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The problem is that increasing manning doesn't really contribute to the military industrial complex...so there isn't a real incentive to make room in the budget

The problem is that increasing manning doesn't really contribute to the military industrial complex...so there isn't a real incentive to make room in the budget for additional personnel. When I was in the Navy we routinely had 100hr+ workweeks while in port and the older guys said it was the same back in the day.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
euyyn 9y ago
Honest question from someone that has no idea: Does training in these shitty conditions help performance in case of war, where those conditions might be necessary?
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  No, they are there to break people and get them to rebond as a temp family. You really get to learn who is what kind of guy/girl doing repeated 100 hr weeks
  - euyyn 9y ago
    Is that an official reason, or speculation?
    - moftz 9y ago
      Probably more along the lines of a ship requires X number of crew working 24 hours a day to run properly and the ship can only hold a crew of less than 3X (8 hours shifts, 7 days a week). It's not going to be a simple 9-5 job for everyone on the ship but there should at least be some scientific justification behind whatever shift scheduling the Navy decides on. Do people work better when doing long shifts with long breaks in between or short shifts with short breaks? Can people doing day shifts work longer than people doing night shifts? Do people work better with regular shifts or with ones in different lengths? It's obviously going to be different for every position, anyone making critical decisions shouldn't be overworked but the guy cleaning toilets isn't going to do too much damage being tired. It all boils down to how much can you work someone until it becomes an issue.
      - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
        When I was in, we had a 6-on 12-off schedule to allow for 24hr coverage with only three watches. Effectively, each of our "days" was an 18hr day, with 6 being on-watch, 6 being used for maintenance/drills/training, and 6 being for sleep. Rarely did we get a full 6hrs of sleep per 18hr "day."
        logfromblammo 9y ago
        That sounds like the worst possible compromise between 16+8, which gives you a normal "on" work shift and a normal sleep period, and 8+4, which could give you biphasic sleep, or triphasic with 4 hours base sleep and 2 x 2-hour naps. Even so, it's still 8 hours of sleep per 24 hours, which is adequate, even when only being able to take 6 at a time makes it somehow seem worse. And I have a sneaking suspicion that it only exists because the Navy found that sailors were useless after the 12th hour of working, so decided to set the workday to 12 hours, and just make the whole duty cycle 18 hours. I'm guessing that people on that schedule stop being very effective after just 9 hours of wakefulness. But I'm no somnologist.
        brandmeyer 9y ago
        The 12-on is composed of a 6-hour operator shift, followed by 6 hours of maintenance and training. I think the 12+6 is based on maintaining full awareness over a 6 hour period, and in that sense it basically works. If you eat when you wake up, and after your operator shift, then that also works out to two meals per 18-hour day, and gives you a normal-ish 12 hour gap between your last meal and waking up.
        Caveman_Coder 9y ago
        That is correct. The 6 hour on-watch period is based on maintaining full awareness. With a 3 watch-section crew and "18hr days," you'll have round the clock coverage for all watch stations. Like you said, we'd wake up, eat, go on watch for 6hrs, get relieved by the next watch section, eat, do maintenance/training/etc. for the next 6hrs, and then sleep for the final 3rd of our "day."
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    > "No, they are there to break people and get them to rebond as a temp family." - I'm not sure if this is the primary point of the 100hr+ work-weeks. In my case, our submarine was going through an Engineering Refueling Overhaul in Norfolk so we were just incredibly busy.
    - stephengillie 9y ago
      Failure to staff adequately is a managerial failure to plan, which is sometimes used as a cost-cutting measure. 100-hour work weeks not only save direct worker costs (you get 2.5x the labor at the cost of 1x), but also in managerial and other costs (you get 2.5x the labor for the cost of managing a 1x headcount).
      - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
        That is correct. It is also a pipeline issue. The Navy has to recruit, train, and certify a certain number of nuclear trained personnel to account for shore-duty rotations and personnel leaving the Navy altogether. On a couple of occasions, our engineering team was short a few personnel in each of the three nuclear-trained jobs. We were able to pull from some of the other boats at the base, but they were not qualified (a.k.a. useless) so the workload wasn't distributed any better with the additional personnel.
      - liberte82 9y ago
        I seriously doubt you get 2.5x as much work done, working people for 100 hours a week versus 40.
        derefr 9y ago
        You wouldn't think so, given how easy it is to burn out a regular white-collar worker by overworking them, but people in the military are sort of the "high-spec components" of humanity: there's been many layers of selection pressures applied to find the people that can be pushed far past their "tolerance" without breaking. Everyone that can't, washed out a long time before you got your hands on them. (At least, that's the thinking. In reality, it's maybe 50% that, and 50% everyone hiding their weaknesses and covering for one-another's failures to give off the image of this. But good officers know that, and only expect 150%-of-tolerance rather than 200%-of-tolerance. :P)
  - jermaustin1 9y ago
    I've always felt that this was the case. They break you so they can rebuild you and your instincts for war times. So that everything you need to do is completely second nature.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- PeterisP 9y ago
  The life on board in wartime navy shouldn't be that different. In peacetime maneuvers you need 24/7 staffing of all key positions; in wartime maneuvers you need the same. Driving the ship around is the exact same activity that takes the same amount of work. Keeping all the gear running takes the same effort. If you've not been hit, you have the same people doing the same things; and if you've been hit, you're either dead or swimming towards the shore in a much smaller boat.
  - euyyn 9y ago
    What if it's a long war and the whole Navy is just shorter in personnel?
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      It's not a realistic scenario. US navy is much stronger than any navy in the world. A long war with a minor power, or a limited war with a major power is not going to cause meaningful casualties to US navy and it's not going to result in a Navy that's significantly shorter in personnel. A significant war capable of significant damage to the navy as a whole (as opposed to a lucky strike on some ship) essentially requires an open, high stakes war with a nuclear power; and due to MAD such a war can't really be long - if the problem is so irreconilable that it escalates to large scale open hostilities with significant casualties, then that also escalates to nukes, and then it'll be over in a single day.
derefr 9y ago
Does manning need to increase for headcount in these particular positions to increase? I always figured there was a certain level of "bloat" positions in peacetime militaries—the military equivalent of middle-managers—who certainly went through the same boot-camp as everyone else once upon a time, are still required to pass regular physical exams like everyone else, and so could simply have their duties extended/rebalanced to have them do more man-on-the-spot work as well as their clerical duties. That's what happens when a war starts, no? There's also a good chunk of personnel who, even in peacetime, end up injured or disabled on the job (such as my friend the CPO with a sudden heart condition) who are required by doctor's orders to not do some tiny part of their job, and then regs dictate that they just not do that job at all—so they're either honourably discharged (and now receive VA benefits), or they're kept, but desked. In a more "efficient" military, these people (who are mostly still able to do 99% of their jobs) would just have their duties adjusted, with the one part of their workload they can't handle reallocated to their peers, so they can continue converting payroll into duties performed, rather than chairs sat on.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  My perception when I was in was that the Navy was very "top heavy," staffed with useless academy grads that did little and stayed in for the cushy shore-duty [1]. My views are definitely biased (and anecdotal), since I was "lowly blue-shirt," but there was always at least one unfilled billet in my rate yet there never seemed to be an unfilled role for the officers. [1] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/5/ash-carter-says-us-military-too-top-heavy-aims-cut/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/5/ash-carter-sa...
rtkwe 9y ago
That and there's also a pretty hard limit on the number of people that can be packed onto any particular ship just due to space, can't just double the number of people on board to go from 100 hour weeks to more reasonable 50 hour weeks. Even with hot bunking there's feeding them and having somewhere/something for them to do with the newly freed time.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

euyyn 9y ago

Honest question from someone that has no idea: Does training in these shitty conditions help performance in case of war, where those conditions might be necessary?

Pica_soO 9y ago
No, they are there to break people and get them to rebond as a temp family. You really get to learn who is what kind of guy/girl doing repeated 100 hr weeks
- euyyn 9y ago
  Is that an official reason, or speculation?
  - moftz 9y ago
    Probably more along the lines of a ship requires X number of crew working 24 hours a day to run properly and the ship can only hold a crew of less than 3X (8 hours shifts, 7 days a week). It's not going to be a simple 9-5 job for everyone on the ship but there should at least be some scientific justification behind whatever shift scheduling the Navy decides on. Do people work better when doing long shifts with long breaks in between or short shifts with short breaks? Can people doing day shifts work longer than people doing night shifts? Do people work better with regular shifts or with ones in different lengths? It's obviously going to be different for every position, anyone making critical decisions shouldn't be overworked but the guy cleaning toilets isn't going to do too much damage being tired. It all boils down to how much can you work someone until it becomes an issue.
    - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
      When I was in, we had a 6-on 12-off schedule to allow for 24hr coverage with only three watches. Effectively, each of our "days" was an 18hr day, with 6 being on-watch, 6 being used for maintenance/drills/training, and 6 being for sleep. Rarely did we get a full 6hrs of sleep per 18hr "day."
      - logfromblammo 9y ago
        That sounds like the worst possible compromise between 16+8, which gives you a normal "on" work shift and a normal sleep period, and 8+4, which could give you biphasic sleep, or triphasic with 4 hours base sleep and 2 x 2-hour naps. Even so, it's still 8 hours of sleep per 24 hours, which is adequate, even when only being able to take 6 at a time makes it somehow seem worse. And I have a sneaking suspicion that it only exists because the Navy found that sailors were useless after the 12th hour of working, so decided to set the workday to 12 hours, and just make the whole duty cycle 18 hours. I'm guessing that people on that schedule stop being very effective after just 9 hours of wakefulness. But I'm no somnologist.
        brandmeyer 9y ago
        The 12-on is composed of a 6-hour operator shift, followed by 6 hours of maintenance and training. I think the 12+6 is based on maintaining full awareness over a 6 hour period, and in that sense it basically works. If you eat when you wake up, and after your operator shift, then that also works out to two meals per 18-hour day, and gives you a normal-ish 12 hour gap between your last meal and waking up.
        Caveman_Coder 9y ago
        That is correct. The 6 hour on-watch period is based on maintaining full awareness. With a 3 watch-section crew and "18hr days," you'll have round the clock coverage for all watch stations. Like you said, we'd wake up, eat, go on watch for 6hrs, get relieved by the next watch section, eat, do maintenance/training/etc. for the next 6hrs, and then sleep for the final 3rd of our "day."
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  > "No, they are there to break people and get them to rebond as a temp family." - I'm not sure if this is the primary point of the 100hr+ work-weeks. In my case, our submarine was going through an Engineering Refueling Overhaul in Norfolk so we were just incredibly busy.
  - stephengillie 9y ago
    Failure to staff adequately is a managerial failure to plan, which is sometimes used as a cost-cutting measure. 100-hour work weeks not only save direct worker costs (you get 2.5x the labor at the cost of 1x), but also in managerial and other costs (you get 2.5x the labor for the cost of managing a 1x headcount).
    - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
      That is correct. It is also a pipeline issue. The Navy has to recruit, train, and certify a certain number of nuclear trained personnel to account for shore-duty rotations and personnel leaving the Navy altogether. On a couple of occasions, our engineering team was short a few personnel in each of the three nuclear-trained jobs. We were able to pull from some of the other boats at the base, but they were not qualified (a.k.a. useless) so the workload wasn't distributed any better with the additional personnel.
    - liberte82 9y ago
      I seriously doubt you get 2.5x as much work done, working people for 100 hours a week versus 40.
      - derefr 9y ago
        You wouldn't think so, given how easy it is to burn out a regular white-collar worker by overworking them, but people in the military are sort of the "high-spec components" of humanity: there's been many layers of selection pressures applied to find the people that can be pushed far past their "tolerance" without breaking. Everyone that can't, washed out a long time before you got your hands on them. (At least, that's the thinking. In reality, it's maybe 50% that, and 50% everyone hiding their weaknesses and covering for one-another's failures to give off the image of this. But good officers know that, and only expect 150%-of-tolerance rather than 200%-of-tolerance. :P)
- jermaustin1 9y ago
  I've always felt that this was the case. They break you so they can rebuild you and your instincts for war times. So that everything you need to do is completely second nature.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
PeterisP 9y ago
The life on board in wartime navy shouldn't be that different. In peacetime maneuvers you need 24/7 staffing of all key positions; in wartime maneuvers you need the same. Driving the ship around is the exact same activity that takes the same amount of work. Keeping all the gear running takes the same effort. If you've not been hit, you have the same people doing the same things; and if you've been hit, you're either dead or swimming towards the shore in a much smaller boat.
- euyyn 9y ago
  What if it's a long war and the whole Navy is just shorter in personnel?
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    It's not a realistic scenario. US navy is much stronger than any navy in the world. A long war with a minor power, or a limited war with a major power is not going to cause meaningful casualties to US navy and it's not going to result in a Navy that's significantly shorter in personnel. A significant war capable of significant damage to the navy as a whole (as opposed to a lucky strike on some ship) essentially requires an open, high stakes war with a nuclear power; and due to MAD such a war can't really be long - if the problem is so irreconilable that it escalates to large scale open hostilities with significant casualties, then that also escalates to nukes, and then it'll be over in a single day.

derefr 9y ago

Does manning need to increase for headcount in these particular positions to increase? I always figured there was a certain level of "bloat" positions in peacetime militaries—the military equivalent of middle-managers—who certainly went through the same boot-camp as everyone else once upon a time, are still required to pass regular physical exams like everyone else, and so could simply have their duties extended/rebalanced to have them do more man-on-the-spot work as well as their clerical duties. That's what happens when a war starts, no? There's also a good chunk of personnel who, even in peacetime, end up injured or disabled on the job (such as my friend the CPO with a sudden heart condition) who are required by doctor's orders to not do some tiny part of their job, and then regs dictate that they just not do that job at all—so they're either honourably discharged (and now receive VA benefits), or they're kept, but desked. In a more "efficient" military, these people (who are mostly still able to do 99% of their jobs) would just have their duties adjusted, with the one part of their workload they can't handle reallocated to their peers, so they can continue converting payroll into duties performed, rather than chairs sat on.

Caveman_Coder 9y ago
My perception when I was in was that the Navy was very "top heavy," staffed with useless academy grads that did little and stayed in for the cushy shore-duty [1]. My views are definitely biased (and anecdotal), since I was "lowly blue-shirt," but there was always at least one unfilled billet in my rate yet there never seemed to be an unfilled role for the officers. [1] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/5/ash-carter-says-us-military-too-top-heavy-aims-cut/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/5/ash-carter-sa...

rtkwe 9y ago

That and there's also a pretty hard limit on the number of people that can be packed onto any particular ship just due to space, can't just double the number of people on board to go from 100 hour weeks to more reasonable 50 hour weeks. Even with hot bunking there's feeding them and having somewhere/something for them to do with the newly freed time.