By Spike Dearing
From the moment we leave our homeports, the ships of 7th Fleet live under the shadow of Chinese weapons and in the ever-present gaze of their ISR network. We are far from home, and very near to those who may wish us harm. This reality is embodied in the phrase “Tip of the Spear.” We expect to be the first to fight, the first to deliver and sustain damage, and the first to die. As such, the priority of the surface force in 7th Fleet ought to be in line with the Secretary’s hardcore focus on warfighting, of keeping the spear sharp. But it has dulled. Our priorities instead have pivoted to preservation. Rust and paint have taken precedence over combat readiness at exactly the moment when our time could not be more valuable.
Preservation in and of itself is not a bad thing and it certainly has a place in our list of priorities. Those who defend the primacy of preservation rely on two arguments. First, a well-preserved ship is indicative of a well-trained crew. The battle between steel and seawater is eternal, they do not play well together. Running rust can ruin a deck, and beyond the purely cosmetic, it can do damage to the hull and various systems exposed to the outside of the ship. It takes the dedicated efforts of many sailors to effectively keep it at bay. This first argument presupposes that if a ship is well-preserved, it is because the crew is working hard at it. And if they work hard at preservation, then they must be working hard at everything else too. Perhaps.
The second argument is that a well-preserved ship sends a message to friends and foes alike. To our friends it is a message of pride, fortitude, and reliability. For eight decades ships of the United States Navy have been patrolling the waters of the Indo-Pacific, safeguarding the peaceful flow of maritime traffic and commerce. That our ships are well maintained and present demonstrates to our friends that we will be there to carry on this legacy and can be trusted to preserve this system if challenged. To our foes the message is that we are still here, still committed, and still lethal. Our finely manicured exteriors are a sign that rather than a fleet in decline that is wanting for manpower and resources, we are still the preeminent naval force in the world.
I do not dispute the inherit truth in either of these arguments. That being said, should preservation of ships be such a high priority? Should it be more important than combat readiness? Should it consume a lot of a Commanding Officer’s attention and potentially ruin their careers? The press releases and official statements centered on the Navy are geared more towards preparing for war and ensuring the Fleet maintains its lethal advantages over potential adversaries. But when it comes to defining priorities however, words pale in comparison to how time and effort is actually being expended. In the 7th Fleet surface force today, much more time and focus has been allotted towards preservation rather than warfighting readiness. This will have an adverse effect on our wartime performance if not properly realigned.
Since returning to 7th Fleet nearly 14 months ago, I can recall four instances where senior officers (ranking O-6 and above) toured the waterline and inspected ships on “preservation tours.” These high-ranking officers would walk down the piers in Yokosuka or take a small-boat ride out to a ship at anchorage, scope out the warships, determine whether their level of rust was defensible, and then turn around. While such preservation spot-checks have become a common occurrence, these senior officers hardly – if at all – come aboard the “Tip of the Spear” ships and request that the Combat Information Center (CIC) be fully manned up and a combat scenario be run for their observation. I personally have not witnessed this ever taking place, which I find alarming.
What exactly is the current state of paint and rust going to reveal about a ship’s ability to actually fight and win a war at sea? Certainly not more than observing trained watchstanders execute simulated combat operations in a stressful environment and gauging their performance.
This is not a radical idea. After the burning and decommissioning of USS Bonhomme Richard (BHR) the Navy instituted a new process of no-notice fire safety inspections. Assessors would show up to ships, request the entire in-port emergency teams (ship version of firefighters) be mustered for accountability, and conduct safety walkthroughs. Ships responded to this shift by increasing training and vigilance amongst the crew. No captain wanted to get caught slacking by the fire safety inspectors. This action shifted a priority. While fires have still broken out on ships in the time since, none have suffered the same fate as BHR.
Instituting a similar practice for combat scenarios is necessary. Snap combat inspections are a time-honored practice of great power fleets preparing for war. Doing so would provide an honest look into how ships are preparing to execute their primary purpose – to intimidate and destroy the enemy. Commodores and Flag Officers should be interested in stopping by their ships to see how well they actually fight.
This is the ultimate test for ship COs and would absolutely re-focus their priorities if they have been drawn away from their tactical roots. The potential of the Commodore swooping by to spot-check a combat evolution would motivate commands to always have their teams well-trained and prepared for an unannounced visit – which extends to being more ready for an unannounced war. This is even more important for 7th Fleet ships who do not have the luxury of a long transit to a conflict to train themselves up.
The execution of such a program could be made simple. It is a reality that setting up a CIC for a scenario is time-intensive for sailors. A call to a ship’s CO from their immediate superior that a visit will be conducted the next day would provide an opportunity to have the system properly configured while not allowing so much time that the watchstanders could get away with not being adequately knowledgeable or trained. These snap combat inspections should also be genuinely stressing and not easily gamed. The senior officer could have a set of multiple scenarios sent over to the ship in advance and then select a scenario once they arrive to push the watchstanders to adapt and improvise. This would eliminate the possibility that the ship could practice a certain scenario multiple times and perform well due to their familiarity with the sequence of events. Snap combat inspections should guard against assessing heavily scripted drills that sailors can easily prepare for.
Regardless of the details of such an initiative, the central purpose should remain intact. It is not a given that warfighting readiness will get prioritized. It demands active and sustained attention from senior leaders to drive this focus into their commands. Perhaps Commodores and Admirals – by being more deliberate about what they choose to inspect – can bend the surface force towards victory.
LT Spike Dearing is a Surface Warfare Officer and Integrated Air and Missile Defense Warfare Tactics Instructor serving on USS JOHN FINN (DDG 113) as the Damage Control Assistant.
These views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the official views of any U.S. government entity.
Featured Image: PHILIPPINE SEA (Feb. 1, 2024) Petty Officer 1st Class Nikolai Raab stands watch in the combat information center (CIC) aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Rafael Peralta (DDG 115). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Devin Monroe)
Discover more from Center for International Maritime Security
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well said. I’m reminded of the old adage “You can’t expect what you don’t inspect.”
When the first DDG 51s were commissioned the manning levels were set to meet the multitude of these tasks. The manning was adjusted down on these ships after the first several years in service (surface admirals had to reduce costs!). The workload remained the same. New materials were supposed to reduce corrosion, etc. It did not happen. People are expensive, but failure to maintain the ships (including addressing corrosion) is a worse outcome. For context I was the commissioning CO of the 6th DDG 51. I lost over 45 sailors in my 2+ years after the shi[’s commissioning.
“People are expensive, but failure to maintain the ships (including addressing corrosion) is a worse outcome.”
I’d argue that Japan’s WWII experience, especially regarding pilots, led them to the outcome that highly trained personnel are an irreplaceable national resource. Just as CIC watch standers for Aegis Destroyers, and the training it takes to make them impeccable warfighters, are much harder to replace than a paint job and painters in a shipyard.
Unlike aircraft, ships, or ammunition, that are manufactured or produced, the multi-year training required to create a skilled pilots, warfighters, operators, and sailors of these highly advanced combat systems, means, that they are, a finite and crucial asset that cannot be quickly replaced. A paint job is easier.
How is a day’s notice a “snap” inspection?
The obvious answer is do both, and yes it is disturbing that we aren’t checking warfighting readiness.
I’ve had the experience in the civilian world of what happens when you don’t pay attention to “paper cut” issues like rust. When I took over a project it was possible to make the user interface crash by typing in a calcuation (like 2+2). This wasn’t a documented use of our UI, technically it was a syntax violation, but we didn’t give an error either. I went to the lead developer and asked him about it and he replied that he never fixed it because he didn’t want people using our UI as a calculator. My response was “if a customer sees we can’t handle something so simple, why will they ever trust us to reliably handle their data?” He said nothing, simply turned back to his terminal (this was pre-PC days) and by the time I got back to my office he’d made the fix.
Now you need to understand this in context. A few years later I’m talking to a customer who is using our product and I’m told “If we are down for 5 minutes we have to notify the Secretary of the Treasury. After 10 minutes he notifies the President.” Would they really have taken a dependency on us if we’d ignored the cosmetic issue?
Mechanisms matter. You may have read about “the wheel” at AWS. You can’t check that every team is on top of their operational metrics each week, so at the weekly operations review we would spin a wheel that selected the team(s) to be reviewed. That forced every team to always be on top of operations. Spin the wheel, are we checking for rust today? Or is it the CIC? Or maybe navigation?
This article mirrors my experiences and frustrations during my time in the Navy. I was a GMG3 on an aging AE in the late 80’s. My division was responsible for maintaining the ship’s meager weapon systems which included 3/50’s. However, we rarely trained on the weapons. Rather we devoted the majority of our time to preservation. As a result, whenever we conducted weapon exercises they predictably went very poorly, angering the command. During a postmortem on a particularly poor gun shoot, to the horror my division officer, I publicly challenged the CO and suggested that if we devoted more time to weapons training and less to preservation, we might be able to effectively operate our weapons. In my opinion it was a failure of command. Oh god, the ass chewing I got. I was in the doghouse permanently after that, and I started my countdown to my EAOS. My unremarkable Navy career had come to an end. The irony is, of course, an AE is very unlikely to ever fire its weapons its weapons in a real fight. But I harbored this notion, as US Navy sailors, that we should know how to operate our weapons regardless.
The rust issue reminds me of Mahan’s famous quote ‘Those far distant storm beaten ships upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world’. Rusty or not, thanks very much US navy for keeping your ships on patrol thousands of miles from home and keeping the Pacific peaceful for 70 years.