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Originally Posted by DenverTaco07
Hey Blur, thanks for that thoughtful post. USN here too, although it's been 17 years. My concern is, i think, somewhat parallel to yours... basically manpower and training which requires $$$. over extended?
to my original post, you have several layers of watches who's primary purpose is the safe navigation of the ship, in less than what, two months all layers of redundancy have failed causing loss of life.
the only explanation i can think of is that everyone on watch is so exhausted, they are asleep. both incidents happened during mid watch....i wonder if drills and lack of manpower etc. is just to much???
if i recall, cargo ships are lit up to all hell, look outs job to report. OJ194 surface tracking collision data is all there. Bridge watch..what 3 to 5 sailors on bridge during mid?
anyway, I just can't fathom the posible reason, other than asleep. I was EW, but do to lack of sailors, was effectively an OS.
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Having recently returned from deployment, I wonder about several factors. There's a risk theory called the swiss cheese model. The idea is that if you take several slices of swiss cheese, each representing a layer of protective measures, the holes may line up. When the holes in your cheese go all the way through your layers of protections, mishaps occur.
Military service is inherently risky, and we work on the whims of our country and our country's potential adversaries. If someone decides to start making decisions that endanger our people, we're called to quell the threat. As such, no amount of planning can truly prepare us for the unpredictable threats faced by rogue governments (DPRK, etc.) or terrorism (ISIS, etc.). Our enemies don't care about our budgetary constraints. They don't care if your ship's conn showed up a week ago. They just want to cause trouble.
The swiss cheese model applies here. With a higher operational tempo than ever before, we can do all the ORM matrices we want. No amount of safety briefs is enough. More work means more risk. Add to that the cost of training. How many ships have manpower issues? I'm going to go with all of them. They all need something, and the schoolhouses can't support the need. As a result, there's pressure on the schools to pump out graduates, and that may compromise the quality of training our technicians receive. In fact, I've had Sailors discuss the low quality of their technical C-school training, pointing out they already knew how to do the job (welding, etc.) but they needed the school to be fully qualified to do it. This brings up another layer for our swiss cheese model. The schools have to create these graduates because administrative requirements have become overwhelming. Sailors who know how to do things can't because there are so many administrative requirements that they oftentimes find themselves limited in what work they can do to help the ship. The ones that go to school meet the administrative requirements, but limitations on class sizes and dates make it hard to schedule schools around other operational commitments, and sometimes the schools make them more of a pump than a filter. As a result, the few qualified people doing NEC-required technical work may be overworked, which leads to maintenance management issues, especially when someone gets sick, hurt, or otherwise can't get everything done on time.
The list of issues goes on, but I think I made my point. We need to take a hard look in the mirror. All big organizations have problems, but we owe our country the best Navy out there. I'm proud of our leadership for taking an honest look at the community and realizing something wasn't right. I hope we get good policy and improvement out of each other so that we can better do our jobs.