Posted on 09/07/2017 4:44:55 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
WASHINGTON – The majority of ships operating in the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, where two destroyers have been involved in fatal collisions since June, weren’t certified to conduct basic operations at sea related to war-fighting, according to U.S. Navy records.
As of late June, eight of the 11 cruisers and destroyers in the Seventh Fleet, and their crew members, weren’t certified by the U.S. Navy to conduct “mobility seamanship,” or basic steering of the ship, according to U.S. Navy records provided to two House Armed Services subcommittees.
The Navy also said that seven of those ships had expired training certification in the areas of cruise missile defense and surface warfare, which test a crew’s ability to defend a ship or to conduct attacks.
The USS Fitzgerald collided with a Philippine-flagged vessel on June 17, killing seven crew members. The USS John McCain collided with a Liberian-flagged vessel Aug. 21, killing 10 sailors. Neither the Fitzgerald nor the McCain were certified for the majority of the mission operation requirements that the Navy periodically evaluates.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
If seamanship is that bad in the 7th Fleet, how bad is it in the other fleets?
Heads need to roll from the top down.
For years the Navy has been spending a lot of money and frittering it away on removing urinals so transsexuals will not be forced to choose to stand up or sit down.
Check out the Alnic MC tracking-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlrA36GzHNs
As I understand it, the purple stripe separating the inbound/outbound traffic at Singapore is about a couple hundred yards wide.
The Alnic MC was traveling 9.2 knots per hour and was about a 100 yards or so starboard the purple stripe (denoting the traffic separation zone).
The USS McCain was destined for Singapore. Somehow the USS McCain gets in front of the Alnic MC and gets hit. Why was the USS McCain heading across the Traffic Separation Zone when its destination was Singapore?
ping
A certification to be war ready? Wouldn’t a destroyer be war ready by design?
Were these ships at war?
I get the lack of training, that is a leadership failure.
Who does this certification? Sounds like fake news, I sure as heck hope it is anyway. That’s insane. In the middle of Pearl Harbor.. sorry mr prez, the ships aren’t certified. I will fill out this paperwork while thousands die.
I have to say, I am deeply concerned about our entire defense structure.
That would be the bad old Navy. The new Navy is a “global force for good” that can’t be bothered with that heteronormative white nationalist training for war.
“You learn or you die” is “heteronormative” [good word by the way!]? Darwin was a white male, I will concede.
Army forces get combat certified also.
“I get the lack of training, that is a leadership failure.”
Leadership, yes. But most likely if you dive down into the data you will find that Obama cut the funding and diverted it to things like buying “green” fuel. These things have long cycle times, so a funding cut years ago leads to the situation we see today. The Navy is a huge organism with long cycle times and it takes a while for deficiencies due to poor top level management to manifest. However, Trump blamed in 9, 8, 7...
Some mechanism needs be in place to ensure that every ship has a qualified crew, is fully equipped, and has all of its systems maintained and operating properly. A formal certification covers all of those areas in minute detail.
And yet, there they were, performing "basic operations at sea." So I guess that certification is meaningless if you can deploy and operate without it.
Sure, individual personnel on board ship failed at their basic duties - probably for a combination of reasons. But there has also been a massive failure in command/leadership. If you say "these are the basic qualifications a ship and it's personnel must demonstrate..." and then you let units deploy that do not meet those criteria... That's a leadership failure too.
In my best Sam Kennison voice.....
“Say it! Say it! Say it!”
The Clintons gutted the Navy!
8 of 11? They are getting stuff confused. There are probably 11 cruisers and somehow 8 not ready is probably the number of all ships not ready in the entire PacFleet or 8 hips out of 200, so this is a non-story but really an indictment of the press who thinks there are only 11 cruisers and destroyers in the entire Pacific Fleet!
8 not ready is no big deal since they are probably in refresher training and just out of overhaul. It is a non-story.
While there isn’t a single verse which directly applies to these current Navy issues, it appears the overall poem applies, in spades.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
By Rudyard Kipling
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm
Train like you fight. Fight like you train.
Our Navy is in trouble.
Gay Ray did his job well.
...Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."...
We won all those wars without it? But today we can’t navigate a stretch of ocean? When I see ww1and ww2 footage, I see uneducated men who were in non combat jobs squaring their shoulders and facing difficult times. The infestations of lice and all manner of nasty, dirty warfare.
Just wierd. Our standards and our expectations have sunk to a low that is scary, as a civilization.
since when did competency require a certification?
If you work on a warship, a destroyer, then surely you have the competency and the training? No?
You are saying we put warships out to sea without competent folks? I know there is a clear difference between competency and excellence. That requires a lot of intangibles.
Navigating the ocean seems like a 101 skill in the Navy.. on a destroyer, maybe it’s a 301. Are you saying we put the 101 guys out there? On a muti Billion dollar destroyer? That’s how I see it.
Current number for the US Navy as a whole:
Deployed ships underway: 47
Ships under way for local ops/training 48.
The same thing happened in the AF nuclear force. After the fighter jocks succeeded in eliminating SAC, the nuke guys sucked hind teat for a couple decades. Result?
- Accidentally flying nukes to Barksdale, which were left unguarded until a munitions crew caught the blunder.
- ICBM crews were caught cheating on certification tests.
The bottom line is fighter jocks never had any business in charge of the nuclear enterprise. Nukes require steady folks in charge that follow checklists, not seat-of-the-pants folks.
Anyway, the AF finally put the nukes back under a 4 star and they appear to be fixing their problems.
I think the surface Navy probably sucks hind teat behind the SEALS, boomers, attack subs and carriers, but that’s just a guess.
A tool is useless if you dont know how to use it. War ships conduct refresher training on scheduled routines. Tiger teams from the geographical area come to the ship to train and evaluate the crew. The trainers are very good at what they do and a crew that passes has proved that they should be able to use the tool competently. Its always a war zone inside the skin of the ship, whether people are shooting at you or not. Just keeping a large ship powered and maneuvering successfully takes training and coordination of the everyone on board the ship. ...and yes, usually the lowest ranking men are given the most vital roles. Lookout - for things we may crash into, and making rounds below deck - on running equipment that provide the ship with electricity and propulsion to manuver that also may cause a fire or cause the ship to sink before we can prevent it.
Yes. This is a very big deal Much bigger than two of our most advance warships colliding with civilian ships while underway. Much bigger!
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