chronoserpent

Well said!

Commodores and Flags need to have their CO's backs while instilling that same atmosphere. And they in turn need to have the backbone to say "No" to Service Components and Component Commands (e.g., NAVCENT, CENTCOM) as well as TYCOMs and other admin overseers like Fleet Forces Command.

From my tours on destroyers, the O-5 COs I served with seemed to feel like they were always in competition with the other COs across the squadron for those elusive FITREP rankings from the Commodore (which I can understand since it could mean a make or break for a nearly 20 year career). Some of the COs I served with often felt like they had to "win" by saying yes, their ship can do the mission when another CO's ship failed, or conversely would go to great lengths to seek waivers in order to not fall short. I think changing the culture at the Commodore level to be supportive and not competitive would go a long way. Ultimately it needs to be a culture change across the Surface Force as you said.

Mr. Miller,

Thank you very much for your work on this piece. As an active-duty Surface Warfare Officer, I appreciate that you and your fellow journalists are shedding light on the systemic failures which led to our warships operating overtasked, undermanned, undertrained, and unmaintained. I served in the FDNF-J myself and our ship experienced its share of mishaps and near-mishaps, though through luck alone no injuries resulted. The "do anything", "adapt and overcome", "mission first, mission always" mentality was the expectation across the waterfront, and we never had the agency to to push back. The American people deserve to know what what is going on, and you provided a clear glimpse into the highest levels of the Navy.

I hope you have time to answer some questions I had about your work:

1) Training deficiencies were one of the causal factors you identified. You mentioned the ill-fated decision in 2003 to do away with Surface Warfare Officer School and instead send new Officers to ships with "SWOS-in-a-Box", a set of training CDs. I reported to my first ship in the FDNF in those dark days, and had zero classroom instruction until well after I was qualified as Officer of the Deck Underway, all from on-the-job-training. This was finally rescinded in 2012 with the introduction of the Basic and Advanced Division Officer Courses. New Officers attended BDOC shortly after checking in to their first ships and received "12 hours of instruction in Rules of the Road, 40 hours of instruction in Navigation, Seamanship, and Shiphandling (NSS), 30 hours of training in Conning Officer Virtual Environment (COVE)" amongst other topics in a 8 week course. One can always argue there should be more, but it was trending in a positive direction.

Coppock and Parker, as 2nd tour division officers, would have attended both Basic and Advanced courses, in addition to a full tour of experience. Womack was inexperienced but at least had BDOC and watches under instruction under his belt. (Arguably, two experienced 2nd tours on the team was probably planned to mitigate the Conn's inexperience) This bridge team received more training than other Officers had received for nearly a decade. Where did the training pipeline fail? Was it still not enough, was it ineffective? Or were individual proficiency and readiness/rest factors more significant elements of the collision than their individual training?

2) You mentioned in another comment that FTZ only passed seven of 22 certifications. Do you know which seven those were? I'm curious if they passed their Navigation certification.

3) In 2014 the Navy instituted the Optimized Fleet Response Plan in response to unpredictable cycles and extended deployments. This was supposed to force a more regular schedule of maintenance, training, deployment and sustainment. Was this implemented in the FDNF at all? I have not served in the FDNF since the implementation of the OFRP, but I recall in 2013-14 that they were implementing the Training Availiability (TRAV) which would be a locked in period of training and certifications after a ship completed a long maintenance period in order to complete the ship's certifications before she could get back underway and operational. Before this, I personally experienced a case were we pulled out of dry dock one week with a new Captain and significant crew turnover since we were last in the water, and were deployed in the East China Sea no more than 4 weeks afterwards with no underway training or workup period. The TRAV should have at least been working in the right direction, even if it was rushed and severely compressed compared to relatively leisurely stateside cycles. Did it fade away by 2017? Did they slip back to square one with waivering and practically hand-waving away certification requirements?

Thank you again for your work and for answering our questions here.

I don't know if this strictly falls under scar literature you mentioned, but it made me think of "To Live" by Yu Hua. Highly recommend it to anyone in this thread.

I'm a US Navy junior officer. One thing that's come up before, are you allowed to deviate from your course, or does the company expect you to follow the most fuel efficient track? There have been times where we asked merchant ships to divert a few dozen miles because we were conducting military exercises and they refused and just sailed right through.

What do you do when you have to cross through a giant, several-mile-wide fishing fleet? Our warships are very maneuverable so we "slalom" through. Do you just hope they move out of the way?