Senior Navy officer won't excuse crashes
Official refuses to blame hectic pace or strained budget.
A senior U.S. Navy officer told a congressio- nal oversight panel Thursday that the hectic pace of military operations and a constrained military budget don’t excuse two warship accidents in the Pacific region that killed 17 American sailors and led the sea-going service to order a broad investigation into its performance and readiness.
“No matter how tough our operating environment, or how strained our budget, we shouldn’t be and cannot be colliding with other ships and running aground,” Adm. William Moran, the vice chief of naval operations, told mem- bers of the House Armed Ser- vices Committee. “That is not about resourcing; it is about safety and it is about leader- ship at sea.”
Moran said the Navy is “shocked” by the collisions involving the USS John S. McCain in August the USS Fitzgerald in June. But he also used the hearing to urge Congress to end the practice of providing defense budgets by way of stopgap spending measures. The stopgap bills have been used frequently over the last eight years and lock the Pentagon’s budget in at last year’s level, which bars military services from starting new programs or ending old ones. That forces the ser- vices to move money from their weapons modernization and training accounts to pay for current missions.
The shortfalls sparked a discussion about whether the Navy needs to refuse addi- tional missions until the force is better stabilized. Moran said the Navy, in the wake of the McCain collision, launched a wide-ranging review to exam- ine those questions and also assess sailor training and navigational proficiency. Separate investigations are looking into the cause of the collisions.
“Our culture is we’re going to get it done. That’s what the Navy is all about,” he said. “And sometimes our culture works against us.
Ten sailors aboard the destroyer USS John S. McCain were declared missing after their ship crashed into a Liberian-flagged oil tanker in coastal waters off Singapore. Seven sailors died when another destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, hit a container ship off Japan.
John Pendleton of the Government Accountability Office said the Navy is “treading water” in a push to keep up with operational demands that have put a heavy strain on the force. Pendleton said GAO found that more than a third of the warfare cer- tifications for cruiser and destroyer crews based in Japan, including certifications for seamanship, had expired as of June. That represents “a more than a five- fold increase in the percentage of expired warfare certifi- cations for these ships” over the last two years, according to Pendleton.