The Gang That Couldn’t Steer Straight

The editors of the Washington Post are concerned about the latest collision between a naval vessel and a civilian vessel:

FOR A state-of-the-art U.S. Navy destroyer to collide with a slow-moving tanker ship, there must be multiple failures of operations and personnel, from the enlisted seamen manning lookout posts to the captain of the ship. That it has happened twice in two months to the Asia-based 7th Fleet, with the tragic loss of up to 17 lives, suggests broader and deeper maladies in the fleet and perhaps in the Navy more generally.

About the only good thing that can be said following Monday’s crash of the USS John S. McCain with an oil tanker near Singapore, which left 10 sailors missing, is that senior commanders appear to recognize the severity of their problem. Navy Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, quickly ordered an “operational pause” and a fleetwide study of “operational tempo, performance, maintenance, equipment and personnel.” That review must be unsparing — and Congress should study its results when it considers defense spending plans.

as well they should be. The culprits I’ve seen blamed so far are:

• The watch officers
• Inadequate training
• Inadequate funding, i.e. the Congress

I do have lots of questions. Are the crews relying too heavily or even improperly on automatics? Is the volume of sea traffic in their areas of operation greater than their training covers?

I also feel the need to point about that increasing funding to cover more training and operations is only one alternative. We could start reducing the operational load of the Navy so that the present number of ships could handle it.

Update

The editors of the Wall Street Journal are concerned, too:

In May the USS Lake Champlain collided with a South Korean fishing boat, and in January the USS Antietam ran aground in Tokyo Bay. It’s hard to credit all this merely to bad luck.

Whatever we learn about the McCain incident, one reality is that the Navy has been conducting missions across the oceans with less funding and fewer ships. Senior Navy officials told Congress recently that about 100 ships have been deployed routinely each day since 2001. Meantime, the size of the battle force has dwindled 14%. The Navy is now smaller than at any point in modern history, with more ship retirements ahead. That translates to longer and more frequent deployments.

To sustain the high operational tempo, ships must crash through scheduled maintenance in between patrols. The demand for fast turnover compresses time for the crew to train at home, which is essential for competence at sea. Sometimes ships are delayed in the yards, which can condense cycles for on-board qualifications for, say, aviators. This can become a lethal combination of less prepared sailors with less reliable equipment on more dangerous missions.

Another question is tactical. The Navy has damaged two destroyers in the Pacific in one summer, and a smaller fleet means the force can’t easily replace this capacity without losing manpower elsewhere. So what risks must the Navy accept during what may be the most dangerous time in the western Pacific since the end of the Cold War?

I’m glad to see that they observed that the coin has two sides. The two responsible courses of action are either to suit the Navy to the tasks you’re imposing on it or to change the tasks you impose on it to fit the Navy you’re willing to pay for.