Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

The difference between driving a car, or being in a cockpit, and a surface combatant or a sub, is that in the latter you have to operate through a team. A skimmer is the most complex because CIC, distant and out of sight, is a core part of collision avoidance. In one collision the CO was on the bridge (don't know if he had taken the conn), and the collision still happened. The OODs might have known exactly what to do, but their team on the controls failed them. I don't know, but it's more complicated than in an airplane or car where the decision-maker is holding the controls.

The article contains nuggets that indicate the problem(s) to me. Informality of communication. Lack of sim time, and lack of at-sea exercise time. A deployment is not when you practice a lot of emergencies. You do that on local ops and during work-ups pre-inspections. It has been widely reported that the surface fleet has been worked to death during our 17 years of war. Too few ships, too little backstop time. Add to this new missions like THAAD and a whole lot more ocean to cover in anti-terrorist, anti-piracy missions not present in the Cold War, and I think a lot of basic training has slid. It can be fixed, but at some point the people ABOVE the Navy need to understand that ships stretch only so far, and so do crews. Just because you have 300 ships doesn't mean you have 300 ships.