US Navy Woes

[MarkOttawa]

This might cause some woes--start of lengthy piece:

Is Secretary of Defense Mattis planning radical changes to how the Navy deploys?

A typical carrier deployment from Norfolk goes like this: A tearful goodbye on the pier, a trip across the Atlantic, then one or maybe two port visits in Europe before heading through “The Ditch” and into U.S. Central Command territory. There you will stay for the bulk of the cruise before returning the way you came.

Those days might be coming to an end.

The Navy and Pentagon planners are already weighing whether to withhold the Truman Carrier Strike Group from deploying to U.S. Central Command, opting instead to hold the carrier in Europe as a check on Russia, breaking with more than 30 years of nearly continuous carrier presence in the Arabian Gulf. But even more fundamental changes could be in the works.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has made clear as the military’s top civilian that he has a very different vision for how the military will be used in the future. And recent comments have hinted at big changes on the horizon for the Navy and how it deploys.

In testimony last month, Mattis twice compared that kind of predictability to running a commercial shipping operation, and said the Navy needed to get away from being so easily anticipated.

“That’s a great way to run a shipping line,” Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee. “It’s no way to run a Navy.”

But as Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford drive towards new ways of employing the fleet, changing the way that fleet deploys will put pressure on its existing deployment model, forcing the Navy to rethink a structure that governs nearly everything it does — from manning and training to its maintenance cycles.

In an era of great-power competition with China and Russia, Mattis describes the Navy showing up where it’s not expected, making deployments less burdensome to the fleet and its families but more worrisome to a potential adversary.

“The way you do this is [to] ensure that preparation for great power competition drives not simply a rotational schedule that allows me to tell you, three years from now, which aircraft carrier will be where in the in the world,” he told House lawmakers. “When we send them out, it may be for a shorter deployment. There will be three carriers in the South China Sea today, and then, two weeks from now, there’s only one there, and two of them are in the Indian Ocean.

“They’ll be home at the end of a 90-day deployment. They will not have spent eight months at sea, and we are going to have a force more ready to surge and deal with the high-end warfare as a result, without breaking the families, the maintenance cycles — we’ll actually enhance the training time.”

OFRP under pressure

Experts contend that what Mattis is describing, a concept he’s labeled as “Dynamic Force Employment,” would necessarily create tension with the Navy’s current deployment model known as the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, an iteration of similar plans that have been in place since the Cold War.

Under the plan, introduced in 2014 by then-Fleet Forces Commander Adm. Bill Gortney, ships operate in a 36-month cycle that carves out 16 months for training and maintenance, a seven-month deployment and 13 months where the carrier and its escorts are to maintain a high level of readiness in case it needs to deploy again.

Around that model the Navy builds everything from when it brings in new recruits to boot camp to when an aircraft carrier needs to come out of its years-long reactor overhaul. It’s also a system that builds in a significant dip in readiness where, during maintenance phases, ships lose sailors with critical skills to other commands and shore duty assignments.

The dip in readiness is deliberate and informs both manning levels on the ship and the Navy’s overall end strength. Simply put, there are not enough trained sailors in the Navy to fill every job on every ship, and that’s all built into the plan.

The key to the whole plan working, however, is at least a degree of predictability...
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/05/02/is-secretary-of-defense-mattis-planning-radical-changes-to-how-the-navy-deploys/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Yikes!  PLA Navy must be chuckling hard:

The US Navy’s ships are getting old. They might be getting a lot older.

The U.S. Navy is eyeing extending the service life of all its ships according to an internal document produced by Naval Sea Systems Command that outlines the outer limits of each of the hulls currently in the fleet.

The analysis, first obtained by the military blog CDR Salamander, shows that as part of the Navy’s effort to grow the fleet to 355 ships, the service is eying extending the lives of the non-nuclear surface ships currently in the fleet to as much as an average age of 49 years, with some platforms being extended to as old as 53 years.

The letter, which qualifies that the extended service lives are contingent on following class maintenance plans, proposes extending the early Arleigh Burke destroyers to 45 years and the Flight IIAs to between 46 and 50 years. It also proposes cruisers could be extended to between 42 and 52 years; littoral combat ships to between 32 and 35 years, up from 25 years; and the amphibious assault ships to as long as 53 years up from 40 [emphasis added, really out-doing RCN].

The document raises questions about how exactly the Navy would accomplish the extended service lives on its heavily used surface combatants and amphibious ships, especially platforms such as the cruisers that the Navy has proposed in recent past be decommissioned citing burdensome maintenance and upkeep costs. The average cruiser, for example, is almost pushing 30 years old. The oldest destroyers, the Fight I Arleigh Burkes without a helicopter hanger, are between 21 and 27 years old.

The costs of owning the aging platforms is only going to increase every extra year the ships are in service. But foremost among the concerns to consider, experts say, is what it would take to keep the combat systems functioning and relevant into the future.

...

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/06/07/the-us-navys-ships-are-getting-old-they-might-be-getting-a-lot-older/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Lessons for RCAF?

Navy Working Through Plan to Hit 80 Percent Hornet Mission Capable Target

The Navy is working through how it will try and hit the ambitious readiness target set by Secretary of Defense James Mattis for Hornet and Super Hornet fighters, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition James “Hondo” Guerts said on Tuesday.

In a September memo, Mattis told the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force those services needed to have their fleet of fighters to meet an 80 percent mission capable rate by the end of Fiscal Year 2019. The Navy’s current rate is 53 percent for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fleet and 44 percent for the service’s reserve fleet of F-18C Hornets [emphasis added].

Leading the effort for the Navy will be commander of Naval Air Forces, Vice Adm. DeWolfe Miller III, Guerts said.

...Miller is looking to commercial aviation for tools and techniques, Naval Air Forces spokesman Cmdr. Ron Flanders told USNI News last week.

“One of the main efforts involves adopting commercial best practices to modernize maintenance depots and streamline supply chain management,” Flanders said. “By adopting these proven practices, we will rapidly attain the ability to sustain increased numbers of full mission capable aircraft and achieve SECDEF’s readiness vision.”

Both Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer and Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan have promoted commercial aviation maintenance practices as a model to improve how quickly the services can repair their aircraft.

In a roundtable with reporters in August, Spencer sent the Navy and Marines to Delta airlines to see how the company had reduced its maintenance backlog...

In the shorter term, the Navy and Marines are also considering shedding older aircraft to focus repair efforts on newer aircraft that don’t require as much maintenance...
https://news.usni.org/2018/10/17/navy-working-plan-hit-80-percent-hornet-mission-capable-target

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

What mighty carrier force?

1) All 6 East Coast Carriers In Dock, Not Deployed: Hill Asks Why

As the Navy scrambles to get enough parts and people to move carriers back out to sea, it's facing a crowded waterfront at Norfolk.

When the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman missed a planned deployment last month after suffering major electrical problems, the only East Coast-based carrier currently capable of deploying was forced to head back to the dock.

As the Navy scrambles to get the Truman out to sea, it is pulling material and work crews from two other carriers undergoing their own long-planned refit and repair availabilities, though Navy officials say they don’t expect the Truman’s problems to affect those other repair efforts. As it sits pier-side in Norfolk, the Truman has plenty of company, joining an already crowded Norfolk waterfront where six of the Navy’s 11 carriers are currently tied up. At the time we’re going to print that means not one of the six carriers based in Norfolk are ready to be deployed.

One congressional staffer familiar with Navy issues called the fact that there are so many ships at Norfolk at the same time “unusual,” but said this has happened before. “How much of an issue this will be operationally will depend on how long the situation lasts,” the staffer said.

Normally, six carriers are based in Norfolk. Four are based on the West Coast, with two based in San Diego and two in Bremerton, Wash. The final carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, is the only carrier based outside of the United States, in Yokosuka, Japan.

It’s unclear how long the Truman will be out of commission, but early estimates that it would be ready by the end of November might be too optimistic, according to a person familiar with the issue...
https://breakingdefense.com/2019/10/all-6-east-coast-carriers-are-at-the-dock-hill-presses-for-oversight/

2) VCNO Burke: Navy Needs New Readiness Model for New Era of Conflict

The Navy’s current carrier strike group readiness generation model may no longer work in today’s era of great power competition and struggling ship maintenance yards, the vice chief of naval operations said.

The Navy’s two fleet commanders are taking a “hard look” at the current model, the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, and will send the chief of naval operations ideas for better or different models for this era of great power competition, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Robert Burke told USNI News today.

Speaking at the Military Reporters and Editors annual conference, Burke said that OFRP had been written in 2012 and was optimized for a different world than the Navy operates in today. With two major near-peer competitors in the world and ship maintenance yards that are struggling with aging infrastructure and inexperienced workforces, a new model may be needed, the VCNO said.

“We understand why the carriers are in the situation they’re in. OFRP was designed – the O in OFRP stands for optimized – it was optimized in 2012 around some different objectives. So we recognize that we have to take a good hard look at it,” Burke said.
“We started that look last July, and Admirals Grady and Aquilino, the two fleet commanders in the Atlantic and the Pacific, owe CNO an answer on that here in the coming months. But we are very open to making changes to that readiness plan, and we’ve taken it down to the fundamental assumptions and principles of it, and what do we have to do differently.”

OFRP is a 36-month cycle built around about six or seven months of maintenance work, followed by six months for basic and integrated training, a primary deployment of about seven months, and then a “sustainment” or “surge” phase to round out the three-year cycle, where the carrier strike group retains its high readiness and could deploy a second time or surge forward for a contingency if called upon by national leaders.

However, the yards that maintain carriers – especially the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on the East Coast – are backed up with carrier and submarine repair work, and maintenance availabilities are being estimated at much longer lengths due to the backlogs there. For instance, USNI News previously reported that USS George H.W. Bush’s (CVN-77) ongoing maintenance availability should last 10-and-a-half months, but it is scheduled for 28 months due to yard capacity.

Overall, four of the Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers are totally out of the OFRP cycle altogether: USS George Washington (CVN-73) and USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) are in or about to go into their mid-life refueling and complex overhauls, respectively; USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is wrapping up its post-shakedown availability but will still need to go through full ship shock trials typically done to first-in-class ships, followed by another maintenance period, before it can start working up for a maiden deployment likely in 2024; and Bush is at the front end of its planned 28-month availability at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Another carrier on the West Coast, USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), is in a lengthy docked maintenance period, but the Navy has declined to comment on how long the availability was planned for.

Of the 11 carriers, just two are deployed today: USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), which has been deployed for seven months already and will remain on station until a replacement can relieve it, Burke said, and USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), which is the forward-deployed carrier in Japan [emphasis added].
https://news.usni.org/2019/10/25/vcno-burke-navy-needs-new-readiness-model-for-new-era-of-conflict

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Plus the shrinking USN:

Navy May Scrap Goal of 355 Ships; 310 Is Likely
The Navy, facing a budget crunch in the near future, is looking for more punch from fewer ships, a top Admiral says.

A top Navy official suggested today the service is reconsidering its long-stated goal of a 355-ship fleet, floating the idea that a number around 310 ships would be about the best it can do if current funding projections hold.

Without big increases in shipbuilding accounts over the current five-year budget projection, “we can keep around 305 to 310 ships whole — properly manned, properly maintained, properly equipped,” Navy vice chief Adm. Robert Burke told reporters today. Although a 355-ship Navy “is a great target for us, it’s more important that we have the maximum capability to address every challenge that we might face,” he added.

As it stands now, the Navy has 290 ships, and will hit 300 by next fall, but as Navy leadership tries to build more ships, it has to confront two significant problems: keeping the ships it has in good condition, and wrestling with what are expected to be flat or declining budgets in the coming years. Only about 30 percent of the Navy’s destroyer fleet can leave port on time after repairs, while six of the service’s 11 aircraft carriers are in dock under repair, including the USS Harry S. Truman, which was supposed to deploy to the Middle East last month but has been hobbled by electrical problems.

The Truman can’t relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier in the Middle East, forcing the Navy to extend the big deck’s 7-month deployment. “She’s just over eight months now,” Burke said in the Navy’s first confirmation of the extended deployment, “because the world gets a vote.”

During a Wednesday hearing on Navy readiness, Rep. John Garamendi, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee readiness subcommittee, warned the service’s top acquisition official, “if you cannot take care of a 290 ship fleet, so maybe you shouldn’t build more.”

Burke’s comments appear to offer a peek into the new force structure assessment the Navy and Marine Corps are currently working on, slated to wrap up by the end of the year. The two services want to more fully integrate their operations and spending, allowing the Marines to support the fleet from land using precision fires and F-35s based on small, ad hoc bases.

Burke didn’t close the door on the larger fleet size, which was a major talking point for President Trump on the campaign trail in 2016. “It’s not to say we won’t getting 355, but some tough decisions need to be made,” Burke said, citing concerns over the Navy’s ability to repair ships on time and get them back out to sea. “On readiness, are we there yet, are we exactly where we want to be or should be? No.”

Part of the problem has been years of continuing resolutions passed by Congress in lieu of full yearly budgets. Those have affected operations and maintenance budgets...
https://breakingdefense.com/2019/10/navy-may-scrap-goal-of-355-ships-310-is-likely/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Are USN Super Hornets properly organized and deployed, and are their pilots properly trained? Start of a major piece by a serving officer:

Improve F/A-18 Super Hornet Training and Readiness with More Missiles and Fewer Missions

The performance of American naval aviators in the early years of the Vietnam War was dismal. Navy fighter jets, launching from aircraft carriers on “Yankee Station,” flew air-to-air and air-to-ground  missions over North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese sortied their own fighter jets, Soviet-built MiGs to shoot down American aviators, resulting in intense aerial combat between the two forces. From June 1965 to September 1968, U.S. aircraft fired nearly 600 air-to-air missiles. In nearly 360 engagements, the likelihood of a kill was one per ten missiles shot, and the kill ratio between U.S. aviators and the North Vietnam Air Force was two to one. In the Korean War, American fighters had enjoyed a 10-to-1 ratio, in World War II, the Navy F6F Hellcat fighter’s kill ratio was 20-to-1. Something needed to change.

The Navy directed Captain Frank Ault to assess what went wrong. He published his findings in The Report of the Air-to-Air Missile System Capability Review, commonly known as “The Ault Report.” The report led to the creation of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, or TOPGUN. Ault singled out two major problems with fighter squadron training and readiness. First, F-4 Phantom II pilots were not firing enough air-to-air missiles in training to prepare them for employing the missiles in combat. Next, the multi-role Phantom was being over-used for air-to-ground missions, resulting in aviators unskilled in aerial combat. The Navy consequently refocused on air-to-air employment and by the end of the conflict, the kill ratio improved significantly, to as high as 15-to-1.

Modern U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet squadrons find themselves in circumstances similar to those Ault investigated in 1968. Current Navy strike-fighter squadrons do not fire enough air-to-air missiles, and their training mission profiles are too fragmented between air-to-air, air-to-ground, and other mission areas. In a future conflict with China or Russia, as in the past, naval aviators should expect these deficiencies to yield combat losses unless they are mitigated in peacetime. The Navy should increase missile-firing allowances for strike-fighter squadrons and explore ways to specialize squadrons for either fighter (air-to-air) or attack (air-to-ground) roles.

We’ll Do it Live

American naval aviators need more practice firing air-to-air missiles. Currently, firing an air-to-air missile in training is a rare event. It requires weeks or months of planning, occasional squadron detachments to other airfields, and the right combination of training range availability, support assets, logistics, and more. Many aviators go their entire career without firing a missile. Those who do typically get just one opportunity.

Training requirements for the F/A-18 Super Hornet, the Navy’s mainstay strike-fighter, are governed by a training “matrix,” a spreadsheet that outlines every task required for a squadron to be considered ready for combat. The matrix states that before deploying, each fleet squadron must shoot four missiles: two AIM-9 infrared-guided missiles, and two AIM-120 radar-guided missiles. The training requirements for the F-35C Lightning II — currently equipping just one operational squadron and destined to comprise one quarter of the Navy’s strike-fighter fleet — are still in development. The Ault Report, meanwhile, recommends that the Navy “provide F4 [sic] pilots with one each AIM-7 and AIM-9 per pilot during [Fleet Replacement Squadron] training and two each… per pilot per year in fleet squadrons thereafter.”

Current FA-18 student aviators fire no air-to-air missiles during their training, perhaps due to the expense and complexity of doing so. Fleet squadrons are only assured of shooting the mandated four missiles per two-year cycle.

Vietnam-era aviators fired missiles in exercises and in combat and still performed poorly against the North Vietnam Air Force. As a result, Ault recommended an increase in live missile allowances. The report focused on the “kill ratio,” that is, how many North Vietnamese planes were shot down compared to American planes, and on the ratio of missiles fired compared to missiles that hit their targets. In 1968, both were tilted strongly against the Americans. Using this methodology to describe missile-firing allowances, Ault’s recommendation of two missiles per student was a ratio of 2-to-1. Meanwhile, the current missile-to-student ratio is 0-to-1. For operational fleet squadrons, Ault recommended a ratio of 4 missiles for every one pilot every year, while the modern missile-to-pilot per year ratio is about 1-to-8 (see Figure 1 below).

Ault’s focus on firing live missiles stemmed from improper missile employment, resulting in a high number of misses. Vietnam-era aircraft, with analog computers and vacuum tube radars, required constant tweaking to ensure reliable missile performance, problems today’s computer-driven aircraft largely avoid. Modern software-simulated missile training modes and flight simulators provide aircrew with combat-realistic indications without firing half-million-dollar weapons, while “heads up” and helmet-mounted displays provide missile data without the need to check cockpit displays.

However, these solutions only go so far. The first time a live missile leaves your aircraft is a unique experience. Like the first time driving alone with your driver’s license, there are numerous items to check and recheck, procedures to follow, and a feel to the experience that no simulation can replicate...
https://warontherocks.com/2019/11/improve-super-hornet-training-and-readiness-with-more-missiles-and-fewer-missions/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[CBH99]

He makes some good points and good suggestions, absolutely.  I have no experience as a pilot, so can't comment on his suggested mandated weapons/firings, but the overall point of having some squadrons really focusing on air-to-air while others really focus on air-to-ground probably has merit.




I think all branches of military - including US and allies - are simply experiencing the necessary shift in mindset from fighting the wars from the past 18yrs+, so fighting a future high end conflict.

For the past 20 years+, conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc have required more of a focus on supporting ground forces & taking out an enemy's ability to wage war on the ground.  With tensions heating up with China, it makes sense to start focusing on large scale peer-on-peer types of engagements.


As time moves on, geopolitics change, and the conflicts that come with that also change - there will always come the time when militaries need to adapt and change the way they do things.

 

[MarkOttawa]

What 355 ship navy, destroyers and cruisers section:

Pentagon proposes big cuts to US Navy destroyer construction, retiring 13 cruisers

The Department of Defense has sent a plan to the White House that would cut the construction of more than 40 percent of its planed Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyers in in fiscal years 2021 through 2025.

In total, the proposal would cut five of the 12 DDGs planned through the so-called future years defense program, or FYDP. In total, the plan would cut about $9.4 billion, or 8 percent, out of the total shipbuilding budget, according to a memo from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to the Defense Department obtained by Defense News. The memo also outlined plans to accelerate the decommissioning cruisers, cutting the total number of Ticonderoga-class cruisers in the fleet down to nine by 2025, from a planned 13 in last year’s budget.

The Pentagon’s plan would actually shrink the size of the fleet from today’s fleet of 293 ships to 287 ships, the memo said, which stands in contrast to the Navy’s goal of 355 ships. The 355 ship goal was also made national policy in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act [emphasis added].

The memo comes on the heels of a wave of rhetoric from the Navy and the highest levels of the Trump Administration that the goal remains 350-plus ships, and the memo directs the Pentagon to submit a “resource-informed” plan to get to 355 ships, though its unclear how that direction might affect the Navy's calculus with regards to destroyer construction. The document gives the Navy a degree of wiggle-room to try and redefine what counts as a ship.

“OMB directs DOD to submit a resource-informed plan to achieve a 355-ship combined fleet, including manned and unmanned ships, by 2030,” the memo reads. “In addition to a programmatic plan through the FYDP and projected ship counts through 2030, DOD shall submit a legislative proposal to redefine a battleforce ship to include unmanned ships, complete with clearly defined capability and performance thresholds to define a ship’s inclusion in the overall battleforce ship count.”

Destroyers are built by General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Maine and by Huntington Ingalls in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Each destroyer costs an average of $1.82 billion based on the Navy’s 2020 budget submission, according to the Congressional Research Service.

A Trump Administration official who spoke on background said the Navy's proposed plan to shrink the fleet is being driven primary from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and that OMB is strongly behind the President's goal of 355 ships...

Cruisers (Again)

The fate of the cruisers has been a nearly annual fight on Capitol Hill, as the Navy has tried desperately to divest themselves of the troublesome class, though this year's proposed cancellation of six cruiser modernization plans did not make a stir on the Hill.

The cruisers themselves are the largest surface combatants in the Navy’s inventory but have become increasingly difficult to maintain. Cruisers have 26 more vertical launch system, or VLS, cells per hull than their Arleigh Burke Flight IIA destroyer counterparts, and 32 more than the Flight I Burkes.

Cruisers act as the lead air defense ship in a carrier strike group but as they have aged, the fleet has managed everything from cracking hulls to aging pipes and mechanical systems. The ships’ SPY-1 radars have also been difficult to maintain, as components age and need constant attention from technicians.

Last year, the Navy proposed canceling the modernization of Bunker Hill, Mobile Bay, Antietam, Leyte Gulf, San Jacinto and Lake Champlain in 2021 and 2022. The new proposal would accelerate the decommissioning of the Monterey. Vella Gulf and Port Royal to 2022, which would cut between three and seven years off each of their planned lives. The plan would also advance the decommissioning of the Shiloh to 2024, three years earlier that previously planned...
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/12/24/pentagon-proposes-big-cuts-to-us-navy-destroyer-construction-retiring-13-cruisers/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Blackadder1916]

The US Navy has devised a solution to the problems of competency and morale among its surface warfare officers.  Leather jackets!

https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=111811

Navy Announces Institution of Surface Warfare Officer Leather Jacket

Story Number: NNS200109-04Release Date: 1/9/2020 12:59:00  From Chief of Naval Personnel Public Affairs

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) qualified officers can now stand bridge watches in a soon-to-be issued leather jacket per NAVADMIN 004/20 released Jan. 9.

The institution of the SWO leather jacket—similar to the aviation bomber jacket—is meant to build esprit de corps and reflect a symbol of the tactical warfighter expertise that come with earning a SWO pin.

“The Surface Warfare community has a long-standing history of excellence, and a uniquely identifiable item is one way to signify the outstanding achievement and professionalism of our Surface Warfare Officers,” said Vice Adm. Richard Brown, commander, Naval Surface Forces. “Those who wear the jacket will be easily identified as a part of a long lineage of professional ship drivers and maritime warfighters.

Wear and eligibility instructions were published in NAVADMIN 004/20 complementing the newly released OPNAVINST 10126.5, Management and Control of the Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) Leather Jacket, which outlines issuance and management procedures for this new uniform item. The SWO leather jacket will be organizational clothing and only available through the naval supply system.

Active, Reserve and Full Time Support (FTS) officers with designators 1110, 1115, 1117 who have earned the SWO qualification are authorized to wear the jacket.  SWOs with designator 1113 are authorized to wear the SWO leather jacket if issued while on active duty or during reserve support assignments.

Officers who earn a surface warfare qualification and are issued a SWO leather jacket while serving in designators 1110, 1115, and 1117 and who transfer to other designators are authorized to continue wearing the SWO leather jacket.  Officers who transferred from designators 1110, 1115, and 1117 prior to the date of this instruction will not be issued a SWO leather jacket.

Personnel qualified to wear the SWO leather jacket may retain their jacket when separating or retiring from the Naval Service under honorable conditions. However, they are not authorized any subsequent issues or replacement issues after retirement or separation.

The SWO leather jacket availability for issue and wear is planned to start this summer as part of a phased issuance that will continue through 2021. Additional details on the phasing and eligibility for first issue will be promulgated by COMNAVSURFOR.

 

[dapaterson]

Well, it worked for the RCAF's pilot problems, right?

 

[dimsum]

The US Navy has devised a solution to the problems of competency and morale among its surface warfare officers.  Leather jackets!

https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=111811

At least the aviation community has some history with leather jackets.  I'm not sure how a leather jacket will make people want to stay.

 

[tomahawk6]

The USN has more people than some armies, over 300000, but they will try to fix this with more money. I think the real problem is lack of leadership. Same issue in the Army. You have to actally live leadership. For example early in my career it was all about taking care of your men and they will take care of you.  8)

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

At least the aviation community has some history with leather jackets.  I'm not sure how a leather jacket will make people want to stay.

I'm picturing a bunch of Navigators who just finished the FNO course sitting around the gun room whinging....

"But we're pilots too you know!"

I like sailing but I've got no problem saying certain NWOs come off a little self-entitled at times.  The career manager briefs with all the whinging about promotion speed, money, etc are always entertaining.

 

[dimsum]

I'm picturing a bunch of Navigators who just finished the FNO course sitting around the gun room whinging....

"But we're pilots too you know!"

I like sailing but I've got no problem saying certain NWOs come off a little self-entitled at times.  The career manager briefs with all the whinging about promotion speed, money, etc are always entertaining.

Meanwhile, half of the aircrew officers are trying to find ways NOT to get promoted and posted out of line squadrons...

 

[Good2Golf]

Well, it worked for the RCAF's pilot problems, right?

No.

The difference is that the US Navy PROVIDES the jackets and lets you WEAR them on operations = potential improvement to morale, however minor.

The RCAF makes you BUY the jacket, and PROHIBITS you from wearing them on operations = institutionally passive-aggressive kick to the groin.

;D

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Meanwhile, half of the aircrew officers are trying to find ways NOT to get promoted and posted out of line squadrons...

Hahahaha!

I'm using that... "If you are such a shiphandling rockstar, why are you trying to get promoted so you no longer have to do it?"  ;D

 

[dimsum]

No.

The difference is that the US Navy PROVIDES the jackets and lets you WEAR them on operations = potential improvement to morale, however minor.

The RCAF makes you BUY the jacket, and PROHIBITS you from wearing them on operations = institutionally passive-aggressive kick to the groin.

;D

I think the disconnect is this:

“The Surface Warfare community has a long-standing history of excellence, and a uniquely identifiable item is one way to signify the outstanding achievement and professionalism of our Surface Warfare Officers,” said Vice Adm. Richard Brown, commander, Naval Surface Forces. “Those who wear the jacket will be easily identified as a part of a long lineage of professional ship drivers and maritime warfighters.

People who see "leather jacket" will think "aviator", not "Surface Warfare Officer".  They could have their warfare insignia on the nametag but everyone will still think "hey, s/he's a pilot!" 

Also, the leather jacket is hardly unique; flight crew have been wearing them for almost a century.  If anything, having SWOs wear it now is weird.  If they want to be unique, give them something else.  Maybe a ColRegs patch*. 

*too soon?

 

[MarkOttawa]

Start and end of a post, possible big implications for RCAF (further links at original):

Whither US Navy Fighter Aviation? How many more Super Hornets?

Further to this post,

What Does the Fast-Growing PLA Navy Mean for the US Navy (and others)?

Valerie Insinna (tweets here) of Defense News gives the matter a thorough review:

At a budgetary crossroads, the US Navy’s aviation wing must choose between old and new

In the coming years, the U.S. Navy will be faced with a decision that will radically shape the carrier air wing: Is the service willing to sacrifice dozens of new Super Hornet jets for the promise of a sixth-generation fighter in the 2030s?..

If in fact production of the Super Hornet (now the improved Block III) stops–or looks like stopping–in the near future, what are its prospects in current fighter competitions for the RCAF, Luftwaffe, Finnish Air Force and Indian Air Force/Indian Navy?
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2020/06/02/whither-us-navy-fighter-aviation-how-many-more-super-hornets/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[dimsum]

One of the options suggested is to use RN-style training, which the RCN does. 

3 years after the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions, the Navy’s surface warfare community shows few signs of change

Editor's Note: This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

The day after the USS John S. McCain collided with a tanker in the Singapore Strait in August of 2017, I began a course at the Navy’s Surface Warfare Officers School, a training hub for naval officers in Newport, Rhode Island. The school’s commanding officer, then-Capt. Scott Robertson, gathered all students and staff into the auditorium to address the elephant in the room: just two months after the USS Fitzgerald collision claimed the lives of seven sailors, ten more from the McCain were dead in a similar tragedy.

“Something is not right in our community,” the captain told us, “something needs to change. We need to shift the rudder.”

Yet today, three years after two of the most shocking peacetime accidents in the history of the U.S. military, the surface community has seen little substantive change, and surface warfare officers still lack the formal training required of professional mariners. Without serious overhaul of the surface officer corps, the fleet remains in peril.

What is a surface warfare officer, anyway? When I stepped aboard my first ship five years ago, I quickly learned that “SWOs” didn’t quite have a job description. Their role as managers varies immensely: they are in charge of engineers, technicians, or quartermasters; they oversee ships’ legal, cryptographic, or environmental programs; out to sea, they drive and navigate from the bridge, serve as tacticians in the combat information center, and oversee the engineering plant. They are versatile yet interchangeable leaders, potentially responsible for any aspect of the management of surface vessels.

But ever since the dismantling of initial SWO training in Newport in 2003, naval officers have been pushed out to ships without formal training, instead relying on a system of on-the-job training and shipboard qualifications to learn their craft as leaders and mariners. Until last year, surface officers underwent only eight weeks at a basic division officer course, a hodgepodge of PowerPoint-led classes and a few sessions in virtual reality simulators, before they reported to their first ship to lead divisions and stand watch on the bridge. SWOs, it is well understood by sailors, are made onboard ships, not in the schoolhouse.

It’s no secret in Navy circles that this system hasn’t proven the most efficient way to create a professional officer corps. After nearly two decades of eroding training and qualification standards, the requisite knowledge and skills to competently take ships out to sea are noticeably lacking among surface warfare officers. Instead, the U.S. Navy adheres to the “generalist” concept: surface officers, as they advance in rank and eventually become commanding officers of ships, are better off knowing a little about everything than specializing in any one profession, be it engineer, mariner, or tactician. Given the highly specialized nature of modern warships and their increased demand for technical and professional know-how, this construct is failing sailors. In trying to be knowledgeable about everything, SWOs end up being experts at nothing.

[More at link]

https://taskandpurpose.com/opinion/navy-surface-warfare-officers-fitzgerald-mccain-collisions?fbclid=IwAR3rRkMxzZ6MZewNHHlbv06I87MbjEgVkGCg5EONvHBv79hZMwRBsPzh3BQ

 

[FSTO]

I recall years ago as a young subbie, I had just got my BWK certificate and I was cross-pol to a USN OHP. I was on the bridge when we did some OOW Maneuvers followed by recovering the helicopter.


During maneuvers I used the gyro repeat compass face for PPI Rel Vel. The looks from the OOD and the conning officer were ones of wonder. Same as finding the flying course to recover the helo, even though the Americans land differently than us, watching them figure out the wind wheel was painful.

Maybe the USN should send a couple of officers to RN/RCN/RAN/RNZN to go through their OOW training program and see what the output is compared to their own system.
But the USN needs to decide if wants continue with its current system or make a radical change.