Wednesday, July 21, 2010

SUPSHIPS adopts the Salamander Program

Can you help me connect the dots? Can you see something we have been warning and talking about on this blog since ... well ... we started?

First;

"I would tell you a number of our problems in shipbuilding programs, recent problems, had their roots in what I would say is a severe undervaluing of what the supervisor did, probably at the senior Navy level," Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy said at an American Society of Naval Engineers conference on July 14.

McCoy said that understaffing led to a brain drain in SUPSHIP, which became critical when older employees began retiring without handing down the skills their replacements needed. "We looked at the Gulf Coast shipyards, and I want to say there was a three-year period from like 2005 to 2008 where 75 percent of the people at SUPSHIP Gulf Coast had less than five years of experience in the supervisor business," he said.

McCoy pointed out that an array of vital ships are built on the Gulf Coast, including one of the Littoral Combat Ship models and amphibious platforms, making it all the more critical to make sure the region's Navy shipbuilders have proper supervision. The vice admiral assured the audience that SUPSHIP now has the funding it needs and is ramping up its staff.

Existing SUPSHIP employees were also forced to repeat the qualification process, and many of them had to undergo additional training to get up to speed. "I'll settle for the next year or two at just being brilliant at the basics before we even do some of the other things," McCoy said, "and I have to know every single day that fundamental welding is correct, cabling is correct, coatings are correct, every single day I have to know it."

You're welcome. You can make your consulation fees payable to a bar tab at Singletons under the name "Salamander Yacht Club."

From the "how is that transformation working for 'ya now" file,

Officials Concerned Navy Is Reducing Manning On Ships Too Hastily While the Navy is driving toward reduced manning on ships to lower total ownership costs, some officials are concerned that the sea service may be taking sailors off of those ships without full foresight into the second- and third-order effects.

At an American Society of Naval Engineers conference last week, Rear Adm. Thomas Eccles, deputy commander for naval systems engineering said that he saw a graphic illustration of poorly thought-out reduced manning on a new LPD-17. The ship had an automated engine room that theoretically obviated the need for keeping a watchstander in the engine room, but after a problem arose in the network, the ship had to switch to a backup computer system and sailors needed to shut down an engine. However, the automatic shut-down signal didn't detach the engine from the reduction gear, which was still being twirled by an active engine.

"So when the shut-down engine with no lube oil continued to turn at a high rate because the engine on the opposite reduction gear was still clutched into that engine, we had a bad day," Eccles recounted. "And not only did I have a bad day, several of us in the room did. But the sailors on that ship had an acutely bad day. So who should have been in the engine room?"

Eccles said the issue should have been obvious at a system design level, but wasn't properly thought through.

"I'm convinced that what they didn't do is a sufficient job of considering what are the downside effects of taking that large processor out of the engine room in the form of the [machinist's mate second class] who could have made that shutdown and de-clutch," Eccles said. "Because that guy makes a lot of decisions, and the men and women who do that today don't have to be in our engine room, but their decision sets have to be in the right place, and until we get that right we ought to be a little bit slower about taking them out of our engine rooms. My personal opinion."
Sid, Byron .... aren't the bold parts almost directly lifted or at worse paraphrased from our comments in .... 2006/7?

Oh, and you can just extend that Singletons tab ... Byron is thirsty, Sid is laughing like a hyenna, and that vein in my forehead is throbb'n.

With a crew in the 40s, each sailor on the LCS needs to be highly trained to take on work that would require multiple people on a destroyer.

With more and more ships that require a small number of highly experienced sailors, Eccles said he is concerned about where those sailors will come from. "That's not somebody who just came out of boot camp, unless he just came out of boot camp and a bunch of other schools and somehow gained the maturity that I think is only gained at sea," he added.
...
Other officers shared his concerns. Rear Adm. David Johnson, deputy commander for undersea technology, recalled that when the Virginia-class submarines were designed, several lower-level positions were eliminated in favor of putting two petty officers at the ship patrol station.

"Great, we reduced the watch bill by six guys," Johnson said. "But the problem is, now we don't have a pipeline to feed to actually go and create the people that would sit in those seats because we took out the junior guys who actually learn to drive the ships."

Johnson also argued that pushing more maintenance off until the ship is at port has created heavy in-port workloads, and the situation may be driving good sailors out of the Navy.

Rear Adm. Jerry Burroughs said the problem goes beyond the day-to-day operations of a ship, especially on ships where low manning was not a part of the original design.

"The problem I think we're at today is, you get to a point where you take manning down any lower, it gets very difficult to fight the ship from a damage control perspective and maintain the ship," Burroughs said. "So I'm very interested in watching LCS and seeing how that model works from a manning perspective, because it's very low, and they accounted for that in design and I'm very hopeful that they'll be successful in showing ways to do that in the future."
I told 'ya. Things will reach a point where they can't push things to someone elses PCS cycle and all this will come out. Welcome to the party folks. You're buying. If 'ya ain't happy, tell it to Clark, Mullen, and Roughead - this is their baby.

... and finally - from the "Are we a learning institution" part of the Navy via
Navy Times July 26, 2010 pg. 16 By Mark D. Faram.
Navy leaders could cut as many as 25,000 sailors and officers from the ranks in the next few years as part of a wide-ranging drawdown they are considering to offset skyrocketing manpower and equipment costs as budgets shrink.
Ummmm, no. We need to back up a few steps. If we are going to do this - you need to do what I proposed last week. You. Must. Start. By. Cutting. Flag. Officer. Staffs.

Then we go through non-warfighting billets, etc - I won't go though the process again of explaining it - email me if you are new and are sans-clue.


It is a false economy to think you are going to save any money in the medium to long run by having fewer Sailors on ship's manning documents. Full stop.

44 comments:

Byron said...

You dummies should have listened to us YEARS ago, and you wouldn't have the mess you have now. Don't forget that preservation thing either. Since sailors don't do diddly where the commodore or admiral don't go, your hulls are slowly but surely being eaten away by pure old fashioned neglect.

And yes, we DID tell you so.

LT B said...

The other problem is the FITREP cycle and only thinking beyond 2 yrs.  So the FITREP bullet reads, "saved Navy umpteen thousands of dollars by cutting 25 billets."  Next guy comes in and his crap is falling down around him because he needs 25 more men to keep the gear up and running.  But hey, we shot a "LASER" (fingers making quote signs) at a drone, so I am certain we've figured out this whole PMS and preservation thingy.  But, hey Gary, I failed INSURV, but have reached your 16% Hispanic "goal."  My $h!t is tight!  Wrong priorities breed failures throughout the Fleet.  I blame the last CNO's. 

LT B said...

Oh yeah, also, selling our tradition, culture, and honor as the guys w/ lots of scrambled eggs on their covers fellated the Congress-critters has bought us Barney Fwank trying to cut us to the bone.  Stand up to Congress, show them the value of a strong Navy, understand "customer service" to the taxpayer, keep your honor and hopefully the Fleet in tact.  The current strategery is NOT working gang.  Cowtowing to the diversity douches and playing happy talk w/ our civilian leadership just does not fit our Navy Core Values.  But when Admirals decide to be Politicians instead of Naval Officers we shouldn't be surprised.

UltimaRatioRegis said...

"<span>Officials Concerned Navy Is Reducing Manning On Ships Too Hastily While the Navy is driving toward reduced manning on ships to lower total ownership costs"</span>

Such an assertion would likely fail you in any kind of MBA program worth its salt.  As an equipment maintainer (Motor T and artillery), such an idea is absurd.  Each piece of gear fielded comes with a complete list of man-hour and resource requirements per usage time/calendar time.  Ignore at one's own peril. Wanna see TCO skyrocket?  Start replacing major SECREPs on an end item earlier in the life cycle than predicted because of crappy maintenance.  If it is true in the micro (trucks, guns, tractors, etc.) it is true in the macro (ships).

Assertions to the contrary are either startlingly ignorant or deliberately misleading.

Salty Gator said...

Good to see the "Fwank" catching on!

Hence why I wasn't all lathered up to see Gary at the Tour de France.  He was probably inspecting their Department de Diversite!

Speaking of which, if you ever want to see REAL racism, not trumpeted up America-bashing, check out le banileu (the suburbs) of Paris. 

Salty Gator said...

Or how a two year FITREP cycle prevents new "transformational" classes of ships such as the LPD 17 from developing any institutional memory / knowledge base on the class of ships.  I find it interesting that we were able to create the AEGIS mafia back in the '80s so that that reovlutionary system could be maintained....

Salty Gator said...

Sal, not just eliminating staffs, eliminate the admirals!

How many diversity industry admirals could we afford to do without?

How about getting rid of 2nd and 3rd Fleets (I'm open to more seasoned SWOs telling me why this is or isn't a bad idea)

I'm all about dialing down our "transformational" budget while we un-hose training, maintenance, and manpower.  Your laser is neat-o, but won't work for half a damn if the SSTG that powers it is down hard...

Anon said...

I agree cutting the number of Admirals and their staffs is a great start, but getting to 25,000 will take more.  I tell ya, the fighter gap and the questioning of how many Carrirer Strike Groups we need is trouble on the horrizon - it wouldn't surprise me if we skip refueling one of the Nimitz class and just eliminate a handfull of ships.

xformed said...

That Mafia had it's good and it had it's bad side, too.  They built a facility in the middle of no where, then tried to close the one where they already had gunfire and radar ranges on the beach to do testing, etc.  Granted, it's not like you could launch missiles there, but, you could have saved facility costs, as well as TAD/Travel funds....and you wouldn't have had to get all the mosquito bites, either, let alone put in towers for CEC to get the signals from Dam Neck to Wallops for testing.

They had an entire parallel training organization, for the Snipes, too...becuase that extra bit of KWs in their generators made them special across the whole plant.  The upper deck teams thought no one else could possible understand DTE, let alone really advanced concepts of "find target, compute intercept, deliver ordnance, report 'Splash Vampire!'" so they needed whole teams (STs, and GMs, too) who had been AEGISized.

SMEs I get, but there are so many cost saving that could have been attained by using the already manned up teams that really did do the exact same thing for the fleet, even back then, that we would have not had to cut funding from the bare bones upkeep of the FFG combat systems programs, so the SM-2/3 developments could keep moving forward smartly.

xformed said...

"<span>Navy leaders could cut as many as 25,000 sailors and officers from the ranks in the next few years as part of a wide-ranging drawdown they are considering to offset skyrocketing manpower and equipment costs as budgets shrink."</span>

Damn those people costs!  I think we should try to transiton to the people-less Navy...the sooner the better!

(Arhnold...call your office...they may need you to consult!)

AW1 Tim said...

  NOW they get it? What happened to all that "talk to the sailors in the fleet" crap that leadership kept saying it was doing. Were they using selective hearing or only looking for sailors who would say what the flags wanted to hear?

  AS much as they drive me nuts, both Maine Senators Snowe and Collins have interests in military affairs, and I've been writing to them both about these issues for quite awhile. I encourage all of you reading this to write a nice letter outlining these problems and suggested fixes to them and/or your own Senators and assorted congress critters.

Navig8r said...

According to the LCS Classron, all the sailors in LCS will be "second tour" sailors.  Since they are building 55 ships, and they are planning 3 crews for every 2 ships, where will all those guys be doing their "first tours?" 

At least they don't have to worry about sending Petty Officers mess cranking.  There are no mess cranks on LCS, everyone washes his/her own dishes (guess who scubs the $h!tters).

Painting and preservation will be done by the swarms of contractors who will stream aboard every time the ship returns to port to do all the PMS checks with a periodicity greater than weekly.  Wasn't that the concept with the FFGs?  How did that turn out?  Don't worry about the rusty hull Captain, the contractors will take care of that when we get home.

Right.

MR T's Haircut said...

<span></span>
<span>Why don't you ask the Diversity Commissar's that question... they can tell you where the Sailors will come from, what they will look like hell even what gender they are.. AND they will be offered that job in your little crappy ship based solely on Skin Color!!  Yea!!!</span>
<span></span>
<span>"With more and more ships that require a small number of highly experienced sailors, Eccles said he is concerned about where those sailors will come from. "That's not somebody who just came out of boot camp, unless he just came out of boot camp and a bunch of other schools and somehow gained the maturity that I think is only gained at sea," he added."</span>

MR T's Haircut said...

bingo

Therapist1 said...

Sorry to pile on, but this seems very basic to me and should have been addressed in planning phases.  It appears that people listen too much to the Kool-Aid providers.  In my business it happens with the drug company representatives.  They listen too much to the new product push and not enough to the independent voices.

A recently retired guy said...

It all started back in the early 90's when the ISO standards started and we let go of all the deck plate SUPSHIP surveyors.  The best way to get a good ship is management by walking around and that counts in construction, too.  Those surveyors were key players with eyes on every weld and fitting as the ship was constructed.

bullnav said...

Heh, cut 25,000 heads while still supplying 12,000+ folks as IA's because the Navy won't stand up and tell the Army to shove it...don't worry, the ship building budget is being cut so we don't need as many sailors at sea anymore.

Salty Gator said...

HAHAHAHAHA......just what SUPSHIP needs, more therapists!

Salty Gator said...

XFORMED, thanks for that perspective.  Taken on board for future reference!

GIMP said...

Well, looks like someone is finally starting to get it.  Too bad much damage has already been done.  This begs the question "how could a bunch who make such poor decisions have ever risen to the level where their poor decisions have systemic Navy wide effects?"  Our force is a direct reflection of our senior leadership, and if the Navy is in poor shape (which I believe it is), it can be attributed directly to poor leadership.

We need structural reform.  Fewer flags, fewer staffs, less complicated chains of command, fewer working groups, warfare improvement programs, committees, cross warfare specialty teams, executive councils, groups, etc... building power points, taking minutes, and creating requirements for gadgets.

We need more Sailors, enlisted and officer, on ships, airplanes, and submarines turning wrenches, fighting corrosion, learning and teaching their trades, using, testing, mastering their systems and subsystems, and being generally effective at the things we as a Navy do in the real world on, under, and over the worlds seas and oceans.

LT B said...

And I meant the last 3 CNOs.  I forgot to enumerate. 

Byron said...

Depends on where you're at. Ask any ship that's had maintainence at Mayport and find out what they think of the work here. We have lot's of SUPSHIP on the deck plates, and 99% are damn good people. We always have a good relationship with the ship and NAVSEA with the idea of A) making the customer happy, B) making a profit, and C) making sure the ships get's what it need (or as close to it as the budget will allow.

Byron said...

And since we're talking about NAVSEA and Singletons, make sure they include cab fare for the locals like me and limo service to the airport (and of course airfare!) for the likes of Sid and Lt. B. Be nice to cough up the coin to fly the offical Navy Grandmother, Maggie down here from Boston, too :)

LT B said...

I just need a place to park my bike.  Have to hold the next visit when it's not so damned hot. 

Byron said...

Yeah, you could do the rocket ride up 4 and then 95...maybe do it inside where there's AC? I could live without the "ambience" of salt water, oyster shells and dead fish :)

YNSN said...

When the chopping block comes down, and the Navy made due with 10k fewer Sailors doing Sailor things, and the Army needed that 10k to do Soldier things... Which side will Congress err on? 

methinks they will get the extra 10k, and we who did without, will lose those bodies.

YNSN said...

If the Admiral fixes what needs to be fixed... I'll cover his tab too.

LT B said...

I have to ride 10 over to that area.

Anon said...

I heard an interesting arguement on why we keep supporting the IAs, and in the crazy political world of Big Navy and Washington D.C. it makes sense.  If we were to say we can't/won't support then we could loose funding  - not sure what or how much.  And we all know how everyone loves $$$.

UltimaRatioRegis said...

YNSN,

I wish that were so.  I could live with that.  But the 10k IAs doing "solider things" will get cut from the Navy, and the Army will still get cut 5k. 

That is what the tea leaves say, anyway.

UltimaRatioRegis said...

<span>YNSN, 
 
I wish that were so.  I could live with that.  But the 10k IAs doing "soldier things" will get cut from the Navy, and the Army will still get cut 5k.  
 
That is what the tea leaves say, anyway.</span>

xformed said...

Thanks.  Lived it and was constatntly amazed when some very smart E-8/9s/LDO of mine were told they didn't understand AEGIS.  That was the training side.  Later I was the guy who had the RAN Project Officer (who managed the FFG-7 CS program at FCDSSA) who had to figure out how to strip it to the bone at the behest of the NAVSEA sponsors, when the SM-2 project needed about $20M all of a sudden.  And that was mid90s, for a platform we still use.

Salty Gator said...

That is not correct, Anon.  We weren't asked to provide IAs.  We volunteered.  Instead of saying that what we were providing to the GWOT was flexible strike packages, MEUs, sea basing, control of the sea lanes and the assurance that China, Iran and North Korea wouldn't take advantage of the situation, we instead decided to negate the work of our entire navy and throw down our entire GWOT support to SEALs, EOD and 10k IA's.

Navy Suppo said...

I can get you 2,500+ billets tomorrow by civilianizing or eliminating the Supply Corps (SC) billets ashore, turn over JO ship tours to senior LCPOs, and making SC department heads and above line officers.  Count me as a reformed Suppo who now realizes very clearly that the Navy doesn't revolve around the SC and that the working capital fund that the SC uses to fund their logistics operations hides some major inefficient operations throughout the Navy.  Ask any RPPO aboard ship about the cost of parts/supplies.  

Byron said...

Yeah, I always did wonder why you did dumb things like put one grinding wheel (for a very small die grinder, about 2" in diam.) in one little plastic bag with its own NSN. Great gig you got going.

C-dore 14 said...

Ummmm...Singleton's...

sid said...

As long as the beer is cold...I can find a way to pad in just like a stray cat...

Actually I could even deal if the beer is tepid.

FCC said...

Further, we need to re-establish a culture in which it is okay (even, if I may dream, one in which khaki are *expected*) to run candid, real-world feedback up the chain of command.  Coming from the frigate world, I've seen a lot of Kool-Ade guzzling, even as the billets were taken away, as "can-do" spirit went too far.  Some examples: 
  1) Three section duty in homeport (due, in part, to some vestigal-but-mandated FP watchstations). 
  2) all-hands field-daying of Engineering spaces -- a page out of the "work it may, shine it must" playbook. 
  3) Pencil-whipping of that devil of a program, TORIS/TFOM, with the full knowledge of (and sometimes at the suggestion from) ATG themselves when the SMD could not even support a full two-section U/W watchbill, even with small training teams.

Byron said...

Give us a yell if you're ever here in Gator country, C-dore!

Grandpa Bluewater said...

One of the remarks in the basic posting which caught my attention is the one about eliminating the junior people and never catching wise to the fact that what is being eliminated is the ability to train and bring up the incumbents' successors. Eventually, the inevitable takes its course, and a crash program to improve training and inject new blood will get jury rigged under forced draft, but what is lost is the thousand little items unteachable from computers and books (developing "feel" for the use of feeler guages to take diesel engine blower clearances, for example).  This can be hidden by new gear until it gets about a decade of wear on it and the expertise once routinely expected is largely dissipated.

What is also occurs is the loss of judgement human relations, like how to train up a rookie, keep a team with mixed experience motivated and productive while avoiding the basic errors which are usually what are fatal to sailors and equipment.

The worst loss is the appreciation for the cost of losing experience in creating experience and good judgement in others. The sad thing is that experience and good judgement are priceless, and largely unquantifiable and thus ignored... until you leave a diesel engine turning from the gear train it's clutched into without lube oil pressure, or send Task Force Smith to blunt a major offensive without trained private soldiers, or have a kid go over the side in a blue "camo" uniform -  and the lookout doesn't know to "point" the man, and the kid can't dump his chukka style steel toed shoes because he's wearing combat boots and can't get his bell bottoms off and blow them up, because he can't get the straight leg pants off over the combat boots in 4 foot seas..

The sea still lies in wait....

Byron said...

Grandpa, if you ever make it to Singletons, we'll all buy a beer or three.

xformed said...

That nicely encapsulates it.

My USS FIRSTSHIP OSC used to randomly ask me to empty my pockets while we were somewhere on the bounding main.  He'd then tell me sea stories, which were actually "training the new Ensign without him knowing" sessions on how, I had "the right stuff," or I was missing some essential item(s) that would be highly useful were I to part ways with the vessel in an unplanned fashion.  Experience and judgement grew from these moments.  I'm sure I was but one of many junior officers Chief Mac made a difference with.

I also watched him, not being a man of big words, run an extremely effective CIC Team, ET Shop, and how he intereacted with the Mess, and the rest of the OPS Dept and the crew.  You don't get that sort of "sea smart" by pushing a DVD into a computer, do you?

UltimaRatioRegis said...

"<span>You don't get that sort of "sea smart" by pushing a DVD into a computer, do you?"</span>

Of course you do.  At a fraction of the cost.  With the diversity/global warming/force for good messages mixed in....

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