This looks like the same phenomenon as the crisis in staffing nurses that was discussed here the other day. Careerist, indifferent management giving the people on the front line inadequate resources and then blaming them when things start to look shabby, or when someone dies. Scapegoating the people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, who are tired, inadequately trained, and inured to a climate of normalized deviance. Many organizations don't suffer from these problems to nearly such an extent. I've worked in reasonably functional organizations, and ones that are disfunctional in different ways. Why does this malady strike the U.S. Navy and healthcare so severely? Am I viewing this from too great a distance? Are these actually separate forms of institutional dysfunction?
As a Navy physician who has dealt with COVID and fatigue, I think the chronic low pay contributes to a lack of people which leads to overwork, exhaustion, a sort of "this is my lot in life" acceptance of mild to moderate depression. And you get to the point you just look away for your own sanity. Healthcare workers get paid less as you get closer to the coasts. And military gets only very modest pay adjustments for housing costs. A colonel in Kansas may live like a king, but a captain in San Diego can't afford a house.
Edit: I also agree with the posts about outsourcing leading to ossification and rigid stratification. You want rigid stratification? Try military medicine.
The Navy pays officers very generously across all fields, EXCEPT medicine and JAG. URL JOs will take a pay cut for the first several years (at least) after leaving for the civilian sector. I never, ever heard a URL peer get out because of financial reasons.
FWIW, BAH (pay for housing that is tax-free) is $4000 for an O-6 in Point Loma v. $2777 in Offut, NE. Seems to be aggressive adjustment, no?
Enlisted pay might be another story…
EDIT: I know one guy who griped about pay once…kind of in passing. Went on to be a YC founder haha.
Great point! At the end of the day, we're talking about people. Highly trained people in Navy, medicine, and Navy medicine cases.
And people have limits, because they need lives and aren't robots.
Morale and aligning work to allow for happiness in life is a requirement for people bringing their best to work. If you ask people to toughen up and suffer through the suck to get the job done... there'd better be an eventual light at the end of that tunnel. Otherwise, it's just a death march.
PS: Thank you for your service, and especially through COVID.
> A colonel in Kansas may live like a king, but a captain in San Diego can't afford a house.
Assuming both sought living accomodations outside of free base housing, I was curious what those figures actually looked like[1]:
- O-6 colonel stationed at, e.g. Fort Riley, KS 66442, would draw up to an additional $1500 without dependents, $1911 with.
- O-6 captain stationed at, e.g. NAS North Island, CA 92135, would draw up to an additional $3342 without dependents, $4026 with.
It's worth mentioning for those unfamiliar that, just like BAS (i.e. food allowance), this BAH (i.e. housing allowance) is completely tax-exempt.
The game that active service members play here is to secure a home mortgage (often through VA home loan), then apply BAH directly towards monthly mortgage payments throughout service all the way to retirement. It's not hard to imagine other tax advantaged games to be played here. Applying BAH to rent a house off base is a naive fool's errand.
In terms of annual cost of living adjustments to base pay, uniformed service received +2.7% increase this year; in contrast, +2.2% for federal GS civilians. The year before that, it was +3% v. +1%. These adjustments have historically favored uniformed service over the federal civilians that work beside them. Sure, they're lowball relative to inflation, but that ought to be squared against military tax-exempt BAS/BAH and hugely subsidized commissary entitlements.
Exceptionally common amongst Navy personnel, married sailors typically draw an additional $250/mo family separation allowance[2] when out at sea for more than 30 continuous days. This will obviously have a greater financial impact amongst the enlisted ranks than officers. Depending on rank and job, there's a litany of allowances, bonuses and incentives (beyond the scope of this remark) that are often ignored when the conversation of military service compensation is brought up...nevermind that no one ever talks about the opportunity to retire with guaranteed pension + benefits for life as young as 38.
As an outsider, I'm inclined to agree that military health professions do seem to pay a substantial indirect opportunity cost despite the unique bonuses they're entitled to[3].
I do wonder what individual circumstances led you to choose a Navy commission over everything else?
> Why does this malady strike the U.S. Navy and healthcare so severely?
Both industries substantially outsourced functionality in the 90s in an attempt to cut costs.
Consequently, they are now less empowered (vs historical levels) to effect change in their own processes in a timely manner.
Large organizations need to pay more attention to ossification of processes as a serious future risk, that needs to be balanced against immediate savings.
I know much more about healthcare than the Navy, but it’s notable that they both have rigid stratification between roles. I could imagine that hampering operational feedback loops in normal times, and strategic feedback loops given the labor supply/demand situation in these extraordinary times.
At least in healthcare, I doubt this is a major causative factor (presuming when you say roles you mean physicians and nurses) -- the physicians are extremely supportive of the nurses, and their demands for more pay and better conditions in all the healthcare settings I've worked.
The real problem is the unaccountable bureaucratic management, which are neither physicians nor nurses, and the numbers of which continue to expand (sucking up financial resources) while physicians and nurses workload increases and pay continues to decrease in real terms.
In the UK at least, there's much less stratification than there once was I think.
For example Advanced Nurse Practitioner status grants nurses almost all prescribing rights you'd get as a doctor. They're allowed scheduled drugs (ie stuff that's commonly abused) because a bunch of those are effective painkillers and a key reason to have Advanced Practitioner is that "This patient is in agony, and I know the only thing a doctor would do is give them these stronger drugs, but I'm not allowed to do that on my own" is a stupid situation to put an experienced nurse in, so let's just authorise them to do it.
I believe there are Advanced Practitioner variants for several other healthcare roles including midwife and pharmacist; in some cases you just get limited prescription rights (so you can only give people some specific prescription drugs from a list) but in other cases like Advanced Nurse Practitioner it's the whole thing, if your knowledge and experience tells you that off-label use of a heart medicine is the right way to solve your patient's acute hiccups you can do that just like a doctor could.
To qualify for advanced practice these professionals are doing much of the same work student Doctors do - but just focused to their specific discipline. Lots of Chemistry, learning how to read research literature, and so on. They get a post-graduate degree of some sort, I don't remember the exact title.
> Why does this malady strike the U.S. Navy and healthcare so severely?
Totally government run in the case of the military, and healthcare is the most heavily regulated industry (by far) in the US. Heavy bureaucratic regulations make an organization unable to adapt to local and/or changing circumstances.
I read in the book "The Pity of War" by Ferguson that the reason the death rates of the German army in WW1 were so much lower than that of the British is the British generals would craft detailed orders on how the soldiers were to achieve objectives. The German generals would instead just give the officers the objectives. The officers were free to adapt to local circumstances.
A similar idea is a story I heard where a class of new lieutenants were asked how would they go about raising a flagpole. The lieutenants all wrote down detailed instructions and procedures. The instructor said you're all wrong. The correct answer is "sergeant, get that flagpole up!".
That's incorrect. In World War 1 both sides had extremely rigid operational plans. The German operational plan even included specific times down to the hour, for when specific bridges and road junctions should be captured.
Indeed, what saved the Entente in World War 1 was the fact that Belgium, which had been expected to roll over and allow the German army unmolested free passage, actually called up its military and fought. That ruined the German timetables, allowing France to complete its mobilization and brought the British into the war preventing a quick German victory on the Western Front.
Towards the end of the war, yes, Germany was beginning to move towards what we would consider a "commander's intent"-based system. Erwin Rommel's text, Infantry Attacks, captures this transition. However, it's inaccurate to say that the German military was any less rigid than the British.
It is also inaccurate to say that the death rates of the German army were any less than they were for the British. Perhaps in 1914 and 1915, as well-trained German regulars were facing off against the "Pals Brigades", the Germans inflicted more casualties than they received. But by the end of the war, as the German economy was crumbling and the prospect of US involvement made the German generals desperate, they resorted to mass infantry charges with relatively untrained soldiers, and took extremely heavy casualties as a result.
If anything, your description of the German army is more accurate for the Wehrmacht in World War 2 than it is for the Kaiser's army.
>the reason the death rates of the German army in WW1 were so much lower than that of the British
If the advice you just gave is so good, why couldn't you (or the book's author) have found an example in which the side following the advice actually won the war?
Former Navy (nuclear propulsion) here. That by no means makes me an expert, by I will share a couple of thoughts:
Ships rust. Officers don't chip paint and paint. Technical enlisted and NCOs don't chip paint and paint either. Junior, and especially unrated (not trained in a vocational area yet) enlisted do. This looks like a simple case of being undermanned, and/or having "too many chiefs and not enough braves". Reality is that it probably has to do with pay rates for Enlisted. Fedex pays $36-$42k/yer for package handlers. An E-1 makes $21k/year base. With all benefits, you might be at parity with Fedex, but you give up a lot of freedom.
I'll commit a little naval heresy here but surface ships are probably nearing obsolescence if not already obsolete. They are slow, easy to find, and hypersonics, drones, cruise missiles, aircraft and submarines are just incredibly lethal, and perfect point defense doesn't exist. The sinking of the Moskva is really just a sign of the times. The carrier battle group may fare better because of the range of air cover and subsurface escorts, but we're in an era of weapons that can kill a carrier with a single hit.
In a "morale emergency" an effective leader will lead from the front, showing the behavior that she needs her team to show.
The chief of maintenance on those ships should be chipping and painting in their free time until the people under them have enough shame and/or pride to start doing it correctly on their shifts.
I once had a problem with "that's not in my job description", pitting security guards against truck unloaders. I took one trip with 25kg of rice on my shoulder and then looked back to see a line of security guards following behind me.
> In a "morale emergency" an effective leader will lead from the front, showing the behavior that she needs her team to show.
Maintaining the paint on a destroyer is really hard to do, and the sailors I served with, well, there was no shortage of people willing to work and lead by example. That said, picture a 154 meter destroyer and compare that to a 4" paint scraper. How many effective leaders does that take?
I totally agree. Surface ships are now just sitting ducks. Does the US have more carriers under construction? You need carriers to launch planes, but I guess the future could be quadcopter drones launched from subs?
The concept of "carriers" might change as they start to carry smaller unmanned planes - quadcopters tend to be at a disadvantage to fixed wing drones when longer ranges and longer loiter times are required.
The solution to ship-killer weapons is decentralization, replacing a single juicy target with many dispersed targets. A Predator or Bayraktar sized drone designed for naval operations could be launched from a "dronecarrier" much, much smaller and cheaper than the current carriers.
But are planes the most cost-effective form of throwing high-explosive long distances? Once, they were. They had a much greater range than a battleship's guns and thus obsoleted the battleship.
These days, missiles have double the range of carrier aircraft. So a very inexpensive frigate with long-range missiles is far more cost-effective than a huge expensive Carrier Group. (Most of the Group's ships are there merely to protect and support the carrier. Without the carrier, they are redundant. Sure, a Group looks big and powerful, but cost-effective? No.)
Why do you figure quads over fixed/wing or VTOL? Quads, compared to every other propulsion model, are inefficient. What you buy is mechanical simplicity, and its associated durability/repair-ability.
> "An AKE like the Shepard should have 129 crewmembers in perfect conditions but they are now running at roughly 80% because of manning problems,” said another MSC officer. “About 20 in the deck department can be assigned to rust prevent duty. However, that crew is also assigned to Underway Replenishment duties. Three Unreps could easily eat away an entire day. When we return to port can we OSPHO? No. Can I send a crewmember over the side to chip? No. Navy rules prevent it."
Sounds like a classic case of trying to do the same job with less people, and management only taking notice when the issue becomes public-facing.
Manning problems have existed for a decade, if not more. The Navy holds the sad record of being the worst managed branch of service. Steep budget cuts in the 1990s and again during sequestration have had severe effects that the Navy hasn't yet recovered from. But I don't know whether that's the cause of the problem. The Navy is an especially unique branch given that it's the only service that revolves around a relatively small number of very large, very expensive assets. The Army doesn't revolve around its tanks, and the Air Force, while it revolves around planes, there are a lot more planes in the Air Force than ships in the Navy. Congress is not without blame for the Navy's problems either, apart from the budget cuts. Congress has the last word on all programs and procurement. The Littoral Combat Ships should never have seen the light of day for instance, but Congress pushed the program through, and now the ships are useless (and still being built!)
But there is hope on the horizon. The submarine construction programs (Virginia SSNs and Columbia SSBNs) are proceeding smoothly, as are the Flight III destroyers. DDG(X), the future replacement of the Arleigh-Burke class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers, is in development, and the first Constellation-class frigates will soon be laid down.
While there have been budget cuts, the US Navy’s budget went from ~80B in 2001 to over 160B today. Given what the US spends as a % of GDP, it feels like this should be more than enough. From afar, the problem appears to be decision makers in the Navy refusing to reduce scope and deciding to understaff.
The Navy has failed to accomplish the modpro packages on the current CGs & LSD, including Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Tortuga. Those three I have personally been involved with in many ways. The 5XXX and structural work on the CG program has been wildly underestimated. The money for Tortuga was never there and as she lay idle in the shipyard problems grew. They are not simply east coast/BAE issues either. The issues repeat themselves here on the west coast at Vigor. It was a huge mistake to leave behind cost+ and switch to FFP. There is too much time lost to pointless contract fighting.
There is hope on the horizon with new subs and DDGx and FFG. Time will tell if the new build construction yields a new DDG1000/LCS or a workhorse like the earlier DDG flights.
As for corrosion it is a necessary evil. Too many armchair metallurgists point to various alloys as a solution. The ocean is cold, salty, and miserable. The planning yards, repair yards, and Navy are full of extremely bright and hardworking folks. It takes time and money to fight rust at sea and in port.
There's a big issue with manning on the civilian and Navy side. At the end of the day there are few people in my generation lining up to enlist or to do body-damaging labor. I can't say I blame them.. I became and engineer and then joined program management. Few in the yards want the same for their children as they had in their life. Those who are left are primarily 30+ years of experience or 1-5 years of experience looking to get out.
This is quite a cool analogy for either poor or strong leadership during a time of crisis and long deployments. I can't tell which is which yet. I'd probably go with the former based on my experiences and what I've seen firsthand in the surrounding world(healthcare, big tech, education, etc).
On the poor leadership front, less people on the front line and they have been burnt out for longer than ever on overextended deployments. Enduring stress for too long simply breaks you down. The attention to detail eventually dissipates and people are just trying to keep their heads above water.
On the strong leadership front, everything continued to function to expectations except appearance which may be argued to be the last remaining detail. Appearance however is everything in the military and goes back quite some time to tradition:
> An old Navy tradition has it that the ship's cook shines the ship's bell and the ship's bugler shines the ship's whistle. This tradition may still be observed in some of the ships of the modern Navy. However, in normal practice, the ship's bell is maintained by a man of the ships' division charged with the upkeep of that part of the ship where the bell is located.
This seems like a fun college-level question for a leadership/military/software class. What is your argument and why?
I also like the part of looking sharp, this is also a non-zero factor in any field, including IT. Between two professionals, if one looks sharp, clean and fit, while the other one does not, it is hard not to conclude one has also more self discipline.
This bias is a consequence of what Kahneman called “What You See Is All There Is.” It’s bad logic and ascribing signal when it’s actually projections of the observer.
That isn’t to say there is no effect - people might start to see themselves as more disciplined if they look sharp. “Look good, play good”, as my coach used to say.
While I have certainly seen idiots with nice clothes make bad decisions in management, I do think that all things being equal, some level of professionalism is beneficial to an environment. Attitude and aptitude are critical, and I think dress can help the former.
You'll notice the reference to "deterrence" and "you have to look like you mean business". If your ships are rusty on the outside, do the weapons work on the inside?
Readit News
Edit: I also agree with the posts about outsourcing leading to ossification and rigid stratification. You want rigid stratification? Try military medicine.
FWIW, BAH (pay for housing that is tax-free) is $4000 for an O-6 in Point Loma v. $2777 in Offut, NE. Seems to be aggressive adjustment, no?
Enlisted pay might be another story…
EDIT: I know one guy who griped about pay once…kind of in passing. Went on to be a YC founder haha.
And people have limits, because they need lives and aren't robots.
Morale and aligning work to allow for happiness in life is a requirement for people bringing their best to work. If you ask people to toughen up and suffer through the suck to get the job done... there'd better be an eventual light at the end of that tunnel. Otherwise, it's just a death march.
PS: Thank you for your service, and especially through COVID.
Deleted Comment
Assuming both sought living accomodations outside of free base housing, I was curious what those figures actually looked like[1]:
- O-6 colonel stationed at, e.g. Fort Riley, KS 66442, would draw up to an additional $1500 without dependents, $1911 with.
- O-6 captain stationed at, e.g. NAS North Island, CA 92135, would draw up to an additional $3342 without dependents, $4026 with.
It's worth mentioning for those unfamiliar that, just like BAS (i.e. food allowance), this BAH (i.e. housing allowance) is completely tax-exempt.
The game that active service members play here is to secure a home mortgage (often through VA home loan), then apply BAH directly towards monthly mortgage payments throughout service all the way to retirement. It's not hard to imagine other tax advantaged games to be played here. Applying BAH to rent a house off base is a naive fool's errand.
In terms of annual cost of living adjustments to base pay, uniformed service received +2.7% increase this year; in contrast, +2.2% for federal GS civilians. The year before that, it was +3% v. +1%. These adjustments have historically favored uniformed service over the federal civilians that work beside them. Sure, they're lowball relative to inflation, but that ought to be squared against military tax-exempt BAS/BAH and hugely subsidized commissary entitlements.
Exceptionally common amongst Navy personnel, married sailors typically draw an additional $250/mo family separation allowance[2] when out at sea for more than 30 continuous days. This will obviously have a greater financial impact amongst the enlisted ranks than officers. Depending on rank and job, there's a litany of allowances, bonuses and incentives (beyond the scope of this remark) that are often ignored when the conversation of military service compensation is brought up...nevermind that no one ever talks about the opportunity to retire with guaranteed pension + benefits for life as young as 38.
As an outsider, I'm inclined to agree that military health professions do seem to pay a substantial indirect opportunity cost despite the unique bonuses they're entitled to[3].
I do wonder what individual circumstances led you to choose a Navy commission over everything else?
[1] https://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/bahCalc.cfm
[2] https://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/fsa/
[3] https://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/Pay-Tab...
Both industries substantially outsourced functionality in the 90s in an attempt to cut costs.
Consequently, they are now less empowered (vs historical levels) to effect change in their own processes in a timely manner.
Large organizations need to pay more attention to ossification of processes as a serious future risk, that needs to be balanced against immediate savings.
The real problem is the unaccountable bureaucratic management, which are neither physicians nor nurses, and the numbers of which continue to expand (sucking up financial resources) while physicians and nurses workload increases and pay continues to decrease in real terms.
For example Advanced Nurse Practitioner status grants nurses almost all prescribing rights you'd get as a doctor. They're allowed scheduled drugs (ie stuff that's commonly abused) because a bunch of those are effective painkillers and a key reason to have Advanced Practitioner is that "This patient is in agony, and I know the only thing a doctor would do is give them these stronger drugs, but I'm not allowed to do that on my own" is a stupid situation to put an experienced nurse in, so let's just authorise them to do it.
I believe there are Advanced Practitioner variants for several other healthcare roles including midwife and pharmacist; in some cases you just get limited prescription rights (so you can only give people some specific prescription drugs from a list) but in other cases like Advanced Nurse Practitioner it's the whole thing, if your knowledge and experience tells you that off-label use of a heart medicine is the right way to solve your patient's acute hiccups you can do that just like a doctor could.
To qualify for advanced practice these professionals are doing much of the same work student Doctors do - but just focused to their specific discipline. Lots of Chemistry, learning how to read research literature, and so on. They get a post-graduate degree of some sort, I don't remember the exact title.
What in the world is that supposed to mean? I've been hearing that for years now, and I have not the foggiest idea of what we're even talking about.
Nothing is different. What is extraordinary?
Edit to add: If these times are extraordinary, then that is a valid excuse for rust and a lot of other problems.
Totally government run in the case of the military, and healthcare is the most heavily regulated industry (by far) in the US. Heavy bureaucratic regulations make an organization unable to adapt to local and/or changing circumstances.
I read in the book "The Pity of War" by Ferguson that the reason the death rates of the German army in WW1 were so much lower than that of the British is the British generals would craft detailed orders on how the soldiers were to achieve objectives. The German generals would instead just give the officers the objectives. The officers were free to adapt to local circumstances.
A similar idea is a story I heard where a class of new lieutenants were asked how would they go about raising a flagpole. The lieutenants all wrote down detailed instructions and procedures. The instructor said you're all wrong. The correct answer is "sergeant, get that flagpole up!".
Indeed, what saved the Entente in World War 1 was the fact that Belgium, which had been expected to roll over and allow the German army unmolested free passage, actually called up its military and fought. That ruined the German timetables, allowing France to complete its mobilization and brought the British into the war preventing a quick German victory on the Western Front.
Towards the end of the war, yes, Germany was beginning to move towards what we would consider a "commander's intent"-based system. Erwin Rommel's text, Infantry Attacks, captures this transition. However, it's inaccurate to say that the German military was any less rigid than the British.
It is also inaccurate to say that the death rates of the German army were any less than they were for the British. Perhaps in 1914 and 1915, as well-trained German regulars were facing off against the "Pals Brigades", the Germans inflicted more casualties than they received. But by the end of the war, as the German economy was crumbling and the prospect of US involvement made the German generals desperate, they resorted to mass infantry charges with relatively untrained soldiers, and took extremely heavy casualties as a result.
If anything, your description of the German army is more accurate for the Wehrmacht in World War 2 than it is for the Kaiser's army.
If the advice you just gave is so good, why couldn't you (or the book's author) have found an example in which the side following the advice actually won the war?
Ships rust. Officers don't chip paint and paint. Technical enlisted and NCOs don't chip paint and paint either. Junior, and especially unrated (not trained in a vocational area yet) enlisted do. This looks like a simple case of being undermanned, and/or having "too many chiefs and not enough braves". Reality is that it probably has to do with pay rates for Enlisted. Fedex pays $36-$42k/yer for package handlers. An E-1 makes $21k/year base. With all benefits, you might be at parity with Fedex, but you give up a lot of freedom.
I'll commit a little naval heresy here but surface ships are probably nearing obsolescence if not already obsolete. They are slow, easy to find, and hypersonics, drones, cruise missiles, aircraft and submarines are just incredibly lethal, and perfect point defense doesn't exist. The sinking of the Moskva is really just a sign of the times. The carrier battle group may fare better because of the range of air cover and subsurface escorts, but we're in an era of weapons that can kill a carrier with a single hit.
Deleted Comment
In a "morale emergency" an effective leader will lead from the front, showing the behavior that she needs her team to show.
The chief of maintenance on those ships should be chipping and painting in their free time until the people under them have enough shame and/or pride to start doing it correctly on their shifts.
I once had a problem with "that's not in my job description", pitting security guards against truck unloaders. I took one trip with 25kg of rice on my shoulder and then looked back to see a line of security guards following behind me.
Moo.
Maintaining the paint on a destroyer is really hard to do, and the sailors I served with, well, there was no shortage of people willing to work and lead by example. That said, picture a 154 meter destroyer and compare that to a 4" paint scraper. How many effective leaders does that take?
>Moo
Agree
The solution to ship-killer weapons is decentralization, replacing a single juicy target with many dispersed targets. A Predator or Bayraktar sized drone designed for naval operations could be launched from a "dronecarrier" much, much smaller and cheaper than the current carriers.
But are planes the most cost-effective form of throwing high-explosive long distances? Once, they were. They had a much greater range than a battleship's guns and thus obsoleted the battleship.
These days, missiles have double the range of carrier aircraft. So a very inexpensive frigate with long-range missiles is far more cost-effective than a huge expensive Carrier Group. (Most of the Group's ships are there merely to protect and support the carrier. Without the carrier, they are redundant. Sure, a Group looks big and powerful, but cost-effective? No.)
Sounds like a classic case of trying to do the same job with less people, and management only taking notice when the issue becomes public-facing.
But there is hope on the horizon. The submarine construction programs (Virginia SSNs and Columbia SSBNs) are proceeding smoothly, as are the Flight III destroyers. DDG(X), the future replacement of the Arleigh-Burke class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers, is in development, and the first Constellation-class frigates will soon be laid down.
The Navy has failed to accomplish the modpro packages on the current CGs & LSD, including Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Tortuga. Those three I have personally been involved with in many ways. The 5XXX and structural work on the CG program has been wildly underestimated. The money for Tortuga was never there and as she lay idle in the shipyard problems grew. They are not simply east coast/BAE issues either. The issues repeat themselves here on the west coast at Vigor. It was a huge mistake to leave behind cost+ and switch to FFP. There is too much time lost to pointless contract fighting.
There is hope on the horizon with new subs and DDGx and FFG. Time will tell if the new build construction yields a new DDG1000/LCS or a workhorse like the earlier DDG flights.
As for corrosion it is a necessary evil. Too many armchair metallurgists point to various alloys as a solution. The ocean is cold, salty, and miserable. The planning yards, repair yards, and Navy are full of extremely bright and hardworking folks. It takes time and money to fight rust at sea and in port.
There's a big issue with manning on the civilian and Navy side. At the end of the day there are few people in my generation lining up to enlist or to do body-damaging labor. I can't say I blame them.. I became and engineer and then joined program management. Few in the yards want the same for their children as they had in their life. Those who are left are primarily 30+ years of experience or 1-5 years of experience looking to get out.
I would strongly advise waiting until the first Flight III ship is going on deployment before making this claim.
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Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
On the poor leadership front, less people on the front line and they have been burnt out for longer than ever on overextended deployments. Enduring stress for too long simply breaks you down. The attention to detail eventually dissipates and people are just trying to keep their heads above water.
On the strong leadership front, everything continued to function to expectations except appearance which may be argued to be the last remaining detail. Appearance however is everything in the military and goes back quite some time to tradition:
> An old Navy tradition has it that the ship's cook shines the ship's bell and the ship's bugler shines the ship's whistle. This tradition may still be observed in some of the ships of the modern Navy. However, in normal practice, the ship's bell is maintained by a man of the ships' division charged with the upkeep of that part of the ship where the bell is located.
This seems like a fun college-level question for a leadership/military/software class. What is your argument and why?
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading...
If you run your teams and equipment beyond the threshold, your equipment and team will suffer and degrade your abilities.
This is a failure of leadership, and it was avoidable!
That isn’t to say there is no effect - people might start to see themselves as more disciplined if they look sharp. “Look good, play good”, as my coach used to say.
While I have certainly seen idiots with nice clothes make bad decisions in management, I do think that all things being equal, some level of professionalism is beneficial to an environment. Attitude and aptitude are critical, and I think dress can help the former.
An overheard Chief's response to the question, "why do we have to clean all the time?"
These kinds of symptoms are pervasive.
Everyone laughs at the poorly maintained Russian tanks without realizing we're heading that direction.
Does it matter that they have visible rust?
If the performance is the same and it’s just a veneer with no effect on ability, who gives a damn?
I had a CO who once told me: “I trust the guy who’s got mud on his boots vs the one whose shoes are always spit shined.”