One reason I think it resonates so much is that it serves as a solid validation of the warnings that have been sent out from both inside and outside the Navy's lifelines about the exceptionally wrong-headed path of the transformatinalists and the MBA-centric ideas that caught the fancy of Navy leadership.
It wasn't that there weren't good ideas that came from the transformationalists - there were. It isn't that there weren't appropriate places for MBA-centric ideas - there were. The problem was that transformationalism became a selfish, bigoted, and intollerant religion of the revolutionary that treated those whose ideas were rooted in the concepts of evolutionary progress and the lessons of history as a Medieval Christian knight would a pagan.
The stories of how warnings were ignored are legion. This isn't about the wee-crickets in the Navy blogosphere though. No. I want to take you back to the month before this blog started. Back to JUN 2004.
Some of you may recall that the USS Milius (DDG-69) had an Optimal Manning Experiment conducted on her in the middle of the last decade. I have a copy of the report by John J. McMullen Associates, dated 21 JUN 2004. Interesting reading, and in a way sad.
In it you had all the warnings you need for the second and third order effects we see today in the Balisle Report. Just a sample of the standard issue happy-report verbiage - with an underlying theme of caution;
Did we even try to understand our own studies - or did we spin them? Just search for MILIUS here to answer the question.Initial conclusions / assumptions are that OM is working aboard Milius. Indications of their success is illustrated in Attachment A, Optimal Manning Metrics”.
However, the question begs, “At what cost to the sailors at the deck plates”? In the information and reports that I gathered there are several significant inconsistencies that are in need of clarification.
- Were there 52, or 63 billets moved ashore?
- The 3M Coordinator says that moving PMS ashore to SIMA is a failure.
- SURFPAC & the ships Final Report says PMS ashore is a success.
- The ship says Gapped Billets are at 14, with an average of 3.07 Gapped Months per billet, and the problem is worsening.
- SURFPAC says the ship only has 4 Gapped Billets and it is of no problem.
- SURFPAC and the Milius Final Report say that the OME was / is a success.
- Many of the crew interviewed have a different answer.
- If it is working well, why are so many of the crew getting only 4 hours sleep per night?
- The ship was under the impression that technological innovations would accompany OM. However, essentially no technologies, other than a stamp machine / postal meter, were implemented that have actually augmented reducing the manning.
The primary impression I am left with is that OM is certainly doable, but not without proper shore support. As indicated in the report, the shore support functions in need of improvement are SIMA, BUPERS/SURFPAC, & PAPA DETS.
I only had about a week on board the Milius to research and get answers to a multitude of questions and subjects. Therefore, much of what I am concluding is based upon interviews, and reports written by the Wardroom of the Milius. In order to determine the validity of these conclusions it would be appropriate to interview personnel at SIMA, BUPERS/SURFPAC, & PAPA DETS.
28 comments:
It's this horrible addiction "we" have had for a long time: A system that leverages off the other supportive things in existence gets approved (case in the way back machine was the "Minimum Manned" FFGs). The direct program manager gets slaps on the back, LOMs, and really cool resume building statements. All sorts of shore support was going to keep the ships running. I believe Byron has been telling us how that has gone for decades on these pages for some time now.
Life then trips things up. The program manager of one (actually) most of the rest of the supporting organizations/agenecies/etc, needs to prioritize. What goes first? The "stuff" for that other prgram manger who was so rude as to not build the first empire as a standalone entitiy.
I watched, from afar, as CAPT Herb Kahler came up with great ideas to use many things already paid for/in development to make BFTT get off the ground. It was a novel methodology, as it saved money and put many "best of breed" things together. I also had the "opportunity" to sit in meetings with the TADMUS civilians who were dead set on making BFTT into a massive lab rat environement for one PhD in particular to make a name for themselves in the physchology world on the taxpayers dime. I voiced my opinion in several meetings, having been asked to attend them as a guy who had been on the other end of the process and later I got disinvited when I espoused the let's make this the BFTT it needs to be, not what anyone compnent group seeing it as a way to leverage their funding off of BFTT.
The difficulty is getting the long term buy in for the support from those who sign MOUs/MOAs upfront to make some new plan work, then find themselves having to circle the wagons to keep from eating their own.
So, the history has been around for a bit longer. If anyone has some experience in the PHM experiment, I'd bet there are some great lessons learned for the future waiting to be read and comprehended.
We've been along this path before, but we tunred back sooner. Maybe the CNO can get the rights to use Wyle E. as the new mascot...in a logo of a freefall experience with Acme umbrella.
You cannot police yourself...
This started a terrible trend when we stopped ISIC and AMDAT's. If programs are given to the commands to manage, then why not budgets? We are misaligned,,,, big time.
Time for some DEPOT level Maintenance on BIG NAVY ship building and manning.
I put a lot of this on the back of Vern Clark and his cohort Tim Lafleur. "Efficiency" for the sake of a fitrep bullet or two. Now, everytime I hear about one of these new purportedly transformational programs, I nearly reflexively tell all in hearing distance, "Admirals need fitrep bullets too." There is nothing wrong with efficiency, but it has costs, and to fully realize any benefits from an efficiency, those costs must be seen and recognized in an objective and accurate way. From the Milius study one can clearly see some very different visions on costs and effectiveness from the deckplates on Milius to the hallowed halls at SURFPAC. And who was at SURFPAC at the time...
You can't do an experiment justice if you have already preordained the outcome. I think that in nearly every one of these things the outcomes were preordained and sighted well before the experiment or pilot project was begun.
I had little respect for the intelligence and ethics of these people before all this came to light, and considered them disingenuous at the least. Seeing what their efforts of years gone by have now wrought now makes me ill.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pnav/is_200210/ai_2889525783/
The thing about it, is that it hasn't worked. It doesn't work. By forcing it to work, we short change ourselves. How can we discover a better way if we do not allow ourselves to see what is false, what doesn't work?
Wayy too much of, "Paint The Side The Admiral Sees" in recent years.
All that STFU going on.
Manning. Training. Gear. Family. It has to be in that order. People die when it is not in that order. (I invite the wrath of older more salty sailors who may disagree).
The Balisle Report is hugely important because it puts to text that which great men like our USFF commander already know: there are disparities between the requirements being put on our sailors by Washington and the Resources that are being allocated.
I never expect to see a "revolt of the admirals." I've been in the game too long. Met too many of them. But I would like to see a revolt of the commanders or captains. An open ended letter saying "ENOUGH!" I wonder how many 05's or O6's would commit their names to it?
remember that VADM Phil Balisle, USN(ret) is himself to be held accountable here. As COMNAVSEA in the mid-2000's, his task from CNO was to in effect kill off the Aegis Program Office structure (PMS 400B primarily), to achieve efficiencies, and to roll those efficiencies back into other shipbuilding programs such as LPD-17, then DD(X), and others. It didn't work. the office responsible for building/buying complex Aegis Weapons Systems computer programs was terminated and folded into a new org (PEO IWS), efficiencies were pulled to pay other navy bills, the LPD17 and DD(X) SHAPMs didn't recieve the benefit of these efficiences, OMN was slashed from the budgets, SCN was pulled when we thought we'd stop at DDG112, and we wonder why we're seeing the problems in maintenance, training, and quality in the code delivered to the waterfront?
Phil Balisle was part of the problem in 2004 and now gets to report about it as a VP in industry as a Subject Matter Expert. Who was it that once said "we have met the enemy, and it is we." ?
Who was it that once said "we have met the enemy, and it is we." ?
Pogo...
Sadly, this is no joke.
Here is a better link...
I think there are a whole bunch of scalps to be collected...without benefit of a drug induced euphoria before the knife is drawn about the head. Training is suffering, too. Who was CNET (and staff) through all this?
Oops! Should have gone with fireball's comment one up!
Pretty up "Do more with less", commit it to powerpoint, sell your soul, and become an industry SME. Nice. A$$hats.
SN Timmy and ENS Gumdrop is gonna die as a result, but they're just from the town of "John Wayne, Johnny Cash and John Deere". Not inside the beltway.
These guys live in a world of peacetime steaming and watchstanding with no maintenance and no combat conditions. Its a perfect shipyard world, where everything always works and nothing ever breaks, where equipment magically cleans itself and the crew spontaneously breaks out in song.
Whatever they are smoking: I want some. Now.
Jesus, Fireball. You really captured it. In 1996 this was the plan. LPD-17 was the first of many planned ships that were going to epitomize this concept (followed by DD(X), LCS, CG(X)). Here's a piece of trivia for you: who set the manning requirement on DDX / DDG1000?
That's right, Mike Mullen Actual. you can thank him for the zero bench concept. Ya know, it's funny. you would never show up for a junior varsity football game with no bench, yet Admiral Mike thinks that it is a good idea to show up to war that way.
Methinks me knows who you are, fireball......
Phil Balisle was part of the problem in 2004 and now gets to report about it as a VP in industry as a Subject Matter Expert.
So happens I was wondering what DRS may have been paid for this...
These problems are attributable to only one thing. Poor leadership. There are many reasons we have such poor leadership, but here are some.
1. Our system actively rewards liars. Tell the truth and say it can't be done - you are done. Prove it can be done with reports that are lies - welcome to the club. I have seen and heard of more false reports than can be counted on fingers and toes by direction of superiors.
2. The liars who are rewarded by the system choose their replacements. 'Nuff said there.
3. We elevate technocrats at the expense of leaders. Since organizations do not exist without the people doing the work, this is a tremendous error, and we repeat it continuously.
I fear that we have created a senior leadership culture of unethical amoral technocrats who don't care at all about the Sailors they lead. This may be irrevesible, since the only people with the power to change the system are products of it. We have great equipment that is poorly maintained and great Sailors who are poorly led. It really is pathetic.
What Mike Mullen knows about war you can stick in a thimble. Ditto Roughead.
Ahh LEADERSHIP.
Will the Navy ever find any at its top level? I wouldn't follow the current and recent past crowd out of a burning building.... Unscrupulous and self-serving politicians.
one only has to observe an availability on LCS to realize how AFU the newfangled manning and maintenance philosophies are....
One of the most insightful thread comments I've seen in here. WOULD READ AGAIN.
"Manning. Training. Gear. Family. It has to be in that order."
Concur. With one caveat: Family = crew
When the family is in crisis, then close ranks and take care of your own (family, shipmate with a family in crisis).
Your crew is your only lasting legacy in the Navy. Take care of them.
I see that NAVSEA link about the Milius is dead....
NAVSEA sure is quick to take down links that cast them unfavorably.
Guess they are afraid of the facts.
Pogo was set in the Okeefenokee Swamp
Seems this recent video taken in that swamp is a good allusion to where USN shipbuilding is these days....
I can answer this question. CNET's priorities get generated by the SWE PRT (Surface Warfare Enterprise Personnel Readiness Training) Integrated Product Team. Priorities are set by the SWE. It is quite intriguing to watch the new unofficial chain of command in action.
All it took was one watch of minimum manning to convince me that the concept needed to sent to the circular file. Instead in DC land it was hailed as good for us in the Fleet and thus decreed to the Fleet.
I can attest that the same thing happened with Surface Ship manning and maintenance in the early 00's with the same person in charge of the OPNAV Surface Warfare directorate
Here is the sequence of events regarding the birth of a supposed efficiency...
- Overall funding reduction issued
- Crisis on how to pay the bill
- Pet projects exempted...what cut will result in the least pushback
- Easiest targets...maintenance, operations, and manning
- Develop a quasi-sellable story on the rationale for maint, ops, and manning reductions (minimal manning, SIMA maintenance, etc.)
- Promulgate talking points from sellable story throughout the fleet with the CNO-endorsed label to avoid pushback
- Repeat again and again and again each year
- Result...where we are today
- Who is accountable...nobody
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