That was not necessarily a manpower issue (as in a lack of manpower), it was an issue with training and relaxing time tested standards of what constitutes a properly trained crew that is fit for deployment. That year, was a symptom of a very low ship count (fell to as low as 270-280) at a time when presence needs were on the rise, particularly in the Pacific. This led to a perfect storm of higher demand with fewer ships. The former is ticking up with the current ship count at 302-304 and with a dozen of ships coming in each year in the post 2020 time-frame. The relaxation of standards was essentially a result of the breakdown of the established communication between the Combatant commanders (who control the ships and how they are used) and the US Navy leadership (that provide the ships). Essentially, the prior CNO's in the USN and their leadership team did not have the backbone to pushback against COCOM demand and willingly played along and allowed ships to deploy that would not have deployed in prior years.gpurewal wrote:
How are they addressing the manpower issue that was brought up in the articles (enjoyable reading btw) posted by Ravi Karumanchiri earlier in the thread?
-Fight the Ship
-Years of Warnings, Then Death and Disaster
I know that automation is being implemented, but it still seems like the USN is lacking the desired staffing for the number of ships they have in force. In addition, some of the key staff in the CiC or other departments lack the training to operate the equipment.
The USN has now set gone back to its previous standards of not deploying a ship (during peacetime) unless it 100% meets all its readiness and training standards which is a reversal from the Obama years when readiness was gutted leading to relaxing of standards and eating training funds and moving those to deployments and modernization. There was an article that I posted and a video describing the return to standards and the green light for the commanders to say NO to COCOM demand if that would eat into training.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4752&start=3280#p2318583
Here's the video I was referring to. Some of the measures are referenced in it.
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/654636/s ... face-force