The Elephant in the Engine Room
Coast Guard Essay Contest—First Prize
Cosponsored by Susan Curtin and the U.S. Naval Institute
If the Coast Guard wants its engineers to be brilliant on the new basics of shipboard maintenance, it must adapt its training and assignment processes.
By Commander Kelsey Barrion, U.S. Coast Guard
August 2023 Proceedings Vol. 149/8/1,446
In her 2022 Coast Guard strategy, Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan charges the service with being “brilliant at the basics” to “advance our mission excellence.”1 Though maintaining the surface fleet for peak operational availability is not specifically listed in the subtenets of “basics,” in a seagoing service with 2,100 ships and boats, it arguably could be the top item. But as the Coast Guard’s change in asset complexity gathers momentum, the basics are not as basic as they used to be—and the service is nearly a decade overdue in adapting to this reality.
The Coast Guard is aware that the surface asset classes coming online have roughly four times as many pieces of equipment installed as the classes they are replacing. The service is beginning to understand the effects of four times as many shipboard points of failure and orders-of-magnitude-more logistics support requirements. Senior leaders are hesitantly embracing the reality that the new ships also are more technically complex, with industrial IT systems connecting every pump, purifier, compressor, and propulsion component.2
However, the service has not embraced the training investment and skills required for the engineers (enlisted and officer) who come with these complicated and interconnected assets. On-the-job platform training via qualification packets is no longer sufficient, and the culture around shipboard maintenance needs a sea change as well.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/august/elephant-engine-room
