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Readers, leaders detail surface force problems

The commander of the Navy’s surface force took an unscheduled drive down the San Diego waterfront April 10 with his force master chief, and the two were not pleased with what they saw.

Sailors didn’t salute. Their uniforms were dirty. The ships showed rust, and their docks and parking lots were messy.

The conditions so offended Vice Adm. D.C. Curtis, the Navy’s Surface Force commander, that he issued a special message the next day urging sailors to “get back to basics” — get their uniforms and haircuts squared away, get their ships back into fighting trim, and generally look the part of sailors in “the world’s greatest navy,” he wrote.

Surface Force Master Chief (SW/AW) Michael Schanche sent a message of his own, singling out chiefs across the surface Navy and charging them with whipping their crews back into shape:

“Shipmates, I have always been incredibly proud to be the surface force master chief. Today however was the first time during my tenure that I have to say that I was professionally embarrassed!”

Sailors just stared at Curtis’ sport-utility vehicle with its three-star logo, Schanche wrote. The only sailor who saluted was sitting on a stack of pallets “and he didn’t even stand. UNSAT!”

By April 18, Curtis had become so unhappy with the state of the surface force that he issued a third message ordering a “strategic pause,” expressing his concern about crews’ basic ability to assess their own status.

“Recent formal and informal assessments and inspections indicate that our self-assessment capability has declined, resulting in reduced readiness,” Curtis wrote.

Two of the “formal assessments” that became public around the time of Curtis’ inspection were reports from the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey about the destroyer Stout and the cruiser Chosin, found to be in such bad shape they couldn’t fire their guns, launch their missiles, use their flight decks or operate their Aegis radar systems. Navy leaders blamed the ships’ failures on a breakdown of maintenance and procedure, not lack of funds or a high operational tempo.

Schanche told Navy Times on May 1 that when he and Curtis took another drive down the waterfront a few days later, they saw “100 percent improvement” over their first trip. But Navy Times readers said they thought it would take more than stern messages and a few days to fix the surface force.

Sailors have trouble with self-assessment because they’re not trained as thoroughly in the shipboard systems they use, wrote user “EMC2E” on Navy Times’ message boards:

“[M]any other programs have molded the sailor into, in some respects, a better sailor as a person, but detracted the sailor from his mission in life. He is not the astute thinker and innovator as he once was. He relies on what the meter tells him and not his superb experience within the system. The deck plates of today are crowded with policies, poor time management, maintenance failures, and degrading equipment. None of this is new. It seems to me it’s the same story and no one is listening.”

User “BLD” also blamed training, citing the difference between the way surface officers are trained and their counterparts in the submarine force:

“Submariners flat-out know far better how their gear works and how to fix it, and that’s because they spend an obscene amount of money on training. One must blame the wardroom for much of these failures. Not (usually) because of sheer dereliction, but because of how surface warfare officers are raised. The backbone of a submarine junior officer’s training is in the engineering department; there is much theoretical training and hands-on qualification before the submarine ensign steps aboard his first boat.”

User “Ex Chief” faulted senior Navy leadership for getting away from traditional fleet maintenance in favor of an “enterprise” system, in which commanders treat ships like “products” with the goal of being able to continually surge forces to the operational chiefs who are their “customers.”

“The decision to run the Navy as a ‘business enterprise,’ or whatever term they’re now using, was a horrible strategy since the focus of any business is to make a profit not just to ‘provide a product.’ Businesses that provide a product without making a profit go out of business. It sounds to me like this is what has happened to the Navy since failing to maintain combat readiness is as close to a business going under in a military setting.”

Related reading

Read the three messages to the surface fleet