Good read on the problems facing the Navy.
By Ray Starmann
The US Navy, the mighty and heroic service that beat the tar out of America’s enemies for 240 years; the force that won brilliant victories at Midway, Manila Bay, Leyte Gulf, Lake Erie and a thousand other places is no more.
The US Navy that refused to surrender and ‘had not begun to fight’ under the leadership of John Paul Jones, is now too incompetent to fight anyone; and every American should be seriously concerned.
To paraphrase Oliver Perry, “We have met the enemy and it is cultural Marxism and social engineering.”
The latest debacle to engulf the Navy was reported yesterday in a myriad of media outlets, including US Defense Watch.
According to Fox News:
The majority of ships operating in the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, where two destroyers have been involved in fatal collisions since June, weren’t certified to conduct basic operations at sea related to war-fighting, according to U.S. Navy records.
As of late June, eight of the 11 cruisers and destroyers in the Seventh Fleet, and their crew members, weren’t certified by the U.S. Navy to conduct “mobility seamanship,” or basic steering of the ship, according to U.S. Navy records provided to two House Armed Services subcommittees.
The Navy also said that seven of those ships had expired training certification in the areas of cruise missile defense and surface warfare, which test a crew’s ability to defend a ship or to conduct attacks.
Don’t worry about basic seamanship; who needs that in the Navy? As for basic ship steering, why would anyone need to know how to steer a ship at sea? Don’t they just float on their own? There’s like currents out there…
Good God…
This latest revelation comes after the Navy’s year of collisions at sea. The USS Fitzgerald collided with a Philippine-flagged vessel on June 17, killing seven crew members. The USS John McCain collided with a Liberian-flagged vessel Aug. 21, killing 10 sailors. Neither the Fitzgerald nor the McCain were certified for the majority of the mission operation requirements that the Navy periodically evaluates.
At first it was thought that somehow the diabolical Kim Jong-un had somehow found a way to hack into ship navigational systems, thereby causing the collisions.
It’s not Kim, it’s not China, it’s not Putin and it’s not Dr. No. It’s a lack of training, a lack of focus on what is important and it’s a complete abandonment of the Navy’s and the military’s mission which is to train for war and to win those wars when called upon to do so.
The Navy repeatedly has said that increased demand on the Seventh Fleet has resulted in cutbacks on training and certifications. That pressure has only increased in recent months with each North Korean missile or weapons test, as the fleet conducts more exercises and patrols with the same number of ships.
Wouldn’t continual time at sea actually hone skills rather than erode or eradicate them? Wouldn’t continual time at sea be a place to conduct training and ensure that certifications are carried out? After all, you can’t practice seamanship sitting in a building in San Diego.
One wonders what the Navy is doing with their training time instead of learning skills sailors have had since the Carthaginians defeated the fleet of Pyrrhus of Epirus in 276 B.C.
I don’t buy the excuse that deployments are making shoddy sailors. The Navy is making shoddy sailors by focusing on issues that have nothing to do with war fighting.
More:
http://usdefensewatch.com/2017/09/the-navy-its-not-a-job-its-a-total-cluster/
