August 3, 2011: The new commander (CNO, or Chief of Naval Operations) of the U.S. Navy has warned Congress that the navy has to get more money, or less work, otherwise the force will fall apart. Many in Congress believe that the navy leadership is the problem, not budget or workload. Yet most admirals can tell you, from personal experience, that the navy has experienced a sustained period of above-average workload, and has not been able to maintain their usual high standards for maintenance (repairs and upkeep) and readiness (for combat, or just going to sea.)

All this began right after September 11, 2001. Up until then, the navy had been maintaining normal rates of operations. For example, 40-50 percent of ships were at sea, with 30-35 percent deployed to distant locations. But soon ships were in combat zones, and working a lot harder. This was particularly true of carrier aviation. Normally, a carrier averages about 115 hours a day (of aircraft in the air.) During the peak of the campaign in Afghanistan, this averaged 250 hours a day and by late 2002 was 190 hours a day. It went up again in 2003, and stayed high for the rest of the decade. This puts a lot of stress on pilots and maintenance crews. It also causes supply and budget problems, as more flying hours increases the demand for spare parts.

The problems slowly increased until, three years ago, the U.S. Navy began to realize that the readiness of warships was deteriorating to an alarming degree. Some eight percent of them were failing inspections. Since then, it's gotten worse. Now, 24 percent are failing inspections. Currently, about 20 percent of navy ships have failed readiness inspections or are unfit for combat. About 40 percent of ships at sea have one major system broken. About half of combat aircraft and helicopters at sea are not fully functional.

Admirals and staff officers scrambled to discover what went wrong. Turns out there was a lot wrong. First, there were fewer sailors to do the work. Crew size has been shrinking, and the navy has not effectively adapted its maintenance needs to this. This is a trend that has been going on for over a century.

In the early 19th century, a typical 3,500 ton "ship of the line" had a crew of 800-900 sailors. That was about 240 sailors per thousand tons of ship. A century later, capital ships had eliminated labor intensive sails and were running on steam, and using lots more machinery. The 12,000 ton pre-World War I battleship had a crew of 750 (62 sailors per thousand tons of ship). But for the last century, not a lot of progress was made. The current U.S. nuclear carriers have 57 sailors per thousand tons of ship.

But then things changed. The new LCS gets that down to 25. Advances in automation, as well as the introduction of the combat UAVs in the next decade, will make the thousand sailor crew for a carrier possible. That's ten sailors per thousand tons of ship, plus a lot of robots, and equipment built to require very little manpower to fix or operate. That last innovation is already happening with warplanes, greatly reducing the man hours of maintenance required per flight hour. The navy has long since accepted those concepts for missiles (delivered in sealed containers, requiring little maintenance.) These are trends that have been building for some time, and show every indication of continuing. Although these new techniques are expensive, so are sailors. Each one costs over $100,000 a year. For a carrier crew of 5,700, that's over half a billion dollars a year. That buys lots of automation, and keeps a lot of people out of harm's way.

A major problem with all this is that the civilian automation methods have not adapted well to military needs. That realization came at the same time the navy was facing major budget cuts (which crippled efforts to make ship automation work on a warship) and sailors were spending less time in the classroom (where they would learn how to make the automation work). Currently, the navy is about half a billion dollars short in what it believes should be spent annually for ship and aircraft maintenance. Lots of navy cash is going to building new ships, to replace aging Cold War era vessels.

 Then there were the leadership problems. Before the Cold War ended, if the navy found itself with a fleet-wide maintenance problem, they would ask the chiefs (Chief Petty Officers, the senior NCOs who supervise the sailors) to find the truth. That no longer works. Over the last decade, officers have been less inclined to ask their chiefs much. The "zero tolerance" atmosphere that has permeated the navy since the end of the Cold War, has led officers to take direct control of supervisory duties the chiefs used to handle. The chiefs have lost a lot of their influence, responsibility and power.

The problem is that, with "zero tolerance", one mistake can destroy a career. This was not the case in the past. Many of the outstanding admirals of World War II would have never survived in today's navy. For example, Bill "Bull" Halsey ran his destroyer aground during World War I, but his career survived the incident. That no longer is the case.

Another problem is that officers don't spend as much time at sea, or in command, as in the past. A lot of time is spent going to school, and away from the chiefs and sailors. For example, while the navy had more ships in the 1930s, than it does today, there were fewer people in the navy. That's because, back then, 80 percent of navy personnel were assigned to a ship, and had plenty of time to learn how to keep it clean and operational.

Then again, maybe not. This is all just a bunch of scuttlebutt from the chiefs. Are they really the solution as they were in the past? They may not be consulted, or listened to, as much as in the past. But they can't help but notice things. It's what chiefs do. And what the chiefs notice is not enough people, and money (for spare parts) to keep the ships in shape for combat.