Redlines—personnel or equipment deficiencies that do not necessarily impede the safe operation of a warship but require flag officer approval for the ship to sail or continue sailing—are a challenge for afloat commanding officers. Redlines, per se, are not the problem. U.S. warships are layered with human, mechanical, and technological redundancy to ensure survivability in combat and safe, continuous operations at sea, and it is understandable that senior leaders must buy in on certain risk decisions. Operating under redline waivers, however, does not reduce a unit commander’s accountability and responsibility for the safe operation of the warship. Rethinking the redline process to empower commanders would reduce stress on sailors, encourage growth in critical enlisted classifications, and lessen administrative burdens—all without substantively affecting a ship’s ability to train, survive, or operate.
Having recently completed two deployments during a 19-month command tour entirely in the sustainment phase, I understand the demands placed on the personnel system to fully man a warship for deployed operations. Throughout my tour, our ship required more than 50 augments to meet fit/fill requirements, as well as critical enlisted billet and redline requirements. Each of these sailors was uprooted from his or her permanent command to support my ship’s manning requirements, often for months at a time.
At scale, this has resulted in a dramatic rise in the individual personnel tempo of sailors who either possess “critical” skills or meet the experiential requirements deemed necessary for underway operations. The effect is treating maintenance and basic phase warships as farm teams for the sustainment phase deployers, and the human toll is significant. Sailors are becoming reluctant to get critical skills and Navy enlisted classifications (NECs) despite lucrative reenlistment bonuses.
Though the number of critical NEC designations has been reduced in recent years, the Navy should consider allowing unit commanders—perhaps together with their immediate superiors in command—to accept some risk. For example, the Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet/Naval Surface Force Atlantic 3504.1 series instruction lists five personnel redlines, including a requirement for two rescue swimmers, an independent duty corpsman or medical officer, and a manned and qualified navigation team. Interestingly, sailing with a fully qualified commanding officer is not a redline, but absent those specific, primarily enlisted qualifications, ships are unable to sail without flag approval.
Allowing a commanding officer to perhaps accept a second fully qualified navigator in lieu of a navigation evaluator, or allowing ships to sail with a single rescue swimmer, would reduce typically emergent manpower burdens on operational units and the vessels providing the augments, thereby reducing the stress on the sailors possessing these important skills.
Recently, I have observed a notable decrease in sailors’ interest in critical and redline NECs. When asked, these sailors attribute their reluctance to having to sign themselves up for the additional deployments and temporary additional duties that can come from having these skills, even when they are homegrown at a command.
Commands have long been challenged to carry sufficient numbers of qualified air controllers, rescue swimmers, and assistant navigators as navigation evaluators. To move toward resolving this challenge, a temporary additional duty operational deferral could be considered: Sailors who agree to learn these skills would be protected from assignment to temporary additional duty for a period of time, perhaps for the duration of their tours. Packaged with other initiatives, this almost certainly would increase the inventory of critical skills in the fleet, provide much-sought consistency for the individual sailors, and provide a more long-term and sustainable system for the Navy once inventory levels stabilized.
Alternatively, type or fleet commanders might consider assigning critical and/or redline NECs to their own staffs, to be farmed out to operational warships as needed. Ships without helicopter detachments are seldom in need of air controllers; ships in maintenance seldom need rescue swimmers. Having Echelon 3 or 4 staffs carry the inventory of those sailors rather than the individual units would allow for more focus on the skills, closer monitoring of individual personnel tempo, and less unit-level churn to meet fit/fill/redline/critical billet requirements.
The last but not insignificant benefit of rethinking redlines is the reduced administrative burden. Naval messages, typically communicated in advance by email, are required for operational, personnel, or maintenance redlines. Their use in the context of redlines is to formally inform senior leaders of risks being accepted in the fleet and typically include a commander’s proposed mitigation measures. Timely communication through the chain of command is a challenge—particularly when nights, weekends, or holidays are involved—and delays in staffing while crafting these messages and awaiting a response can be a stressful distraction for afloat leaders. Furthermore, no commander will knowingly hazard his or her ship, but operating under a waiver does not make a commander immune to culpability should an incident occur. If nothing else, a process change from “redline waiver request” to an information message communicating the risk a commander is knowingly incurring would not only empower commanders at sea, but also reinforce the tenets of command by negation that allow the Navy to operate with precision and lethality around the world.
Service at sea comes with risk, and accepting risk is part of a leader’s job. An experienced captain may be willing to enter port on a single generator or sail with a single rescue swimmer, while an inexperienced captain may not—and that should be okay. Navy leaders should give their captains a bigger vote.
