Navy wants to change training to make maintainers more self sufficient

My take as a Chief Engineer... We were 1st told that they wanted to get the technicians to sea faster. They don't want them to spend years in school before they get to sea. To get there, the school houses aren't going to teach all of 3M/PMS to them (that's what CPO's and E-6's are for). 2nd, they decided that they needed to cut training costs, so we are going to combine a lot of the various schools into a generic school. The only lifeline we had out at sea for some repairs were a call/message/chat capability back at shore that could do the tough work for us researching fixes/repairs. Now, they want to take that lifeline away and make the maintainers on the ship more self sufficient... My guess is that this is another cost cutting measure that will have a horrible effect on the sea going sailors. I will always place my trust, and my life, in the hands of the remarkable sailors that I have worked with, but it would be nice if the senior leaders would think through their actions. Give the sailors the tools they need, or you are going to have more accidents and rising maintenance costs. If I have the choice of spending a ton of time letting them try to repair a piece of equipment, or replacing it, I am going to replace it which will cost more....

Training is important... but as times change are these the right changes? Just ink wiring...

When I went from a 637 class boat that required technicians to repair equipment when they broke and usually had the spare parts on hand to do the job, to a state of art Trident boat that completely changed the maintenance meta to one of component replace. If it breaks while underway, tag it out and have it repaired once back in port. I knew this concept had its problems and now we are going back to the days of training technicians, 3M programs, and INSURV. I was also an instructor during this shift, however my area was the emergency diesel generator and did not fall into the new concept, however my fellow instructors (mostly fast boat sailors) struggled to not teach what they knew about maintaining their equipment. So after 30 years, here we go back to what really worked. I am all for it.