Civilians to join the gator fleet next year - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Civilians to join the gator fleet next year

Civilian mariners are joining the Gator Navy.

The Navy’s top officer has announced that the service, after some study, will embark a detachment of civil-service mariners on a yet-to-be named amphibious ship during the next year. The trial will test the feasibility of “hybrid crews” aboard amphibious ships, a drastic change under consideration as the Navy tries to cut runaway manpower costs.

Fewer civilian engineers may be required to run the same engineering plant, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said in announcing the initiative Nov. 10 in a speech in Washington.

The initial idea came up in a discussion where amphibs were compared with command ships and submarine tenders, which are already manned by hybrid crews, Roughead said. “We looked at the logistics force and someone said, ‘You know, the amphibious ships are basically the same type of ship.’ They do have more complex combat systems on them that have a lot of need for sailors onboard. And so I said I was comfortable with doing a pilot to see how it would work.”

He continued: “We’re going to take one ship and we’ll see what we learn. It may lead us to nothing more than having to make some modifications to how we run on some of the [Military Sealift Command] ships.”

The announcement of a test ship is a major step forward for the idea, which until now had been in the proposal and evaluation stage. Adm. John Harvey, head of Fleet Forces Command, asked MSC in July to look at options for hybrid crews aboard amphibs.

The proposal raises larger questions about the role of the civilians and may, if extended to the fleet, have large-scale consequences for the enlisted force, as engineering billets would be drastically cut.

Sailors in steam-specific ratings would likely have to convert ratings or leave the service altogether.

“It’s not simply a matter of running with a mixed crew,” Roughead said. “There’s some laws-of-war issues we have to take a look at where the ships may operate, but I do believe it will give us some good information.”

Navy spokesmen declined to specify what ship or even what class would be involved with the trial, or what departments onboard will be transferred to civilian management. The most likely candidate is the engineering department.

Roughead pointed out that sealift ships operate with fewer engineers onboard, a setup that may save money on amphibious ships, although he declined to specify how much.

It is also possible that the civilians would take over other departments, such as supply or deck, both run by civilians on supply ships.