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https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swos-a-culture-in-crisis/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swo... "For nearly

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swos-a-culture-in-crisis/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swo... "For nearly 30 years, all new surface warfare officers spent their first six months in uniform at the Surface Warfare Officer’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, learning the theory behind driving ships and leading sailors as division officers. But that changed in 2003. The Navy decided to eliminate the “SWOS Basic” school and simply send surface fleet officers out to sea to learn on the job. The Navy did that mainly to save money, and the fleet has suffered severely for it, said retired Cmdr. Kurt Lippold. “The Navy has cut training as a budgetary device and they have done it at the expense of our ability to operate safely at sea,” said Lippold, who commanded the destroyer Cole in 2000 when it was attacked by terrorists in Yemen. After 2003, each young officer was issued a set of 21 CD-ROMs for computer-based training — jokingly called “SWOS in a Box” — to take with them to sea and learn. Young officers were required to complete this instructor-less course in between earning their shipboard qualifications, management of their divisions and collateral duties. ... In recent years, there’s been a push to re-energize SWO training. And on paper, they’ve got a course for every level of SWO — all the way up to the commanding officer level. Young SWOs now get about nine weeks in fleet concentration area classrooms. Generally, these new officers report to their ship first and then get a seat in school within the first couple of months on board. But, Parin said, “only a couple of days are dedicated to navigation and mariner skills. The rest is damage control and other material division officer-specific training.” Another eight weeks of school comes between an officer’s first and second division officer tours. They are taught more advanced skills, but still, the professional mariner instruction isn’t what it should be, Hoffman said. That’s still just a fraction of the original training."

mmanfrin 9y ago
Skipping on training to save money -- with a budget the size of nearly half the world's military expenditure.
- drawnwren 9y ago
  Unfortunately the way that it gets handed to the service components, they can only spend the money on what it's budgeted for. This leads to situations where training budgets are very tight but you have a huge office supply budget. So units buy $1000 chairs but can't afford to send their troops to training
- r00fus 9y ago
  Gotta pay those defense contractors somehow. We can't skip out on those payments!
- jdietrich 9y ago
  US military expenditure is a stealth job creation program. It's politically untenable for any American government to announce a $1.5 trillion dollar scheme to create 100,000 skilled manufacturing jobs in the rust belt, unless that scheme produces a fighter aircraft. It's a woefully inefficient job creation scheme, but that inefficiency means that a lot of different stakeholders can get a slice of the pie. Everyone would be better off if that money was spent on clean energy or healthcare, but the American electorate are far more willing to sign a blank check for defence.
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    1 500 000 000 000 ----------------- = 15 000 000 100 000 That would, in theory, result in 8-figure jobs for every serviceman. Is that right? Where is the excess going?
    - bluedino 9y ago
      The military budget is $600B. There are 1.2M active and 0.8M reserve servicemen. Like any old organization, they have legacy costs: healthcare and pensions for former and retired servicemen are phenomenal.
      - vacri 9y ago
        I thought healthcare and pensions weren't included in that $600B, but farmed out to other parts of the budget?
        torstenvl 9y ago
        Nope. Pensions (technically, retired pay and retainer pay) come out of the MILPERS budget. Military retirees are still military personnel, and generally exist within one of three statuses within the reserve component of the last armed service in which they served. For Navy personnel, for example, they are on the Retired List, the Retired Reserve, or the Fleet Reserve.
    - 9y ago
trhway 9y ago
>only a couple of days are dedicated to navigation and mariner skills. couple of days :) ... couple of years during middle school that i spent going to "Young Sailor Club" (USSR version of sea-skill oriented Boy Scouts) half the time was my specialization - electronics, half the time - the generic maritime skills, navigation, sailing, classic communication (Morse, flags), firefighting, actually going out on a [small training non-armed] Navy ship, etc..
- cr0sh 9y ago
  Sounds like you had an interesting childhood (and likely one that provided skills to serve you well into adulthood)!
- lscotte 9y ago
  In the US, this is the Sea Scouts. Almost nobody knows about them, but anyplace near big water likely has several ships (same as a troop). It's a great program, we were involved when my son was a teenager - they (group of teenagers) literally ran a 100 ton, 95 foot former USCG Cutter. It's great for boys and girls, I'm convinced they get more training than the Navy does. :-)
bballard 9y ago
As a former naval officer, I was shocked to hear they didn't still require conning officers to plot and track the closest point of approach of all contacts on paper. To rely on a computer or radar system to do that for you is craziness. Sure, the commercial ships do that, but then in this case they should have avoided hitting Navy ships, but they are rather stealthy and weren't broadcasting their positions, so it's up to the junior officers on watch. Doing this on paper keeps you alert and reduces boredom, believe me. It is possible to get into a "Kobayashi Maru" situation coming into a busy shipping channel with contacts coming in from all sides, similar to the iPhone game "HarborMaster" which always ends with a collision. But there are rules to follow along the way, whether it's adjusting course to avoid a close approach, contacting other ships on bridge-to-bridge VHF radio, waking the captain, blasting the ship's horn, making evasive maneuvers before you get "in extremis". None of these happened. This is what I found so hard to believe in these two cases, but it makes perfect sense when you're relying on imperfect automated systems and essentially driving asleep at the wheel.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  I know nothing about ships, the Navy, or combat. I do know that most or all of our Navy ships are highly computer controlled/integrated, so maybe the following would be moot today, but... ...wouldn't it be prudent for officers to have the skills to plot and do things on paper in the event that during combat or for other reasons the ship sustains such damage that limits or eliminates the ability to use the computer systems to do that same task? Again - maybe it's one of those things where if the computer systems are down in such a way that you can't do the task, it is likely that you have bigger problems to worry about. Even so, I would think this would be a critical skill to have, if a "just-in-case, cover-yer-butt" scenario presents itself where it could mean the difference between life or death, survival, rescue, etc.
  - bballard 9y ago
    Yes, that was the reason we were told we had to do it on paper, in case the systems failed. Only we always did it on paper, not just for practice.

mmanfrin 9y ago

Skipping on training to save money -- with a budget the size of nearly half the world's military expenditure.

drawnwren 9y ago
Unfortunately the way that it gets handed to the service components, they can only spend the money on what it's budgeted for. This leads to situations where training budgets are very tight but you have a huge office supply budget. So units buy $1000 chairs but can't afford to send their troops to training
r00fus 9y ago
Gotta pay those defense contractors somehow. We can't skip out on those payments!
jdietrich 9y ago
US military expenditure is a stealth job creation program. It's politically untenable for any American government to announce a $1.5 trillion dollar scheme to create 100,000 skilled manufacturing jobs in the rust belt, unless that scheme produces a fighter aircraft. It's a woefully inefficient job creation scheme, but that inefficiency means that a lot of different stakeholders can get a slice of the pie. Everyone would be better off if that money was spent on clean energy or healthcare, but the American electorate are far more willing to sign a blank check for defence.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  1 500 000 000 000 ----------------- = 15 000 000 100 000 That would, in theory, result in 8-figure jobs for every serviceman. Is that right? Where is the excess going?
  - bluedino 9y ago
    The military budget is $600B. There are 1.2M active and 0.8M reserve servicemen. Like any old organization, they have legacy costs: healthcare and pensions for former and retired servicemen are phenomenal.
    - vacri 9y ago
      I thought healthcare and pensions weren't included in that $600B, but farmed out to other parts of the budget?
      - torstenvl 9y ago
        Nope. Pensions (technically, retired pay and retainer pay) come out of the MILPERS budget. Military retirees are still military personnel, and generally exist within one of three statuses within the reserve component of the last armed service in which they served. For Navy personnel, for example, they are on the Retired List, the Retired Reserve, or the Fleet Reserve.
  - 9y ago

trhway 9y ago

>only a couple of days are dedicated to navigation and mariner skills. couple of days :) ... couple of years during middle school that i spent going to "Young Sailor Club" (USSR version of sea-skill oriented Boy Scouts) half the time was my specialization - electronics, half the time - the generic maritime skills, navigation, sailing, classic communication (Morse, flags), firefighting, actually going out on a [small training non-armed] Navy ship, etc..

cr0sh 9y ago
Sounds like you had an interesting childhood (and likely one that provided skills to serve you well into adulthood)!
lscotte 9y ago
In the US, this is the Sea Scouts. Almost nobody knows about them, but anyplace near big water likely has several ships (same as a troop). It's a great program, we were involved when my son was a teenager - they (group of teenagers) literally ran a 100 ton, 95 foot former USCG Cutter. It's great for boys and girls, I'm convinced they get more training than the Navy does. :-)

bballard 9y ago

As a former naval officer, I was shocked to hear they didn't still require conning officers to plot and track the closest point of approach of all contacts on paper. To rely on a computer or radar system to do that for you is craziness. Sure, the commercial ships do that, but then in this case they should have avoided hitting Navy ships, but they are rather stealthy and weren't broadcasting their positions, so it's up to the junior officers on watch. Doing this on paper keeps you alert and reduces boredom, believe me. It is possible to get into a "Kobayashi Maru" situation coming into a busy shipping channel with contacts coming in from all sides, similar to the iPhone game "HarborMaster" which always ends with a collision. But there are rules to follow along the way, whether it's adjusting course to avoid a close approach, contacting other ships on bridge-to-bridge VHF radio, waking the captain, blasting the ship's horn, making evasive maneuvers before you get "in extremis". None of these happened. This is what I found so hard to believe in these two cases, but it makes perfect sense when you're relying on imperfect automated systems and essentially driving asleep at the wheel.

cr0sh 9y ago
I know nothing about ships, the Navy, or combat. I do know that most or all of our Navy ships are highly computer controlled/integrated, so maybe the following would be moot today, but... ...wouldn't it be prudent for officers to have the skills to plot and do things on paper in the event that during combat or for other reasons the ship sustains such damage that limits or eliminates the ability to use the computer systems to do that same task? Again - maybe it's one of those things where if the computer systems are down in such a way that you can't do the task, it is likely that you have bigger problems to worry about. Even so, I would think this would be a critical skill to have, if a "just-in-case, cover-yer-butt" scenario presents itself where it could mean the difference between life or death, survival, rescue, etc.
- bballard 9y ago
  Yes, that was the reason we were told we had to do it on paper, in case the systems failed. Only we always did it on paper, not just for practice.