The recent spate of ship-groundings and collisions at sea have brought the state of the U.S. Navy surface fleet a level of public attention unheard of in recent memory. Seventeen Sailors are dead. The combined damages to the cruiser USS Antietam (C-54) and the destroyers USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) likely will cost the Navy nearly $1 billion. The voting public wonders how such mishaps can occur on ships equipped with advanced navigation systems. Merchant mariners look with jaws agape at the news of nimble destroyers and cruisers in maneuvering mishaps. Reactions range from disbelief, to sorrow, to anger, to bewilderment.
The Navy is thoroughly investigated these incidents to understand what happened on those ships and what could have been done to prevent those tragedies. Undoubtedly, those findings will lead to changes in shiphandling and navigation practices. Those changes will be for naught, however, if the Navy also does not assess the training pipeline of new officers in the surface warfare officer (SWO) community. Changes to procedures will be ineffective if those who are trusted to execute them are inadequately trained.
Currently, the SWO training pipeline does a poor job of preparing junior officers to assume watch. After a brief two-month introduction at the Basic Division Officer Course (BDOC), they go to their ships for their first tours at sea. Ships, whose necessary focus is meeting operational demands, are saddled with the initial training of new SWOs. Consequently, new junior officers are unable to concentrate their efforts on learning seamanship and navigation because their mental efforts are divided among administrative and collateral duties.
No pilot goes to their first operational squadrons having never flown a plane. Likewise, no SWO should report to his or her first ship having never taken one to sea. SWOs need more classroom instruction in the fundamentals of seamanship and navigation, reinforced by underway training on yard patrol craft (YPs). With their initial training broadened in length and scope, their time on the bridges of warships will be spent refining already existing skills, instead of learning new ones. This would make junior officers more confident, more competent, and better prepared to take the watch.
The Problems Today
The root cause of the SWO community’s problems is that operational commands carry the greatest share of the burden for initial training. Ships, whose mission is to deploy in harm’s way, must take newly commissioned junior officers from a two-month indoctrination school and turn them into qualified mariners. Further, shiphandling, seamanship, and navigation occupy just two weeks of the Basic Division Officer Course As a result, there is no single SWO training pipeline. In practice, there are 203 individual pipelines—one for each surface ship. Warships have become de facto school ships, resulting in wide variations in training quality and added risk during real-world operations.
Current practices create ineffective learning environments. Seamanship and navigation training are in a long list of priorities for new junior officers. As division officers, they are responsible for leading a division and its Sailors. They are concerned with the material condition and readiness of their equipment. They must learn and administer the Navy’s byzantine maintenance and material management (3M) program, which codifies maintenance requirements for shipboard equipment from galley griddles to main engines. In addition, they likely are charged with collateral duties, such as legal officer, wardroom mess treasurer, or custodian for the morale, welfare, and recreation fund. Each of these responsibilities is subject to periodic inspections and audits in which the ship is graded by a team of outside assessors who treat that area as though it were the ship’s only mission. These are not conditions conducive to learning seamanship and navigation.
Shiphandling and watchstanding experience are essential factors in the making of a professional mariner and qualified SWO. However, wardrooms today are awash with junior officers seeking to qualify, making it difficult for warships to adequately train them. A Ticonderoga-class cruiser, for example, is billeted for twelve division officers but commonly deploys with more than thirty.[1] Yet, there is only one bridge on any warship and 24 hours in a day. Increased demand for officer training, without a corresponding increase in the resources to meet it, leads to degradation in quality.
The reliance on warships for initial training has also made it nearly impossible to effectively filter-out officers who lack the aptitude, the will, or the temperament to be SWOs. In any training process, the burden should be on the individual to prove to their commands and the Surface Fleet that they are qualified. As Commander Arthur A. Ageton wrote in the first edition of the Naval Officer’s Guide, “it is you who must orient yourself with respect to the new horizons of your naval career.”[2] However, the current state of affairs has perverted the decision-making process so much so that commanding officers are pressured to qualify officers regardless of their personal reservations. This is caused by a well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided desire for fairness to the individual at all costs.
Commodores pressure commanding officers to qualify every officer, because the operational environment makes it difficult to discern the root cause of an individual’s poor performance. If a junior officer has difficulty qualifying, the potential causes are many. That officer may be distracted by other tasking or collateral duties. In many cases, it is difficult to discern whether the cause is the individual or if it is the environment he or she is in. Everyone has a limited personal bandwidth, and no one performs at his or her best when learning new concepts while performing a new job, in a completely new environment. As a result, most commanding officers and commodores err on the side of qualifying officers to avoid the risk of ending the career of someone who does have potential.
The problem of screening in the SWO community can be solved by a more thorough and rigorous training process. It is fairer to the individual officers, more helpful to the operational commands, and more beneficial to the Navy as a whole if new SWOS-in-training have the opportunity to train for more than just the two months BDOC provides. They need at least four months where their only focus is learning and practicing the art and science of seamanship and navigation. If an officer is struggling and cannot pass, despite help and remediation, then it is clearer that the problem is a lack of aptitude, and that officer may need to find another place in the Navy team. In addition to preparing junior officers, it also gives commanding officers more confidence that the newest members of their wardrooms are competent and basically trained mariners. A well-defined and thorough training pipeline for new SWOs is a wise investment in the long-term health of the surface fleet.
A New Training Model
The main flaw of BDOC is that it is too short. In just two months, it attempts to provide a survey of everything a SWO must learn to qualify aboard ship. But, there are too many topics under the sun for them all to be covered in a two-month course of instruction. The result is that junior officers, fresh from their commissioning sources, are forced to “cram” as much information as they can to pass a test one week, and “data dump” to make enough room for the next. They graduate having been exposed to subject material, but they had so little time to learn it that the positive effects are dampened. To meet its objective of providing basically trained mariners, more time is needed to provide new SWOs-in-training with a solid foundation.
Of course, if every topic is a priority for initial training, then nothing is a priority. In those four months, we must choose to make them proficient in a few areas, and conversant in the rest. Shiphandling, navigation, and seamanship must be the centerpiece of the SWO training pipeline, because these are the areas in which officers are the primary source of shipboard knowledge and expertise. Their greatest utility is safely navigating the ship, thereby preventing the collisions and groundings that can cause catastrophic damage.
All new SWO candidates must first understand that their goal, so long as they wear the SWO pin and serve aboard ship, is to be a professional mariner. It is an immutable quality that must be in their career description no matter where they go afterwards. I propose that the new course be called the Basic Mariner Proficiency Course (BMPC). It emphasizes the fundamental importance of being a mariner, while also stressing that no matter how intense or rigorous it is, the course will only make them basically proficient. It is a first step in a career of taking ships to sea.
The first six weeks of BMPC will be very similar to BDOC. Its primary purpose will be to provide a level playing field for all new SWO-candidates, whether they spent four years at the Naval Academy or only 12 weeks at Officer Candidate School (OCS). It will include initial training in the basics of administration and maintenance, the fundamentals of engineering and damage control. Then, the focus must shift to seamanship, shiphandling, and navigation for the rest of the course.
For two weeks, SWO candidates will learn the fundamentals of seamanship, shiphandling, and navigation. They will understand their controllable forces—how to use lines, ground tackle, engines, and rudders to maneuver the ship alongside the pier, at anchorage, and on the open ocean. They will learn the effect that wind, current, and other uncontrollable forces can have on their vessel. Instructors will reinforce their classroom lessons with exercises in ship simulators, so they can develop the muscle memory in a risk-free environment.
Finally, BMPC will have a component which no other surface warfare school in the Navy provides – for the final eight weeks, they will have to practice seamanship at sea. Their trainers will be yard patrol boats (YPs) similar to those used to train midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy. For two months, they will practice getting underway and navigating through a channel. They will have the opportunity to develop their instincts as mariners, practicing special evolutions like anchoring and making approaches alongside other ships. The last two weeks of BMPC will culminate in a series of check-rides in which they will demonstrate their ability to perform special evolutions without guidance or assistance from instructors.
BMPC: Obstacles and Opportunities
The first obstacle to BMPC is its cost. To acquire eight additional YPs would likely exceed $50 million total. Then, there will be the cost of their fuel and their maintenance. Also, additional instructors would need to be billeted to the Surface Warfare Officer School (SWOS) detachments in San Diego and Norfolk. Underway training operations will also require additional support personnel such as boatswain’s mates, quartermasters, and enginemen. There will also be significant start-up costs, as the first group of instructors will themselves have to train-up and prepare for the first BMPC class. Accountants will argue that the mission of these YPs would equally well-served by a simulator.
While simulators are very useful supplements, no synthetic model has, or ever will, prove a suitable substitute for the sea. Simulators build muscle memory and reinforce concepts learned in the classroom, but they cannot replicate the experience of standing on an actual bridge wing. The knowledge that actual engines and rudders are at your control, that your actions affect a real vessel, and that that vessel is being pushed and pulled by natural forces, adds an element that no computer graphics can replace.
We cannot allow cost to be the primary driver behind the content of initial SWO training. Today, training is thought-of as a requirement which must be met with minimum cost, and performance is measured by the dollars spent per junior officer. This myopic approach has two major flaws. First, it does not account for the quality of the training and proficiency of the trained. The result is a system which caters to the lowest-common-denominator, in which it is nearly impossible for anyone to fail. All the risk and difficulty is assumed by operational commands. Second, it minimizes the short-term costs of training, but it does not capture the added risk associated with sending minimally trained officers to ships.
Instead of viewing initial SWO training as a pass or fail exercise, with an objective of minimizing cost, initial SWO training must be thought of as a long-term risk mitigation measure. Training junior officers on YPs reduces risk to operational forces. The more that beginners are making and learning from mistakes on YPs, the less likely they are to do so on cruisers, destroyers, and amphibious ships. It provides a buffer so that risks associated with placing new and inexperienced officers on the bridge are borne by small training ships in friendly waters and not by combatants supporting operational requirements. The past seven collisions and groundings have cost the Navy seventeen lives and an estimated average of $165 million per mishap.[3] This does not include the cost of second and third-order effects, such as the added wear-and-tear and higher operational tempo the rest of the Fleet must absorb while damaged ships lie in the shipyards. Though YP training would cost more today, it would save the Navy countless dollars by preventing future mishaps.
Wanted: A 355 Ship Navy—And the Officers to Drive Them
As the Navy plans its expansion to a fleet of 355 ships, it must also expand the scope and scale of its junior officer training. Otherwise, it risks having a hollow fleet which poses as much risk to itself as does the enemy. While specific details and lessons learned are pending, if there is one immediate truth that the tragedies on Fitzgerald and John S. McCain can remind us, it is that whenever ships go to sea, there is risk of death and mishap. Warships may be fitted with advanced radars and precise GPS, but no technological implement can replace a thoroughly-trained officer assuming the watch. While dedicated training craft like YPs will require a significant investment in materiel and manning, they are a long-term investment in human capital that will pay dividends for years to come. At sea, where the stakes are high and the risks are great, the cost is justified.
Endnotes
[1] Lieutenant Brendan Cordial, “Too Many SWOs per Ship,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, March 2017, https://www.usni.org/node/90091.
[2] Commander Arthur A. Ageton, The Naval Officer’s Guide, New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1943, 147.
[3] This is an estimate based on available information from the grounding of USS Port Royal (CG-73), USS Guardian (MCM-5), USS Taylor (FFG-50), and USS Antietam (CG-54), as well as collisions involving USS Porter (DDG-78), USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), and USS John S. McCain (DDG-56). All costs are adjusted for inflation.
