If they keep this up they are going to run out of ships, or captains. There will be at least 1 officer cashiered for this. Even if someone was spoofing GPS, there are stations that should be manned even without general quarters. Amazing that this has happened twice in the span of a month or 2.
I wonder how well a Zumwalt class would handle one of these collisions.
The previous SecNav was an absolute disaster for the entire Navy. Basic seamanship has been pushed to the side while diversity, sexual harassment, and a crapload of training not directly related to war fighting was pushed on the rank and file. Readiness accounts have been slashed for years. It’s sad some feel the need to pin this on Trump while not understanding how badly the previous administration impacted the military.
Is your argument that commands have no time to drill basic seamanship skills because they are too busy with other mandated administrative training? As a Navy veteran, I find that hard to believe. We did plenty of training on the issues you list, but still had more than sufficient time for drills and seamanship.
Now, I’ve been out for a while, so things could have changed. I’d be shocked if they’d changed that much, however.
TBF, Obama’s priority was to make everyone gay, which takes a lot of indoctrination, so obviously skills like “don’t ram damn-near-immobile cargo ships” fell by the wayside.
Yep, clearly some of the fault lies with women who insist on not getting raped.
Which is exactly why we on The Left with our dictator-in-chief BHO want to turn the entire military into a bunch of homogay sissies. Problem solved!
So do loose lips sink ships or not? I’m getting mixed signals here.
Depends what the lips want to kiss. And who the lips are attached to. And what kind of lips we’re talking about.
Look, it’s complicated.
Clearly something is up, because it isn’t normal for our ships to be ramming into giant merchant vessels…
Pretty much. Basic seamanship has fallen by the wayside. I’m a DoN civilian, and the amount of BS training I have to do is not a good use of taxpayer dollars. It’s worse for the active duty guys. Back when I was active duty, training was relevant, when bad shit happened you didn’t have to think, you just acted. Not saying that they don’t still train, but there are only so many hours in the day.
Apparently it’s loose hips.
Way to pull two words out of my post and completely miss the point. I’ve served with woman in the Fleet, have you? How much mandatory training do you have to do every month that has nothing to do with your primary job?
Maybe I’m too old school, but the military shouldn’t have to waste time teaching people to be decent human beings. That’s what parents and family are for.
Shouldn’t … and yet (looks at the world) here we are.
Navy calls for ‘operational pause’. All fleet operations temporarily halted.
I hear and respect your opinions in general, but I have to call this out. I think you’re wrong, here. The military of a democracy is also responsible for making sure its personnel behave in ways that reflect positively on that society. Otherwise, we’d just, I don’t know, use a bunch of drugged-up psychos and turn them lose on whomever we didn’t like or whatnot. We’ve always, as a nation, tried to field as effective a force as possible while staying true to our values. It hasn’t always worked, nor has it always been easy, but we’ve been quite successful overall.
Diversity and sexual harassment strike directly at the effectiveness of the force. If the force is riddled with well-trained racists and sexists, it will still not function well. It has to be filled with well-trained people who also can get along with each other, trust each other, and be assured that their backs are covered by their comrades. You cannot have that simply by training in operational skills and ignoring real problems elsewhere. Admittedly, HOW you train, and how you allocate the available hours, are a leadership and management issue; it’s entirely possible, even likely, that this is not being done well. But the problem to me seems to be leadership. We’ve had a whole slew of problems over the past many years, covering several administrations, where senior officers in all the services have acted in ways that clearly show they are prioritizing their personal gain over the national interest. That stuff filters down to the rank and file. It doesn’t help when officers push back against things like diversity and sexual harassment training–which by the way I’d argue DOES qualify as training very germane to anyone’s job that involves working with others, the military especially–by sabotaging it in various ways, by word and deed.
We have created a military culture, to some degree, where the folks at the top are in it for themselves, or at least are guided not by national policy or a desire to serve the national interest, but by their own personal ideas of what is best. Most officers, I’m sure, are loyal, hard-working, and dedicated professionals, but far too many turn up with a very cynical, self-serving view of their service, and in fact don’t IMO see themselves as “serving” at all, but rather grabbing at their share of the gravy train, or pushing an ideological agenda. Training, motivation, leadership are all going to suffer in this environment.
Really, sometimes I think we need to go back to the draft.
How much basic seamanship training do you do as DoN civilian? Do you have actual evidence that commands are cutting relevant training to make time for diversity training? Sounds more like a command problem if true, and not the fault of diversity training.
Newest reports are that the ship lost steering, s well as backup steering, on the ship.
This is really weird.
If true though, it wouldn’t be the fault of the watchstanders on the bridge.
[quote=“TheWombat, post:35, topic:131233, full:true”].
Really, sometimes I think we need to go back to the draft.
[/quote]
Lord no. The solution is zero tolerance. Across the ranks. It’s not perfect because some chucklehead is going to test the system, but it’s been pretty effective when it comes to drugs. And maybe I’ve just had a charmed career, but racism isn’t much of a thing from what I’ve seen. Though my perspective as a white male ma!es that opinion suspect, granted. Black, white, male, female, I’ve worked across that spectrum, and still do.
None, I’m NAVAIR. But I work with active duty every day, and much of my team are vets, some very recently active. They have their own quals to maintain. And it’s simple math. Units have a finite number of hours to train. We have a finite training budget for civilians. Time, money both are resources that compete with readiness, maintenance, and actually performing the mission. Increase the amount of required training topics, what do you reduce? The mission?
It’s not a hard thing to understand.
How many hours a week do active duty navy service personnel spend on diversity training? Is it daily, weekly, monthly, annual? In the Army we always got it done.