Navy Returns to Compasses and Pencils to Help Avoid Collisions at Sea
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — Urgent new orders went out earlier this month for United States Navy warships that have been plagued by deadly mishaps this year.
More sleep and no more 100-hour workweeks for sailors. Ships steaming in crowded waters like those near Singapore and Tokyo will now broadcast their positions as do other vessels. And ships whose crews lack basic seamanship certification will probably stay in port until the problems are fixed.
All seemingly obvious standards, military officials say, except that the Navy only now is rushing the remedies into effect after two collisions in two months left 17 sailors dead, despite repeated warnings about the looming problems from congressional watchdogs and the Navy’s own experts dating to 2010.
“Many of the issues we’re discussing today have been known to Navy leaders for years. How do we explain that, Admiral?” Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, demanded of Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, at a hearing last week.
“Senator, there is no explanation,” Admiral Richardson said.
The orders issued recently by the Navy’s top officer for ships worldwide, Vice Adm. Thomas S. Rowden, drew on the lessons that commanders gleaned from a 24-hour fleetwide suspension of operations last month to examine basic seamanship, teamwork and other fundamental safety and operational standards.
Collectively, current and former officers said, the new rules mark several significant cultural shifts for the Navy’s tradition-bound fleets. At least for the moment, safety and maintenance are on par with operational security, and commanders are requiring sailors to use old-fashioned compasses, pencils and paper to help track potential hazards, as well as reducing a captain’s discretion to define what rules the watch team follows if the captain is not on the ship’s bridge.
“Rowden is stomping his foot and saying, ‘We’ve got to get back to basics,’” said Vice Adm. William Douglas Crowder, a retired commander of the Seventh Fleet and a former deputy chief of naval operations, who reviewed the four-page directive issued on Sept. 15, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “We ought to be doing this anyhow.”
Admiral Richardson is expected to announce additional guidance to the Navy in the next several days that builds off Admiral Rowden’s directive. “We took some time to stop, take a break and review our fundamentals, to ensure that we’re operating safely and effectively and to correct any areas that required immediate attention,” Admiral Richardson told the senators last week.
The new orders come as the fallout continues from four Navy accidents in the western Pacific this year, including the two fatal crashes: the destroyer Fitzgerald colliding with a freighter near Tokyo in June, and a second destroyer, the John S. McCain, colliding with a tanker last month while approaching Singapore.
The commander of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Adm. Scott H. Swift, said this week that he would retire after being notified that he was no longer in the running to take charge of the Pentagon’s overall Pacific Command, which would oversee any military operations against North Korea.
Vice Adm. Joseph P. Aucoin, the former head of the Seventh Fleet, based in Japan and the Navy’s largest overseas, was removed last month in connection with the accidents. And Admiral Rowden himself has also said he will retire early.
It has been a sobering time for commanders not just in the Seventh Fleet, which has been closely scrutinized, but also the Navy’s other fleets based overseas. They are all taking a hard look at how to balance their operational requirements against eroding training and maintenance standards.
“We found some things about risk that didn’t match what we thought, and we’re making changes in things we discovered,” Vice Adm. Kevin M. Donegan, commander of the Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, said in a telephone interview.
“When we have something like this happen, we do rigorous homework,” Admiral Donegan said. “We’re not standing fast.”
There is little argument, however, that a shrinking Navy is performing the same duties that a larger fleet did a decade ago, and that constant deployments leave little time to train and maintain ships amid their relentless duties.
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators during a hearing on Tuesday about his visit to the Navy destroyer Barry several months ago, and of his learning that the ship had been at sea for 70 percent of the past 12 months.
“When we go back now and we look at were they able to do all the training necessary, and what was their life like during those 12 months, 70 percent of the time underway is an unsustainable rate,” General Dunford said. “We’re going to have to make adjustments in the demand. That will incur managing operational and strategic risk, there’s no doubt.”
Many of the changes in Admiral Rowden’s order smack of simple common sense.
Hard to see and track electronically, naval vessels have long posed special perils to nighttime navigation. In addition to radar, all but the smallest commercial vessels use the so-called Automatic Identification Systems to broadcast information about their position, course and speed. Military vessels typically carry the systems but often turn them off because the captains do not want to reveal so much information. That will change under the new orders.
“Successful mission accomplishment cannot be our sole measure of effectiveness,” Admiral Rowden said in his directive. “We must take greater heed of the manning, maintenance, training and certification pillars that collectively foster success.”
Admiral Rowden also ordered standardized rules for watch teams on the bridge when the captain is not present; new reporting requirements for major equipment failures and near misses; and manually tracking vessels that come with 5,000 yards of a Navy ship to avoid collisions.
The Navy has allowed ships to rely on grueling watch schedules that leave captains and crews exhausted, even though the service ordered submarines to abandon similar schedules two years ago. A Government Accountability Office report from May said sailors were on duty up to 108 hours each week.
The new rules essentially will adopt studies by the Naval Postgraduate School to develop a shorter watch schedule to match circadian rhythms, which uses three hours of watch duty and nine hours off. Recognizing the benefits, the Navy ordered submarines to move to a similar schedule in 2015.
Senators harrumphed last week that sleep-deprived sailors presented an obvious problem begging for a solution. “If we know that somebody’s working a 100-hour workweek, I’m not sure we need a study,” Mr. McCain said acidly.
軍艦撞船太頻繁 美海軍翻出「羅盤與鉛筆」
美國海軍月初發布新規範,亟欲避免軍艦撞船事件重演。紐約時報廿七日報導,美國海軍將給予水兵更充分的睡眠時間,每周工作時數不超過一百小時。當軍艦航行於新加坡及東京附近等壅擠水域時,軍艦將向其他船舶廣播位置等資訊。此外,目前登艦的水兵若缺乏基本海事駕馭技能認證恐怕得駐守港口,直到問題解決。
美國軍事官員說,這些新準則看似理所當然,問題是國會和海軍內部的專家二○一○年以來就多次警告,海軍卻連這些基本動作都做不到,第七艦隊在六到八月發生兩起軍艦碰撞事故造成十七名水兵喪命後,才急著採行補救措施。
亞利桑那州聯邦參議員、參院軍事委員會主席馬侃上周在聽證會上,質問海軍軍令部長李察遜說:「海軍將領多年來已知悉我們今日討論的許多議題。上將,你如何解釋?」李察遜答道:「參議員,無從辯解。」
美國海軍今年在太平洋西部海域共發生四起意外,其中兩起致命意外造成十七人死亡,分別是費茲傑羅號驅逐艦六月十七日在東京水域與菲律賓籍貨輪相撞,以及馬侃號八月廿一日在新加坡海域與賴比瑞亞籍貨輪碰撞。接連撞船事件後,海軍八月一度下令所有艦隊停駛廿四小時,全面檢查水兵的海事駕馭技能、團隊合作等基本安全及操作標準。
美國海軍水面部隊指揮官羅登中將說,新規範適用散布全球的美國艦艇。現役與退役的海軍官員都認為,新規範象徵受傳統束縛的海軍艦隊經歷重大文化轉變。至少當前的安全及維護與操作安全標準相同,許多海軍艦長要求水兵回歸傳統的羅盤與紙筆,協助追蹤軍艦周圍五千碼內的船舶,避免可能的碰撞威脅,並統一艦長離開艦橋時,值班小組應遵守的規則。
商船通常透過自動辨識系統廣播船舶位置、航道與速度資訊,避免撞船,但美國軍艦因保密等考量,長期關閉此功能。美國政府審計辦公室五月的資料還顯示,水兵過去每周輪值高達一○八小時,新規範將讓水兵每值勤三小時就有九小時的輪休時間。李察遜表示,海軍近日將宣布更多新規範。
原文參照:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/us/politics/navy-orders-safety-operational-standards.html
2017-09-29.聯合報.A11.國際.編譯陳韻涵