
To its great credit, the authors of the Navy’s Strategic Readiness Review (SRR) and other studies point out some of the latent causes that contributed to the series of incidents in WESTPAC in 2017, including the collisions of both the FITZGERALD and MCCAIN that resulted in the deaths of 17 Sailors,.
One was the 2nd and 3rd order effects of getting rid of SWOS at the end of the 20th Century and moving initial training online or to the gaining commands, and similar training efficiency efforts. We all know how that ended up.
Well, I couldn’t help but remember that – along with the call for the Navy to be a “Learning Institution” – when I read about the latest advance of “Sailor 2015.”
The Navy has a radical new vision for how it will train sailors and manage their careers. The overhaul of the personnel system, known as “Sailor 2025,” is already underway, but sailors should expect to see more changes next year.
…the Navy will continue to shorten the length of initial accession training, which has traditionally lasted up to two years. Instead, training will include a far shorter stint following boot camp that will be whittled down to only what new sailors need to succeed at their first duty assignment, getting them to the fleet sooner.
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Some training will occur at traditional “brick and mortar” schoolhouses, but sailors should also expect to see training in local fleet concentration areas and by distance learning onboard commands Navy-wide.
This program has been long in the works. Since the SRR, have we taken a moment to review it along with the “new” lessons and recommendations?
If not, are we working to have a transparent and honest evaluation of the first batch of ratings that will go through it?
The effort started to ramp up in 2017, when the first four ratings moved into the system.
In 2018, look for as many as 15 additional ratings to move into the new system while work continues for 34 ratings.
How about those first four? Will we include gaining commands review 6, 12, and 18 months after those Sailors’ arrival?
If we are going to realign ourselves after the events of 2017, what are we doing to make sure that programs already up to speed are not heading in a similar direction to the shoal water we ran over once?
Bureaucratic inertia combined with dash of sunk-cost fallacy is a hard force to check.