Fatigue, training gaps spell disaster at sea, sailors warn
Two deadly collisions between high-tech destroyers and easy-to-spot, slow moving cargo ships in a little over two months have stunned many in the Navy and sent top leaders scrambling for answers.
But shipboard veterans had long seen signs of trouble. Factor in a shrinking Navy performing the same duties as a larger fleet did a decade ago, constant deployments that leave little time to train and relentless duties that require sailors driving 9,000 ton vessels to endure sleepless stretches that would be illegal for bus drivers and avoidable accidents can happen, current and former officers say.
“What seems impossible — that two ships could hit in the middle of the ocean — becomes very real,” said Robert McFall, a former Navy lieutenant commander who served as the operations officer of the destroyer USS Fitzgerald in 2014. “If you are not at your best, events can start that lead to a disaster.”
Since the loss of 17 sailors after the Fitzgerald collided with a freighter near Tokyo in June, and a second destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, collided with a tanker on Aug. 21 while approaching Singapore, Navy investigators are piecing together the causes of the fatal crashes. Congress has scheduled hearings next month.
While there could be some surprising findings, officers say the accidents are almost certainly influenced by systemic problems that persist despite repeated alarms from congressional watchdogs and the Navy’s own experts.
In interviews, more than a dozen current and former ship commanders who served in the western Pacific said the strain on the Navy’s fleet there had caused maintenance gaps and training shortfalls that were not remedied or received only cursory attention as leaders were focused on immediate missions.
Strain on fleet
Compounding the stress, the officers and crew say, the Navy allows ships to rely on grueling watch schedules that leave captains and crews exhausted, even though the service ordered submarines to abandon similar schedules two years ago.
Recognizing that safety problems may go beyond what occurred on the two destroyers, the Navy intends that its examination of whether systemic issues contributed to the accidents will also review ship operations and incidents at sea over the past decade.
“This is truly a shock to the Navy’s system,” Adm. James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral who commanded destroyers, said of the recent crashes. “It’s hard to believe it is simply coincidental.”
Readiness frayed
Vice Adm. William Douglas Crowder, a retired commander of the 7th Fleet and a former deputy chief of naval operations, agreed. “As the Navy conducts this broad look in its mirror, I suspect it will recognize many blemishes that are neither new nor previously unknown,” he said.
“The key issue is whether the Navy will commit to the fundamental changes required to actually cure those shortfalls.”
In the past two decades, the number of Navy ships has decreased about 20 percent, though the time they are deployed has remained the same, according to a 2015 report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington research group funded by the Defense Department. The increased burden has fallen disproportionately on the 7th Fleet.
“There are very few ships there but the operational demands are enormous,” said Kevin Eyer, a former Navy captain who commanded cruisers in the western Pacific.
That tempo, current and former Navy officers say, has frayed readiness. Government and military investigators drew similar conclusions, warning that the mission pace was leaving crews unprepared. A 2015 study by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the high demands of Navy fleets based overseas, like the 7th in Japan, affects maintenance and training.
Investigators found that ships spend so much time at sea that there was not enough time for routine preventive repairs. And they said that while crews based in the United States were almost always completely qualified before deploying from their U.S. ports, ships based overseas and juggling multiple missions relied on a “train on the margins” approach.
“In Japan, there are no dedicated training periods built into these ships’ operational schedules,” the GAO report found. “As a result, these crews do not have all needed training and certifications.”
The bridge of each Navy destroyer is controlled by a round-the-clock shift of young officers, who must pass written and oral exams to qualify for the positions. They typically are younger than 25 and may have little shipboard experience. Junior officers also move on to other assignments after limited tours.
“Are we shortchanging their basic training, especially as we rotate our junior officers whose tours aboard ship are nominally 24 months?” Crowder asked.