Perceptions shape reality:
When U.S. Navy officials tell Congress they have confidence in their shipbuilding cost projections, lawmakers don’t believe them.
When flag officers say they’ve got enough money for maintenance, fleet sailors wonder why high-tech warships aren’t combat ready.
When top admirals say they have a new maritime strategy, analysts struggle to match it with the shipbuilding plan.
When business strategies override operational needs, officers wonder if they’re war fighters or executives.
Navy leaders are suffering from a credibility gap – with Congress, with industry and, increasingly, with the fleet.
I’ve worried off and on about our new devotion to business process models. We’ve swallowed the hook, line and sinker on Lean Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints and “enterprise behaviors” designed to wring efficiencies out of the system. It’s all for a great cause of course: To make our force both affordable and relevant now and in the future.
A new White House administration develops the National Security Strategy, which heads to DoD as a National Defense Strategy, which is thence translated into first a joint and then a naval strategy. That strategy defines roles and missions, which in turn defines end strength and force structure. From those evolve budgets, at least in theory.
Budgets have been pretty much fixed around peacetime mission sets with war spending wrapped up in semi-annual cost of war supplementals – not a particularly good way to plan over a two year planning, programming, budgeting and execution system. Not to mention a ten-year acquisition “holiday” whose bills are now coming due in the form of increased maintenance costs for aging ships and airframes even before you factor in wartime levels of utilization. Nor all of those systems engineers and acquisition experts who were quietly allowed to retire without replacement in the name of “re-inventing government.”
So, basically, we’re forked. Just like always.
When you haven’t got the revenues to support your requirements you go looking under the cushions for savings in costs. Some of those costs are “direct” – fly less and steam less when in the training cycle, for example. Do the same thing – or more – with fewer people. Maintain the ship in war fighting trim using less maintenance dollars. Others can be wrung out through process improvements.
But to get at process improvements you’ve got to have metrics. Once you start metricizing the force you’re in a business model rather than a war fighting one. A concept which the war fighting culture is viscerally averse to.
And they’ve got a point: If GM should make a strategic decision that ends up being a flop, they’ll lose market share but Chrysler – or Toyota – will step in and fill the gap, and the market will be served. If Navy guesses wrong we stand to lose a great deal more than market share – and it isn’t like the Coast Guard can step in and fill the breach. They’ve got their own gig. And the business guys can go too far. “Redundancies” are dirty words in business speak, but when you’ve got vampires inbound over the horizon, a little redundancy in self-defense – or damage control – can go a long, long way.
If you add up all these competing lines of strain and top it all off with a cultural disposition towards “thank you for your input, now get in line and get it done” looking downward and “yes, sir, we can do that mission” looking up, you can find yourself in the position we’re in now: Forced to make a series of optimistic and interlinked assumptions any one of which can go off track and kick you in the jimmy, derailing your acquisition program and leaving you to explain to an unsympathetic Congress why everything costs a great deal more than you thought it would, but that you’ve got a handle on it and everything will be all right.
Only now they don’t believe you.
What ever posessed the Navy to somehow not only believe that they are a business like GM, but actually expect to work? The Navy along with the other services is in the business of killing people and breaking things. Everything, repeat, everything else is a distant second.
New? Lex, where have you been?
The Navy wandered off into the management blather tar pits about twenty years ago with TQM. It’s gotten worse with each new management scheme. Particularly since metrics cost money – and soon, you are paying more to fight waste than you save in eliminated spending.
It’s like the procurement holiday. It hasn’t been ten years – it’s been twenty. Add to this the burden of CONTINUOUS budget drills (about 50% of the work done at NAVAIR HQ is responding to budget drills, at a cost I would put between 1 and 1.5 billion per year), and you have a recipe for real problems.
The question is, when will the Navy leadership LEAD, and acknowledge that there is a serious crisis?
Byron, on the whole of your comment, I agree. But there is a minor modification. I would only add one word. You write, “The Navy along with the other services is in the business of killing (I would just add the word, ’specific’) people and breaking things.” In the configuration of today’s Military, “specifics” matter. We don’t want to hit our own people.
Grumpy
Grumpy, I sincerely hope that we would be smart enough to make sure that didn’t happen. I will grant you that this civilian ain’t too bright, but that part I could figure out all by myself.
I’m in one of the commands that has bought into it hook line and sinker. Fortunately it’s a shore command and it has paid off, except for the missing bodies. I would not want to be out to see in a tactical squadron trying to do an Airspeed event during GQ or flight ops.
I’m also tired of losing bodies at the deck plate level. It seems from where I’m sitting that there’s a lot more money to be saved by starting closer to the top.
Navy CPO – You can’t cut from the top. Somebody has to write the LOM package!
Now, since we are in the mood to dredge up old history, I can vouch for the “Defense Decision Making” business model brought into the 5 sided wind tunnel by SecDef/Ford CEO Robert McNamera…oh, and topical to the news, the guy who a few years ago wrote how he really regretted doing the the Vietnam War wrong.
From where does all this “I was taking the big bucks, was in the spotlight of the world, and I HAD THE POWER!, but failed to do the “right” thing” remorse keep coming from?
Anyhow, back on topic, any NWC grad (I can vouch for them) knows a full trimester is spent bowing at the alter of McNamera’s “process.” As far as how it is used? I went back to the Fleet to use the Strategy and Policy and Maritime Operations lessons…dunno.
Before Deming, RM peed on the fence post and sent us to business school.
Duhhhh?
b2
There are some interesting points made in the article concerning the impact of Computer Based Training (CBT) and the lack of requisite expertise that accompanies said. Although I cannot comment for ratings outside of the HSL and avionics community, I will say I agree with this entirely.
The penchant for seeking “business oriented” solutions to what ought to be assumed as fixed operating costs is ridiculous. Allow me to clarify here, by “fixed operating costs” I mean that there is a certain dollar amount that is required to achieve a certain proficiency level in a certain skill set. Whether that be fixing appliances or flying airplanes, there are mainly tangible values associated with figuring this out.
A while ago I was whining about having lazy and unsuitable candidates injected into the HSL community maintenance departments by an element of the Bureau of Personnel who doesn’t see or understand Fleet conditions. Furthermore, one of the problems that I pointed out then was the lack of trained personnel available to these squadrons. I often tell my students that we (the HSL community) are effectively the SPECOPS of Naval Aviation. Simply, no one else is expected to do what we do, at that tempo, with that little parts support, and in those environments. I cannot currently think of an airframe with as much mission creep and as many expectations as are placed on the fleet of SH-60B’s that are in service today.
Training is a big part of this. When I went through AT “A” School some years ago, I was put through a 28-week training regimen that demanded constant study and vigilance. The alternative was direct assignment as an undesignated Airman to the first carrier the detailer could find. [Tangent: This I found (in hindsight) somewhat weird as we seemed to be the only rating that wasn't being detailed as something else first. Maybe it was perspective, maybe I am wrong, but I distinctly recall rates trading places all over, AO to AE, AE to AM, AM to AD, AD to AO, and all of the other possible combinations. AT's it seemed had one of two fates: pass or fail.]
Aviation Electronics Technician (AT) “A” school has since been split into Organizational (you work on aircraft) and Intermediate (you work on boxes) strands and shortened. How short?
AT(O) “A” school is now 19 days long.
19 days.
Oh wow. It took us longer to get through Part 1 (covering basic math, numbering systems, and AC/DC circuit theory) than it does for these kids to finish the entire school. Maybe I’m dumb. Mayble I’m an idiot for thinking that the people coming out of “A” school these days ought to know what end of a multimeter is used for what. I asked one of my students not too long ago what an oscilliscope might be useful for in a certain situation and was treated to the question:
“What’s an oscilliscope?”
The Navy wants 313 ships? Bit–es, please. We can’t get floor wax right now. We nearly had to have a Congressional hearing on getting a set of miniblinds for my Chief’s office, and you people (read: Big Navy) want more gray floating things?
Some suggestions for the United States Navy:
1. Stop spending money on Whip-Whaps and Doo-Dads designed to fight The Future War. We are fighting the War on Terror at the moment, which the last time I checked, did not equate to Terminator 2 or anything else directed by James Cameron.
2. Take care of the stuff you have now. My parents used to employ this logic on me all the time, and as a result I tend to be very meticulous about everything from bits of dust in my camera(s) to keeping the car tires rotated.
3. Please, please, in the name of all that is Right, Holy, and Cute in this world: give us more money for training and parts.
4. We are not AT&T, IBM, General Motors, or Enron. Stop with the “Human Capital Management”, “Resource Metrics”, and “Ethos Statements.”
5. Two words: Chinese submarines. Am I the only one that finds these objects relevant to my interests?
Part of the problem here is that BUPERS and EPMAC are loathe to see training time increase as it requires them to spend more money. Due to the byzantine method by which orders are cut and funded, there are two bills generated to put a student through a given set of curriculum: those being for the student in the seat and the schoolhouse that they’re in at the moment.
After all, so long as the billet is filled then their job is done. They (meaning the Bureau of Personnel) could give two sh–s about the quality of training. All they see is a Social Security Number, a name, and a bunch of numbers that says (according to them) this person is perfectly capable of doing that particular job. They see, understand, and are (most importantly) willing to listen to nothing else.
This Defense Weekly article is relevant in that it delves, albeit briefly, into the notion that the current push toward CBT for NAVAIR and SURFFOR training requirements as a substitute for “supervised OJT” (meaning lab-based training) is fallacy. What is required here is a larger analysis of the Naval Training System (NTS) and the methodology by which courses are parsed into Personal Performance Profile Based Training (PPPBT) and Task Based Training (TBT). PPPBT is mainly things such as Aircrew or SEAL training — are you or are you not physically and mentally capable of completing the curriculum as a whole with as close to zero defects as possible? TBT on the other hand relies more on your ability to meet a series of objectives that may, or may not, require you to exercise some physical effort along the way. Effectively, PPPBT focuses equally on process and product while relying on the individual to make decisions based on situations that may or may not resemble the scenario seen in the classroom. TBT on the other hand teaches compliance with a fixed set of standards. In essence, PPPBT asks you to intepret shades of gray, TBT says things are either black or white. Additionally, PPPBT tends to be far more dangerous than TBT.
The issue with this “one size fits all” approach to training is that there are situations in the aviation community where not all things are good or bad. I am quite challenged to come up with anyone working (meaning not doing paperwork) that has not run into a situation that did not require a degree of interpretation to determine what was wrong. (I am talking singly about graduates of TBT pipelines here).
Shortening training pipelines in favor of alternative means of curriculum delivery (meaning CBT) is nice because it fills the Fleet billets faster. Especially when we’re talking about jobs such as in the aviation community where, at least on a purely conceptual level, the book has all the answers and everything falls into those black or white, good or bad, up or down molds. The problem is that delivering CBT robs the students of interaction with Fleet Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) that have hands-on experience with the systems. As a result, retention levels start at 50% of the material and then go down from there.
Yes, I said they go down, not up, from there.
The direct impact from things like a $5 billion (USD) DDG-1000 or LCS with no cap on costs is that the money has to come from somewhere. The twisted logic in the mind of BUPERS and the Cheif of Naval Education and Training (CNET) seems to be that because the systems of tomorrow are going to be self-healing “smart ships” and aircraft that troubleshoot themselves, we don’t need to train people as much as we did once. After all, we’re training the leaders of tomorrow. If they don’t need to be that smart, why train them as much?
The problem is that it isn’t tomorrow. It’s today. The most valuable asset that we can give these kids is a fully functional brain. Robbing them of that to ensure a nice cushy job at Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, L3, or wherever else because you were the one who put your name on the contract for the $100 billion (USD) contract for some piece of gear straight out of science fiction isn’t a sign of weak leadership or a lack of credibility: it’s criminal.
Worse. any sort of super-advanced weapons system requires higher levels of training, not lower. After all, it’s the easy jobs you can automate, not the complex ones.
Memory fades a bit, but this isn’t too too old….A little known problem (dirty little secret?) of Navy’s CBT is that the metric was “courses available online/# of courses available”. So they were thrown up and there they were. The powers that be didn’t seem to care that the curricula were not designed for self training and were supposed to have an instructor….Didn’t matter. the MPT&E gods were moving out.
And don’t get me started on trying to kill a (maybe formerly good idea) funded computer “system” that’s obsolete and/or reached it’s maximum limits. Can’t pay for a new one, can’t retire the old one. Status quo….GRRRRRRR.
….I am not claiming prescience, but 20 years ago when we first started hearing about all the business management fads-of-the-month that were going to lead us to the Promised Land, it was clear that we had gone back to the MacNamara Method. And ANYONE with an ounce of sense knew we would end up in a situation where once again, the process was far more important than the result.
Mike
“What ever possessed the Navy to somehow not only believe that they are a business like GM, but actually expect to work? “
Byron – I will say that it clearly started at the very tip-top with a former CNO. When one walked into his office and was faced with the duty bookcase which served as a talisman for what the current occupant considered inportant, what lay at the core of their belief – their ethos if you will, all one found were the latest tony volumes of business theory and practice. Not even a single, forlorn copy of Mahan, Morison, Corbett was to be found therein…nada, zip, zilch. Anywhere in the office.
Of course, that also came on top of the “we don’t need a strategy, we have Seapower 21 and our business practices – now lay off the strategy talk” conclusion of a discussion on the lack of a new Maritime Strategy…but that’s another story.
- SJS
Drew C –
Not sure what your background is, or if you are still “in the game” but these days, an O level AT doesn’t need to know any of that stuff you learned. They need to know:
1. Which plane needs the box.
2. How to open the panel where the box is.
3. How to remove the broken box.
4. How to install the RFI box.
5. How to get the broken box to supply to send to AIMD.
…rinse…repeat.
I’m not busting on AT’s. I love ATs. Some of my best maintainers were ATs. That is just the nature of the business these days. In the E-2 community, our TYPEWING’s were so lame, they had no retention program for our best maintainers, so we beat the crap out of our good AT’s and then let them escape to F-14 land. A good AT in a Hawkeye was worth his weight in gold.
Nose
Maybe take them to the next step and apply FMEA (failure modes effects analysis) to their business process decisions. e.g. what is effect of failure in a defense system that lacks depth/redunancy in men, materials and weapons.?
Think maybe the guys on the Stark would have benefited from having a couple more CWIS on board instead of having a the actual cost/value optimized qty and placement of CWIS?
Never let the Accountants run the company — or the Military. Keep them and their sprdsheets where they belong — in the background supporting leadership decisions that allow for experience and intuition. Those are two things that will never fit ina spreadsheet cell.
Joist by their own petard so to speak…
Byron, I figured you already knew what I was talking about in comment #3. But you took it in with a good spirit.
To both Steeljaw and Byron, our biggest problem is breaking the cranial – rectal suction. Note: Be aware of any signs of oxygen intoxication.
Again to both of you, THANK YOU, for your continual service to this Great Nation,
As always,
Grumpy Disabled Vet
SJS;
Sounds like a post just itching to find it’s way to the “publish” button, to add context to the current discussions.
And, OT: Byron: I could use a bit of help from some “local” eyes, if wouldn’t mind lending a hand to look up a shipmate, last know to be near you….email works for me…
I know nothing of how it works from the military end, but I know how it works from the contractor end and I refuse to believe that all the metrics we are forced to keep, complete crap in some cases, does nothing but rise the cost of the product.
It irritates me to no end the complete waste of time I am required to spend on things like…. make sure every book in my book case is numbered, with a piece of tape that runs diagonally from the mid of the first book, to the bottom of the last, so if one book is missing… we can tell. I’m not joking. That is how bad it has gotten down to the contractor level.
I was so pissed during the last review, I took a black marker and numbered the wheels on my 5 wheeled chair to show how ridiculous it all is… and we aren’t allowed to have anything but this type of chair anymore either. If you have a chair with just four legs, someone might lean back and fall.
Because you know… we have to have the Nanny state at work now too.
Makes me frickin’ NUTS.
/rant off.
At what point does saluting stupidity equal disloyalty? When does the situation call for, “With all due respect, I must resign my commission.” to underscore that stupidity? Is upward career mobility a substitute for loyalty?
Nose,
You’re kidding/tongue in cheek about required O-level AT knowledge right? Esp in E-2’s?
If not, unless something miraculous has happened I’d challenge you to test your theory by spending a week in w/c 210 as a nightcheck troubleshooter.
Drew C,
19 days?!!! What about AFTA? Does that still exist? It was 20 weeks when I did it.
Pardon me for being all ignorant, but why is Congress asking the Navy how much their ships will cost? Navy presents a contract and specifications for a ship, civilian shipyards and shipbuilders tender an offer to build that ship.
Seems to me Congress should be asking the shipbuilders why costs are so high, and the shipbuilders will point back to Navy command and explain why. Then Navy command can explain their process and why it’s such a good idea.
Calling Navy brass before Congress on over-spending? That’s like calling a meeting of alcoholics anonymous at the local brewery — entertaining, but not terribly productive.
Get the information from the folks building the ship. They’re the ones trying to fill a contract and meet costs. The rest is mere posturing.
– Max
That was a fine treatise Drew. Sure hope it gets wide play.
Blackeagle
I was MO of the last E-2C (group 0) squadron. I spent lots of hours with the best ATs in the Navy. I recruited many of the guys we had. Bottom line is Drew is correct. The “Old School” ATs were great, but the new guys don’t know much when they come out of A school. O level AT maintenance has devolved into mostly “swap the box send it to AIMD.”
And this is anecdotal – but from my experience flying late generation aircraft it is even more prevalent there.
Are you still in? When did you get trained?
Again, I’m not busting on ATs, it is just the nature of the stuff we buy and decisions that the professional maintenance community has made.
N
DrewC, I can’t agree with you more on the issue you aired out. I too was trained in the “Od Navy” (circa 1974) as an AX (AT-A school in Memphis made no distinction between any of the avionic ratings, AT, AX, AQ and TD (yes the Toy Doctors were in that line as well). After A-school I was detailed to the Squadron who decided they needed my warm body in W/C210 and not some IMD work center, so all my C-schooling was in the O-level. This distinction between O and I was done by the Master Chief handling the maintenance department manning and training, not someone so removed from the action as to not understand reality. I was in the VS community where the Avionics trade was the most worked Rating in the Squadron (no matter what those AO’s say, to hell with IYAOYAS, I say).
And I have stayed working in the “business” and have seen firsthand how the training today is so inferior to what I received back in the Stone Age when I went through. I had only one CBT course (a ‘P’ school/class) and ALL of A-school was instructor “stump” trained. And, we had nightly study groups to keep up with all the material thrown at us. Although I have worked the development side of the avionics systems for many years, I was still getting out to the Squadrons quite regularly. One of my last visits was to head up the installation of the F-14 LANTIRN POD system onto the S-3B. My tasking was to take a mixed bag of AT’s and AE’s and teach them how to do a Depot Level installation of wires and cables necessary to make this system work on the Viking. Well, I could eat up the rest of Lex’s bandwidth on horror stories on what these pour men and women DID NOT know about what I thought was common skill set for ALL AT’s. It just ain’t so!!! Long story made short, we got that POD working and I did a lot of OJT one-on-one and those sailors now know things that just is not common knowledge anymore in one of the more technical Ratings in the Navy.
Someone mentioned about how the AT job in the O-level is to simply swap out the box (“rinse and repeat”) and that is fine as long as that aircraft stays brand new. As soon as you get Boat Miles on it and you get “shaky” wiring and those nasty gremlin gripes into the airframe, no amount of swapping boxes is going to fix that. You will need the knowledge that comes from the fundamentals that are ingrained in the 20-weeks long school not the 19 days. Saving training money is a big looser when the Operational side takes the hit because the AT can’t figure out what to do with that twisted-pair wire sticking out in that bundle thingie!!!!
sid,
Thanks much. I rant about these things all the time (I write point papers, and kvetch to people that will listen) and find little traction. I am but a wee cog in this giant machine.
Blackeagle603,
I am very much so still in the game. Up to my neck in it, so to speak. AFTA as you knew it is now a one way ticket to AIMD and closed-loop detailing at I-level or CVN SEAOPDET. I’d love to go through the school, except I like going outside.
Nose,
You’re right on the mark there. The latest generation of helos (I am the sole rotary-wing heretic around here, I think), the MH-60R and MH-60S are “supposed” to have an integrated publications and troubleshooting system that will take the technician right to the wire or the box and tell them what is wrong.
The question I usually ask here is: “what happens when your fancy laptop breaks?” What I get back is typically: “oh, it won’t. That’s why we bought theses [brand name] laptops with all the hardening and rubberized keys.” To which I respond: “you obviously haven’t been on a frigate in the middle of a typhoon before” or “never underestimate the power of a bored Airman.”
I however disagree with your statement that “it is just the nature of the stuff we buy and decisions that the professional maintenance community has made.” It is my opinion (and someone above said it as well) that more advanced systems require more training. What we are in danger of creating is a new class of ignorance and illiteracy when it comes to highly complex systems. Meaning you know just enough to operate, someone else knows just enough to “swap boxes,” but no one really knows how the whole thing works together. In turn, you’ll have people that are literally slaves to the technology they are supposed to be maintaining and totally lost when it comes time to produce anything other than a completely standardized solution.
Just like the emergency procedures in NATOPS are not designed to cover every possible contingency or are to be “used as a substitute for sound judgment”, technical training for us enlisted types cannot be cut any further without doing egregious harm to the quality of people in the Fleet.
I’m not just talking about aviation here either, it is my understanding that the surface folks are suffering just as badly. Unfortunately, I am a complete ignoramus when it comes to those beneath the water, so I’d love to hear from a submariner.
“A good AT in a Hawkeye was worth his weight in gold. “
To which I would add that a good Flight Tech was worth his weight in diamonds and platinum.
Nose/Blackeagle – y’ all are probably too young (Ha! bet you’d given up on hearing *that* jibe Nose
) to remember, but from the very early 80s back we had an FT (two or 3 per sqdn – one/2 in AT shop and one in QA) riding the RO seat — an AIC qual’d FT. Now, in the “B” they were absolutely necessary because of how tempermental that whole system was – from hydraulic-powered v/cycle to really antique bits of the computer and displays, and you could really fix things in flight. Somewhat less, marginally less, in the E-2C. Some of us learned invaluable lessons about the backend, innovative repairs and maintenance in general that served us well in subsequent years.
Oh yes – and some were absolute stars in AIC’s too. More lessons learned.
Alas, the time came when The Powers That Be (which, much to my chagrin and vocal dispute, originated from the (L)East Coast branch of VAW) decreed no more AIC training for FT’s and the program in VAW was terminated shortly thereafter.
- SJS
SJS-
In my second half of my first sea tour (the one that Sparky Doyle called the “Seabat Fleet improvement program”) we had a flight tech AND a smoking-allowed ready room!
God Bless Cool Cal…
I’m older than I look!
Nose
SJS,
re: IFT’s
I are (was) one.
Too young? I wish… I was part of the “final battle for IFTs.
“Some of us learned invaluable lessons about the backend, innovative repairs and maintenance in general that served us well in subsequent years.” …and some of you didn’t which is why we had to keep the IFT toolkit out of NFO hands. Too many ruined Deutsche connectors on the IFF side cabinet.
With O-level A school so short now, is the NAMTRA or airframe specific training picking up the slack? Or is it just up to the Tech Reps to keep the wheels from falling of the AT shop?
Nose,
re: when?
‘82 – ‘91 (113, FCDSSA)
Millington ‘83 (BEE, A, AFTA)
P’cola ‘84 (NACCS) 83
Norfolk ‘84 (E2-C system analyst, IFT syllabus in Jeff Black/Smolski era)
Norfolk again briefly in ‘86 for PDS school/NEC
That “go swap a box you O-level puke” has always been there. It’s just hard to imagine the E2 as a system w/ all it complexity in wiring and system integration is all that much simpler than in the APS-125-143 days. Took a whole of McGyver to be a good AT troubleshooter and keep ‘em FMC.
obtw, If any one out there knows how to contact ATCS John Buck please give me a shout out.
dw
AT1, EAWS, NAC, IFT
Need to change my header to a Hummer, this keeps up. Let me just do a little Google image searching….
Oh.
If only I could find the pic of the Miramar boresight range building the morning after our JO’s snuck out and painted over the FIGHTERTOWNUSA sign to spell instead HUMMERTOWNUSA.
One of ‘em got a nice pic of it w/ one of our birds on the taxiway before they got busted and sent to repaint it.
Lex,
Don’t want to tell you how to run your place, but it would add some curb appeal…
Blackeagle – I see your problem, you started out on the gay….er, sorry, I mean wrong….oops, West coast.
Have a nice weekend.
A hummer would class up the joint to be sure………..
The Navy is the author of this current crisis. It kicked most of its major Naval Aviation procurement decisions down the road. Just about every platform we are buying was feasible back in 2000 (E-2D, F-18, Growler….). Naval Aviation leadership was so fixated on the F-18 E and F that it let so many other things slide, because the F-18 program “cannot fail. We cannot have another A-12″ We got our wish. Now Helo procurement is a train wreck, the P-3 community is killing itself, JSF is bleeding us white, and there is still the problem of C’s and D’ running out of shelf life.
And not once during the last 9 years did any of our flags bang on a table and complain about it. They were too busy trying to re-organize CNAP for the tenth time.
As for AT’s-well they may be sending boxes to AIMD but to what purpose? Most of the AIMD’s have been raped manpower wise because of the Regional Maintenance Center concept and the decline of overseas production capabilities.
And for SJS, you obviously never flew with Burl (you know who I am talking about). You would not wax so eloquent on FT’s if you did.
BE 603,
You said the name of the Devil! Nose and I had just about put the “S” name out of our heads…………
Nose,
We had already fixed the Seabats by the time you showed up.
Love the blather about Lean Six Sigma. Navy medicine has embraced this to the hilt. Seems to be a great way to optimize the production and sale of widgets. The problem: I learned very early in medical school that patients are not widgets. I’ve even had hospital CO’s refer to patients as “customers.”
The issue here, as in the line, is a question of ‘availability’ versus ‘productivity.’ You cannot have both. Availability costs money in the bean counters’ eyes, because you run the risk of your people and assets being underutilized when things are calm. Availability is indeed life-saving and crucial when the brown hits the fan. It can make the difference between winning/losing or living/dying. That is a cost that does not fit neatly on a spreadsheet.
Productivity is the new mantra. Fewer docs, even fewer nurses and corpsman. Doing more with less, until you’re doing everything with nothing. CO’s look good, because their hospitals are “productive.” Lost in all of this is the cost of being unable to meet demand for services when crisis occurs. In other words, when war happens.