‘No one is expendable’
June 18th, 2009 | Science and technology Ships Submarines | Posted by Phil Ewing
ET1 Verlon Cox and FCC Hank Tiamglo heave up a mooring line aboard the Freedom in November, 2008. Freedom sailors have multiple jobs, many outside their ratings // MC3 Kenneth Hendrix/Navy
This week’s train of littoral combat ship news keeps a-rollin’ all night long — Rear Adm. Arthur Johnson, commander of the Naval Safety Center, came aboard the Freedom this week to talk about one of the biggest issues for the fast ship with the small crew: Fatigue.
Freedom and its follow-on ships have exactly the number of sailors they need to operate, with each individual sailor responsible for multiple tasks, and Johnson said he worried about the toll of that workload — one so high it cuts into the ship’s prank operations.
“‘We have to manage fatigue to minimize its impact on the success of your mission,’ said Johnson, noting that with a crew complement of only 40, no one is expendable, even if they are tired,” a Navy announcement said.
Freedom’s Gold Crew executive officer, Cmdr. Randy Garner, told Johnson the ship tries to minimize fatigue with its watchbill structure, but sailor overwork will almost certainly continue to be an issue as more “optimally manned” LCSes join the fleet. What does your ship do to manage fatigue?
Comments
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SwirchBlade Says:
June 18th, 2009 at 4:58 pm“Manage fatigue?” – these ships are accidents waiting to happen. They are under armed (no I don’t believe they will have the right “package” aboard when needed) under manned, poorly designed, and unable to perform the shallow water mission for which they were supposedly designed. The more of the these we buy – the more ships we’ll have that are unsuitable for real world missions and the more egg-on-its-face the navy will have when its finally admitted.
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sid Says:
June 19th, 2009 at 9:20 amIn all the time I have been in and around the USN, I can’t recall but one or two fleeting times a Watchbill was fleshed out in full.
No reason to suspect that it will be any different for the LCS’s once all the special commissioning scruitiny starts to fade.
Been saying it for a few years now. Better start giving these “hybrids” the kind of fatigue training the SEALS endure.
And, then there is the issue of combat casualties… Which I suppose will be solved by making sure the ship will never get hit.
We’ll see how well that plan works….