{"id":185929,"date":"2014-07-12T05:37:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-12T10:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/07\/12\/the-navys-mania-for-reducing-crewing-bears-bitter-fruit\/"},"modified":"2014-07-12T05:37:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T10:37:00","slug":"the-navys-mania-for-reducing-crewing-bears-bitter-fruit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/07\/12\/the-navys-mania-for-reducing-crewing-bears-bitter-fruit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Navy&#8217;s Mania for Reducing Crewing Bears Bitter Fruit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US Navy has discovered that <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/war-is-boring\/u-s-navy-discovers-that-sailors-need-sleep-749558bcaaaa\">the limits of human endurance have been reached, and surpassed, in the Littoral Combat Ship<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Did you ever work a job  that required two people, but your stingy employer insisted that one was  enough? Then you understand the problem with the Navy\u2019s Littoral Combat  Ship.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">One of the  LCS\u2019s supposed advantages is its much smaller crew compared to other  vessels. Where a Navy frigate might have 200 sailors, the frigate-size  LCS has just 40\u2014although, to be fair, two different 40-person crews take  turns running the ship.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">LCS  is a jack-of-all-trades warship that can carry different modules for  various missions\u2014anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare or  mine-hunting.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">The idea  was that automation would enable fewer sailors to operate the  $400-million LCS for all these missions. This saves on manpower costs as  well as on precious shipboard space for crew accommodations.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But a new Government Accountability Office <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gao.gov\/products\/GAO-14-447\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> proves what any Burger King worker already knows\u2014cutting your workforce by 80 percent <i>without also decreasing its workload <\/i>\u2026 isn\u2019t always a great idea.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">When the GAO studied USS <i>Freedom\u2019<\/i>s recent 10-month deployment to Singapore, the auditors found that crews worked too hard. \u201c<i>Freedom <\/i>crews averaged about six hours of sleep per day compared to the Navy standard of eight hours,\u201d the GAO stated.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cSome key departments, such as engineering and operations, averaged even fewer.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">And this happened <i>despite <\/i>the Navy temporarily adding 10 extra sailors to the crew <i>and <\/i>sending contractors aboard.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Also note that with short crewing like this, damage control is marginal, there are no reserves to allow the crew to continue operating the ship while performing repairs, so this ship is likely to have a glass jaw. <\/p>\n<p>This is particularly troubling, as it will be operating in coastal waters, the threats are varied, everything from shore based defenses to guys in Zodiacs packing RPGs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Navy has discovered that the limits of human endurance have been reached, and surpassed, in the Littoral Combat Ship: Did you ever work a job that required two people, but your stingy employer insisted that one was enough? Then you understand the problem with the Navy\u2019s Littoral Combat Ship.One of the LCS\u2019s supposed &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[975,1161,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-naval","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}