The Navy Is Having Collisions at Sea. Here’s Why It’s Happening and What Should Be Done.

I'm coming up on 30 years of life at sea, the vast majority of it spent driving ships that make Navy ships (even carriers) look like boats in a bathtub. LT Brad McInnis said it: the Navy has made the incorrect choice of trading training and time for availability. I was recently shocked to learn that the Navy no longer requires SWO's to learn how to navigate by the stars. This is the single most basic skill in Maritime (any maritime) history, a skill that sailors thousands of years ago mastered. And now, the most powerful Navy on earth doesn't require officers to know how?! Wtf?! This is tantamount to no longer requiring the Ship's Bosun to know basic rigging, or how to tie a bowline. All the instruments in the world are useless in a strike that takes out the bridge and CIC. Or a cyber hack that spoofs satellites, or infects onboard non-air-gapped systems. Then there's the lovely fact that the Navy, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to scrap the ship-handling school that they used to be required to attend, up until like, 2006. 6 months of hands-on training in classrooms and simulators...tossed. "Oh, they can learn on the job". No sir. No, they can't. Not with all the other crap that they have to do to qualify. I have spent most of my career seething when civilian mariners on the bridge would inevitably make comments about the Navy when transiting near a Navy ship, and would often defend them. Well, it seems that their angst was rooted in reality, and my defense in blindness because I love the Navy. All that 'let THIS piece of training go' and 'let THAT piece go' and 'require THIS frivolous piece of bullshit training' is coming home to roost, and there's not many more chagrined about it than I, excepting of course those directly affected now. And I'm not letting enlisted off the hook either. Most of those instruments are manned by enlisted personnel. Enlisted men and women are the lookouts. So you have some combination of them being overworked, undertrained, and afraid, for whatever reason, to speak up to officers that are fucking up, and given the current climate of entitlement, I wouldn't be surprised to find a healthy dose of laziness throwin in. So they're dropping the ball, too

CPT Jack - I was a qualified SWO on 2 DDG's. I was also a Division Officer at Afloat Training Group. My take on all of this is the same as it always has been... The surface Navy has reduced training time to such a minimal extent, that there is no time to become proficient. The training pipeline for new officers (who run the bridge watch) has been cut to nothing. They show up to the ship, barely knowing port from starboard, and face a crew that has less then zero time to coddle them. There is a jack of all trades, master of none mentality, combined with if it was tough we wouldn't do it attitude. Those are luxuries you can have after you have proven that you can do the basics, like getting from point A to point B, without hitting slow moving tankers... I can't find the link, but there was a story today that the 7th fleet, where all of these ships are from, were "rushed" through a condensed training cycle in order to meet operational requirements. When I trained ships, we were very loathe to give a ship a condensed training cycle because of the inherent risk... So, the article you referenced is true in the most part. I can't honestly speak to sequestration effects on training as that was above my paygrade. As most of these articles will point out, training is the issue. That is an easy thing to say, a hard thing for the Navy to do soemthing about... SN Greg Wright SCPO (Join to see)

Reduced training time, high operational tempo and over reliance on technology are all very likely at play in these accidents. I was surprised a few years ago to hear the Army was not training as much traditional land navigation and relying more on GPS technology. This is great until the GPS is down, the weather prevents its use etc.

I think the Navy has done the same. It may not be what they want to do but choices have to be made about where money is spent and when your manpower is stretched thin and you need everyone you can get (don't forget we have non deployable people in the ranks too). Training is always easy to cut but there is always a price to be paid.

I am not sure about the veracity of the story but it does ring true. The Navy will have a formal finding at some point. Safety stand downs for 24 hours will not fix this if this story is accurate.