Should We Be Afraid to Make Mistakes?

“It is a serious problem,"according to retired Admiral Gary Roughead, whom I’ve known since he was Chief of Naval Operations. He was recently directed by the Secretary of the Navy to lead a strategic review after a series of collisions and issues affecting fleet operations.

Ira Friedman with Admiral Roughead

Constant deployments, a shrinking number of ships and high demands on crews have frayed the US Navy, according to naval experts as well as current and former navy officers. This has led to four major incidents and the deaths of 17 sailors according to The Albany Times Union. The paper goes on to say "the collision of the USS John McCain and an oil tanker last August 21, which left 10 dead, was the culmination of more than a decade of nonstop naval operations that has exhausted the service.

Last January, the guided missile cruiser Antietam ran aground in Tokyo Bay leading to the commander’s dismissal. In May, the cruiser USS Champlain collided with a South Korean fishing boat. Roughly a month later, the destroyer USS Fitzgerald collided with a container ship in the approach to Tokyo Bay. Seven sailors died. The commander and executive officer were relieved. In a letter to his officers, the commander of the Pacific fleet pointed out that the rash of incidents occurred during the most basic of operations.”

The Navy currently operates about 280 ships. When President Reagan was in office, the fleet was over 700 ships.

The repair costs of these incidents are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Prior to this, such events were extremely rare. Our ships are equipped with the most advanced radars and alarms in service.

According to a US Government Accountability Agency report, “Lengthy deployments of US ships based in Japan often result in key training requirements being neglected, as both the Fitzgerald and McCain had been at the time of their collisions. Exhausted crews can make bad decisions. In the case of The Fitzgerald collision, officers on watch did not wake the sleeping captain when the warship got in range of the merchant vessel.“

The Navy concluded that the collisions were “preventable” and “avoidable.”

“Government reports, congressional probes and internal concerns have all pointed to systemic problems related to long deployments, deferred maintenance and shortened training periods within the Navy’s Surface Fleet that seems to have coalesced in the Pacific, specifically at the Japan based 7th Fleet.

This is a complex problem and there is no simple answer. According to a former destroyer commander and director of the Center of American Sea Power at the Hudson Institute, the surface fleet has been in decline for the past 15 years. The 7th Fleet's area of operations encompasses 35 countries.”

These are some of the most congested waterways in the world.

“Questions are emerging as to whether the US Navy is up to the challenges it faces in the Pacific from both a nuclear armed North Korea to a strengthening Chinese Navy at a time when its leaders acknowledge the fact that they lack the budget, manpower and weapons to ensure success. The Navy’s Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral William Moran said, “The Navy is trying to do too much with too little. We can’t be tasked to do everything we are trying to do.”

This is a situation which an emerging Chinese Navy hasn’t overlooked as it stakes claims to territory in the South China Sea. The Chinese Navy, though much smaller and less capable than the US Navy, just surpassed Russia to become the number two Navy in the world. It has just 48 warships and 76 fighter jets but is focused in the South China Sea and building the size of its Navy is a priority.

The US Navy has been operating on what people in the service call an “operating on the margins approach.” That means ships had no dedicated training time, but instead fit whatever they could time into time on missions. Among the things the Navy did was to sack the commanders of The Fitzgerald, several other senior officers, as well as the commander of the 7th Fleet, a Vice Admiral, the first time a fleet commander has been relieved of duty in the history of the Navy.

The Navy patrols the sea lanes at a pace that has pushed its 7th fleet operations tempo to the most demanding in decades to safeguard US commercial interests and affirm commitments to regional allies and partners.

On the other hand, we know that people will make mistakes even in life and death situations. According to Admiral Jim Shannon (RADM USN ret.), whom I knew when he was based at NAVSEA, “About 110 years ago Admiral Chester Nimitz was having a very bad week. The destroyer Decatur ran aground on a mud bank in the Philippines while under his command as an ensign, a great responsibility for such a junior rank. The ship pulled free the next day and Nimitz was court-martialed, found guilty of neglect of duty and issued a letter of reprimand.

He was retained in the Navy and given very dangerous duty to command a gasoline powered submarine. 15 years later, he was sent to command surface ships. We all know the rest of the story of a remarkable career for this (five star) Admiral of the Fleet and war hero.

His persistence and determination are something we can all learn from after a bad event happens in our life.”

Nickolas Guertin, a reader of Jim’s article commented, “I wonder how our Navy might be different if we had a higher tolerance of failure and learning. Many officers have untimely career ending events happen where the learning experience of failure might have just made them just that much stronger later.”

Is our Navy stretched too thin?

If so, whose fault is it? Should people be terminated for serious mistakes?

Sometimes that is a very subjective call. What does that policy do for the willingness to take risk? I wonder if under such circumstances anyone would go to medical school.

Have you ever made serious mistakes?

What do you think?

Ira Friedman

Ira Friedman aboard aircraft carrier The USS Iwo Jima with a guided missile cruiser in the background.