDNF) training and operational paradigm for the lack of crew competence. However, the FDNF training paradigm is not the problem with bridge watch teams. The real problem is that ship driving is viewed as a check in the box for junior personnel and not valued as a core competency. Prospective surface warfare officers (SWOs) are neither trained nor qualified to handle a ship when they report. They learn the trade on the job, just like the enlisted helm/lee helm/after steering watches. Once an officer qualifies as an officer of the deck (OOD), his or her focus shifts to combat information center and engineering qualifications.
Enlisted personnel also view shipdriving as a stepping stone, as the good ones usually are promoted to the boatswain’s mate of the watch or another supervisory role. This is why the Navy achieves little return on its shipdriving training investment.
Let SWOs Drive Ships
The solution is to train SWOs to drive, including the helm and lee helm positions, prior to reporting. By working through complex traffic scenarios, such as the one that doomed the USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), in the simulator, officers will be prepared for situations they may never experience but need to be competent to handle. Having a full complement of qualified ship drivers also will greatly expand the number of watch sections, enabling a watch rotation better able to absorb all-hands evolutions. Another benefit of having junior officers report as competent and confident ship handlers would be the opportunity to replace the helm and lee helm watches with officers.
Pilots fly planes; SWOs should drive ships. Steering the ship and working the throttles will provide officers with a better understanding of how a ship handles, which will be useful in determining when it is safe to go alongside an oiler or conduct a similarly dangerous evolution. It is not uncommon to have an OOD, OOD under instruction, junior officer of the watch (JOOW), and conning officer on the bridge. None of these people actually drive the ship. The steering and throttle watches are manned by junior enlisted personnel. The merger of signalman and quartermaster, and a significant reduction in undesignated seamen, has reduced the pool of personnel available to stand those watches, maintain equipment, and support the galley. The result is that enlisted personnel steering the ship are sleep deprived and getting further behind in their maintenance and training every day at sea. Having officers drive the ship not only would make them better ship handlers, but also would enable enlisted personnel to better maintain the ship.
Get Enlisted Back to Ratings
Taking enlisted personnel off the helm would give back maintenance hours. Accomplishing maintenance during a regular window also will better enable leaders to mentor, thus achieving an even higher return on maintenance investment by increasing quality. In addition, getting enlisted back to their ratings would alleviate many single point failures. The master helmsman, previously stuck on the bridge, now could learn critical skills and gain leadership in roles such as refueling rig captain, boat coxswain, and landing signalman.
To accomplish quality maintenance, the Navy must refocus the force on developing and building rating competence/expertise. Over the past two decades, the Navy has been stretched thin, and in an effort to derive efficiencies, numerous well-intentioned decisions were made to reduce sailors’ workloads. The cumulative effect of these decisions is the erosion of rating subject-matter expertise. Navy engineering, operations, combat systems, and equipment have become increasingly complex, requiring more extensive training to operate, maintain, and repair. Fiscal constraints and fleet manning challenges, however, have reduced training pipelines, including shore intermediate maintenance facilities (SIMAs), where the Navy’s true expertise was created. For example, one of the diesel generators on USS Aubrey Fitch (FFG-34) was deemed beyond ship’s force capability to repair. Luckily, an EN2, who had recently reported from SIMA, was able to fix the generator. That EN2’s expertise contributed to the Aubrey Fitch’s self-sufficiency and readiness, and improved the capabilities of all personnel in auxiliary division.
In 2000, the requirement to document completion of nonresident training courses (NRTCs) associated with rate training manuals before taking the advancement exam was removed. A concerted effort should be made to update the NRTCs and make completion mandatory for eligibility to take the advancement exam. This time-tested procedure will reestablish a solid knowledge base and give sailors the competence and confidence to lead at the next level.
While advanced education is a critical element in the professionalization of the Navy’s enlisted workforce, it should not trump rating subject-matter expertise. Sailors earning associate’s or bachelor’s degrees began to be awarded points toward the E4–E6 rating advancement exams in 2007. For chief petty officers, the selection board precept placed an emphasis on advanced education. Rating expertise is what our sailors were recruited and trained for. The Navy should reinforce the value of rate training by creating continuing education units (CEUs) for in-rate self-study.
Ratings exams also are an important part of ensuring the competence of future leaders. There is discussion about eliminating these exams to save money and empower commands to select leaders. However, enlisted advancement systems must be aligned to produce and advance sailors with proven competency. Competence breeds confidence, the confidence necessary to operate, fight, and win.
Ready, relevant learning provides a great opportunity not only to realign and refocus on rating expertise, procedural compliance, and ownership, but also to create a career-long continuum of learning. This can improve individual sailor performance and enhance mission readiness. Technical rates often spend up to a year in school prior to reporting to their first ships. Sending them to the mess for four months often results in them forgetting the majority of what they learned and losing the motivation required for procedural compliance and ownership when they return to the job they enlisted to do. On board the HSV-2 Swift, the culinary specialists were the only ones in the galley. Procedural compliance was easy because everyone in the galley knew their job and took ownership in an outstanding mess.
Return to REFTRA
In regard to shipwide training, the Navy should declare the shipboard training team experiment a failure and bring back refresher training (RefTra). Prior to the early 1990s, a ship would spend one to four weeks executing drills that tested its required capabilities until it achieved a passing level of competence. These scenarios ranged from warfare-specific to the total ship survivability scenarios we know and love today. The primary difference then was that instead of an outside entity like afloat training group (ATG) assessing the ship’s training team and watch standers, ATG provided the training team that trained the entire ship’s crew, which was able to fight the scenarios as if in battle. While that is technically what shipboard training teams are supposed to do, the training team—likely the best people in every area—cannot be on the watch teams being trained and assessed if they are running the training.
Another reason the Navy should return to the RefTra model is that the shipboard training team model is inefficient. Certification is based on the training team’s ability to safely train instead of the ship’s ability to accomplish its mission, leading to “plays” being rehearsed instead of enemies fought. These scenarios have degenerated into box-checking exercises. The real warfighting and damage-control training occurs during warfare-specific exercises and team trainers. While it is important to put it all together and fight through a casualty in a manner requiring teamwork across functional and warfare areas, this is better done with the actual people who will have to work together, and much more efficiently observed/graded by an outside entity with oversight by the ship’s immediate superior.
Honor Our Shipmates
The best way to honor those who died in 2017’s mishaps is to improve ship readiness. If the Navy applies high-velocity learning to its practices, it can provide the readiness required by operational and exercise commitments. The largest hurdle to implementation is making the changes to the directives that guide the training, qualification, and advancement processes.
The Navy may be moving in the right direction. Twelve ensigns graduated from a JOOD pilot program at Surface Warfare Officers School in December 2017 that will enable them to report with the competence and confidence to drive their ships. East Coast ships that have experienced the Royal Navy’s Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) program are pleased with the RefTra-like training. Watchbill and personnel-use changes can be made at the unit level. However, while the JOOD and FOST experiences are beneficial, qualifications must be achieved and capabilities used operationally to provide return on investment. Commands also will not be able to make personnel use changes if prospective leaders are not exposed to these practices from the deckplates.
Learning is a cycle. Until the service follows the guidance in the Secretary of the Navy’s 2017 “Strategic Readiness Review” and “become[s] a true learning organization,” no budget increase will be able to purchase the readiness the Navy needs.