> "An AKE like the Shepard should have 129 crewmembers in perfect conditions but they are now running at roughly 80% because of manning problems,” said another MSC officer. “About 20 in the deck department can be assigned to rust prevent duty. However, that crew is also assigned to Underway Replenishment duties. Three Unreps could easily eat away an entire day. When we return to port can we OSPHO? No. Can I send a crewmember over the side to chip? No. Navy rules prevent it."
Sounds like a classic case of trying to do the same job with less people, and management only taking notice when the issue becomes public-facing.
Manning problems have existed for a decade, if not more. The Navy holds the sad record of being the worst managed branch of service. Steep budget cuts in the 1990s and again during sequestration have had severe effects that the Navy hasn't yet recovered from. But I don't know whether that's the cause of the problem. The Navy is an especially unique branch given that it's the only service that revolves around a relatively small number of very large, very expensive assets. The Army doesn't revolve around its tanks, and the Air Force, while it revolves around planes, there are a lot more planes in the Air Force than ships in the Navy. Congress is not without blame for the Navy's problems either, apart from the budget cuts. Congress has the last word on all programs and procurement. The Littoral Combat Ships should never have seen the light of day for instance, but Congress pushed the program through, and now the ships are useless (and still being built!)
But there is hope on the horizon. The submarine construction programs (Virginia SSNs and Columbia SSBNs) are proceeding smoothly, as are the Flight III destroyers. DDG(X), the future replacement of the Arleigh-Burke class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers, is in development, and the first Constellation-class frigates will soon be laid down.
While there have been budget cuts, the US Navy’s budget went from ~80B in 2001 to over 160B today. Given what the US spends as a % of GDP, it feels like this should be more than enough. From afar, the problem appears to be decision makers in the Navy refusing to reduce scope and deciding to understaff.
It is all meaningless speculation. There is no reason that broadly measured inflation statistics have any relevance to price increases specific to materials and labor required for the subject at hand, such as ship building or operations of a navy.
To reply to those saying CPI inflation is up 60% over the period: S&P500 is a better measure of inflation, up 3x over the period, so navy budget roughly keeping pace.
Part of the problem is that the Navy can't reduce it's scope. Congress sets in law a lot of requirements. For example, the Navy has to have 11 large aircraft carriers, which is more than the rest of the world combined. This led to shell games when the Ford was behind in construction and doesn't allow the Navy to look at alternate force constructs such as more smaller carriers or focusing more on subs. Congress does this with all the branches, just look at why A-10s are still flying or the Abrams are still being built at like two a year. Now, this isn't always a bad thing. The services have not always done a great job transitioning to new technology, and have messed up their financing so bad they can't pass an audit, so a little extra oversight does make sense.
What percent was spent on capital budgets in 2001 vs 2021? The navy is currently undergoing building 4 or 5 major ship replacement cycles, replacing all of its aircraft (Top 10 airforce in the world), etc. My guess is that most of that budget is mandated by congress for that rather than for bottom paint on supply ships.
I looked briefly, and it's annoyingly hard to find summaries of the passed (not proposed) NDAA for a specific year, with top line and categorized breakdowns.
The Navy has failed to accomplish the modpro packages on the current CGs & LSD, including Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Tortuga. Those three I have personally been involved with in many ways. The 5XXX and structural work on the CG program has been wildly underestimated. The money for Tortuga was never there and as she lay idle in the shipyard problems grew. They are not simply east coast/BAE issues either. The issues repeat themselves here on the west coast at Vigor. It was a huge mistake to leave behind cost+ and switch to FFP. There is too much time lost to pointless contract fighting.
There is hope on the horizon with new subs and DDGx and FFG. Time will tell if the new build construction yields a new DDG1000/LCS or a workhorse like the earlier DDG flights.
As for corrosion it is a necessary evil. Too many armchair metallurgists point to various alloys as a solution. The ocean is cold, salty, and miserable. The planning yards, repair yards, and Navy are full of extremely bright and hardworking folks. It takes time and money to fight rust at sea and in port.
There's a big issue with manning on the civilian and Navy side. At the end of the day there are few people in my generation lining up to enlist or to do body-damaging labor. I can't say I blame them.. I became and engineer and then joined program management. Few in the yards want the same for their children as they had in their life. Those who are left are primarily 30+ years of experience or 1-5 years of experience looking to get out.
The Navy builds its ships with steel, and the grades of steel used in the construction can experience rust.
Solutions:
Switch to 100% stainless steel. Stainless steel is an alloy and contains a minimum of 11% chromium. This allows the formation of a protective film of chromium oxide which acts as a shield against rust. The protective film will re-form if damaged. Corrosion resistance can be further enhanced with the addition of nickel.
Use a weathering steel, also known as “COR-TEN” steel which contains up to 21% of alloying elements such as chromium, copper, nickel, and phosphorous. The alloys form a protective rust patina which reduces the corrosion rate with time. COR-TEN steel tends to be cheaper than stainless steel.
Galvanized steel. Galvanizing is a method of rust prevention. This is accomplished through hot-dip galvanizing or electroplating. The iron or steel object is coated in a thin layer of zinc. This stops oxygen and water from reaching the metal underneath but the zinc also acts as a sacrificial metal. Zinc is more reactive than iron, so it oxidizes in preference to the iron object. The zinc oxide layer prevents the formation of iron oxide, thus eliminating the possibility of rust forming.
That's a good idea. Everyone knows chromium does not contain any Rust.
Joking aside: There are many ways to prevent rust, though I think environmental concerns are also an issue. Galvanising might leak heavy metals into the sea? And chrome is also a pollutant. Iron is not.
Is it mechanically a 100% replacement for traditional steel used in naval construction? I recall specialty alloys like Wotan steel being used in WW2 warships. Perhaps such kinds of armor are not in vogue anymore, but corrosion resistance surely isn't the only requirement for naval construction, even if it's an important one. I'm not a metallurgist though, so I have no idea of all the implications of using stainless steel pervasively in naval construction.
I think that the sacrificial anodes work for places where it’s a hull in electrolyte, it wouldn’t necessarily work for salt spray in the superstructure.
I don't know if there's a name for this phenomenon, but it's sort of like an invisible Chesterton's fence. "Just make them out of a different steel" feels like a idea that is elegant, but even as someone that's never built a ship, I have to imagine there's some good reason why they're built out the materials they are, and why a simple material change is unlikely to be a solution. Maybe I'm wrong (it's not like organizations haven't done dumb things before despite a having a good simple solution), but it really feels like that's probably not the case here.
Stainless doesn’t really hold up in saltwater, with the exception of a few grades. The material properties (toughness, ductility, brittleness, weldability) can also be significantly different than non stainless.
Corten can work in less aggressive environments, but it has been known to fail to provide the expected protection in places with more acidic rain than was expected. Salt water is really aggressive.
Hot dip galvanizing does work, and is common for small boats, dock fittings, and other smaller items. There are also likely sacrificial anodes on the ship made of zinc.
I don't know about modern ships -- I suspect a lot of this is classified -- but as an example, the WWII Bismark had a hull which was around a foot thick, as armor.
(1) Rust wouldn't go all the way through. Surface rust isn't a problem.
(2) You want high-quality armor; toughness is key. Steel composition should be primarily chosen for toughness-to-weight
(3) And cost, of course.
Stainless would have been expensive, and given little upside, and potentially a lot of downside in terms of less effective armor plating.
Obviously, modern ships are entirely different (much less armor, actually, instead relying on active defenses), but I assume there are sensible reasons for materials choices.
The exact construction of modern ship hulls is definitely a secret, although perhaps not the most closely guarded one. There are plenty of photos of the Cole with a giant hole blown in it for example.
But modern ships generally don't have any amount of armor except against the smallest of gunfire. The idea being is that if someone gets close enough to shoot at you with a sizeable cannon you're already dead.
Modern missiles with explosive heads and get through anything with can make so there is no point to armor. In the battleship era you could get armor that would give your own guns trouble, but most battleships saw action against bigger battleships and good tactics meant they did okay.
The Navy would love armor that can stand up to modern missiles, but it isn't really possible, and the compromises in costs and inside space mean it isn't worth it. Maybe someday we will find a new material that would work, but for now ships rely on not getting hit.
Peacetime ships are also expected to last (Googling) 36 years in good condition.
I'm sure it was a concern in WWII, and that they took all steps they could to preserve their vessels, but I'm also guessing that as long as they weren't rusting so fast as to become junk in three or five years, they were much more worried about surviving combat than rust.
> Use a weathering steel, also known as “COR-TEN” steel which contains up to 21% of alloying elements such as chromium, copper, nickel, and phosphorous. The alloys form a protective rust patina which reduces the corrosion rate with time. COR-TEN steel tends to be cheaper than stainless steel.
If the point is for the ship to look 'not-rusty', Cor-Ten is probably about as far from that goal as one can get
Stainless steel is prone to stress cracking corrosion (SCC) in saltwater environments which causes catastrophic sudden failure when under load. You REALLY don’t want that in a ship.
Galvanizing basically works like anodic protection. Already used, but a galvanized coating will disappear (even a very thick one) in just a few years at sea, and can’t be reapplied in the field effectively. Paint works better.
Cor-ten works best where the rusting surface isn’t exposed to wear directly (like a ship hull). Something like a bridge span member or a shipping container side, or a side of a building. It has to rust for it to work.
If exposed to a particularly corrosive environment it still rusts through pretty quickly. A lot of Corten products (like shipping containers) still get painted to slow the process down.
Ships have desired operational lives of 20+ years. Painting and rust removal is the only way that works.
I honestly don't know too much about the maintenance that goes on when a ship is underway, but I do know that stainless releases hexavalent chromium when you're welding on it and requires a number of extra considerations for safety.
So any sailor doing any kind of patching or repair to whatever part of the hull is stainless needs extra education and extra PPE. As well as monitoring for blood levels and other health issues. Nothing insane, but an added inconvenience in an already inconvenient job.
The US Navy literally built some ships out of wood up through 1994. Those were minesweepers where minimizing the magnetic signature was more important than strength or corrosion resistance.
I also like the part of looking sharp, this is also a non-zero factor in any field, including IT. Between two professionals, if one looks sharp, clean and fit, while the other one does not, it is hard not to conclude one has also more self discipline.
This bias is a consequence of what Kahneman called “What You See Is All There Is.” It’s bad logic and ascribing signal when it’s actually projections of the observer.
That isn’t to say there is no effect - people might start to see themselves as more disciplined if they look sharp. “Look good, play good”, as my coach used to say.
I love that book, but I’m not sure Kahneman would agree that it applies here when we are evaluating not whether an individual looks sharp (imagine a salesperson on commission) but instead whether the individual+their work/domain/communication is sharp.
I find that to be a very valuable signal, and I’m struggling to imagine how I could be disagree with on this.
I think it’s a leap to go from “this person is disciplined in their personal appearance” to “this person is disciplined in XYZ” or “this person is disciplined in general”.
It’s a classic case of the halo effect. If you had an electrical issue, you wouldn’t contact your doctor because they are good at figuring things out and pretty smart.
Is it so far stretched to say that a person who is in good shape, takes proper care about his hygiene and stuff like hair/beard might be a more self disciplined and organized person compared to someone that is lazy about his hygiene, physical condition and appearance?
That "logic" could also be reversed just as easily. Someone with poor professional skills might feel more pressure to compensate by "looking sharp". Neither is actually "logic" but just post hoc justification of bias that generalizes a subset of cases without any data on their prevalence when in reality, that prevalence is highly contextual.
In my experience, some people place a high priority and gain significant pleasure from looking sharp, while others consider it a chore and would prefer to minimize the time spent on it. Thus a significant part of the "looking sharp" signal is measuring preference and priorities rather than level of successful execution.
In addition, issues with hygiene are more common in people with ADHD, autism etc so if you over apply this metric you may end up excluding some very smart, neurodiverse individuals.
If you see a rundown looking restraunt, you might conclude it isn't worth trying, but you'd be better off looking at how busy it is or the reviews. A rundown restraunt with a line out the door is probably gonna be better than a sharp looking restraunt with no customers, especially if they are side by side (in the same context). Beyond that, if I see a sharp restraunt and a dingy restraunt, both with lines out the door, I will pick the dingy one because I see that as signaling higher confidence that the consistent quality of their food will drive all the repeat business they want.
Edit: I'd also point out that "smart looking" is intricately tied into social class status signaling in many contexts.
> Someone with poor professional skills might feel more pressure to compensate by "looking sharp".
To look sharp and fit you HAVE to be disciplined. That's a fact. Yours, is a speculation. That is a difference.
Notice that I have never said that being a disciplined individual, which is a fact for who takes lots of care about himself implies a better professional, or a more self disciplined worker.
That being said, imho, there is a correlation between those things. If someone has good self discipline often he can probably translate this at a place of work or study.
> to look sharp and fit you HAVE to be disciplined. That's a fact.
Again, not in my experience. There are other ways to be fit than a rigorous workout scheme and diet. Some people are fit as a side effect of something they love to do. A mountain biking enthusiast doesn't have to be disciplined to be fit, just a little obsessed. Some people have obsessive body issues and their level of exercise is the result of an unhealthy lack of discipline. You are whitewashing a complex topic with your bias and stating it as an unassailable fact.
I think it is easy to confuse obsession with discipline sometimes. I think the obsessed tend to outperform the disciplined in their areas of focus and the combination of the two can lead to quite incredible things.
Edit: I will say that a lack of fitness can be a sign of a lack of discipline IF you know the context of the goals and priorities of that individual, but as a stand alone signal, it is meaningless without specific contexts.
It is as valid as for a ton of other characteristics. Eg, does someone who keeps their physical desktop clean fit into the same projection of discipline? How about someone who keeps their spice cabinet well labeled?
The issue is that we take one aspirational characteristic and use it to project things that might or might not be correlated.
Better to just measure what you want to measure directly. If it’s an important evaluation, it’s worth the cost. If it’s not important, why bother even with a cheap evaluation that may or may not be connected?
I think it's like how in sexual selection, many animals display traits that take additional energy to maintain. The theory is that this is selected for since if a potential mate is able to display these traits while still being alive and healthy, then that is some sort of proof of good genetics.
If a company can put energy into looking sharp while also staying in business, that proves some sort of viability/success of the business. There seem to be a few qualities you could have to achieve this, discipline being one of them. But, even if it's discipline that's being used to look sharp, that doesn't mean it transfers to the work the business produces -- all we know is that they're still in business and are successful enough to look sharp. For all we know they could use shady practices, under-deliver, know how to protect themselves contractually, and extract wealth from large inefficient organizations.
While I have certainly seen idiots with nice clothes make bad decisions in management, I do think that all things being equal, some level of professionalism is beneficial to an environment. Attitude and aptitude are critical, and I think dress can help the former.
More often then not I see folks that are faking it all dressed and proper. The people that are the heavy lifters can dress down because they know they are the heavy lifters and they don’t need to pretend. It’s a power play of sorts
" If crews can’t use new types of paint, If crews are restricted from using OSPHO (a mild acid used to clean up rust stains) in port or bosuns chairs over the side if we don’t have enough supply ships or crew on those supply ships if crews are committing suicide and arson because of conditions at shipyards tasked with painting old ships if the Navy doesn’t seek out the advice of commercial professionals at companies that have solved the problem like Shell if the Army and Air Force continue to get all the attention in Ukraine despite the heaviest fighting taking place in the littorals and ports – I could go on – how can individual sailors “stand up and be ready” to combat rust?"
1. I hope I'm reading this wrong. I can guarantee Sailors arn't committing suicide, or arson, because of a fugly rusty ship.
2. If their is any real problem it's the way our Navy treats Sailors, and lies to them upon signing that contract, and tries to renig on any lofty promises upon signing.
I once heard the Navy will send you to school upon enlisting. Navy, "Become a Lawyer. We pay for it.". This commercial was around that movie with Tom Cruise
playing the spiffy lawyer in his whites going up against Jack Nicholson. "You can't handle the truth!". Forget the name.
I looked it up. The military at the time was picking up tuition for 8 enlisted men to go to law school.
The guys are angry because once they enlisted, it wasen't the opportunity they thought it would be. Period.
> 1. I hope I'm reading this wrong. I can guarantee Sailors arn't committing suicide, or arson, because of a fugly rusty ship.
Sad to see that HN discussions stow so low so as to not discuss the things the piece actually mentions
> The situation is not much better for American shipyards. On the morning of April 11, Captain Brent Gaut, the commander of the USS George Washington — an aircraft carrier undergoing major shipyard work at Newport News, Virginia — got on the ship’s intercom to announce that two sailors had died, and Gaut was alerting the crew that those deaths were the eighth and ninth suicides the ship had experienced in the nine months the ship has been stuck in shipyard. What was the Navy’s response? Gilday’s top enlisted adviser, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith, told sailors they need to do a better job “managing expectations” then he chastised them by saying “What you’re not doing is sleeping in a foxhole like a Marine.”
> This type of “toughen up, stand up” approach sounds eerily familiar to those of us who worked offshore in the years leading up to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
> In 2020, while undergoing shipyard repair in San Diego, conditions aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard were so bad a crew member set fire to the ship leading to the ship’s destruction. The responsible crew member was arrested but – despite investigators finding bad morale, delays, and poor training – the ship’s captain (and his chain of command) was left in charge and was allowed to celebrate the decommissioning of the ship he had lost.
> Shell if the Army and Air Force continue to get all the attention in Ukraine
This is a great point that I started thinking about 2-3 days ago, i.e. that the present war in Ukraine is, almost by definition, a continental war (think Napoleon or the Eastern Campaign in WW2), and, as such, that an organisation like the US Navy might feel like it has been left out (like this quote actually emphasises). At which point it gets tricky when it comes to justify your budget, as in: "why should we assign so much money to the Navy when we're most worried about a continental war?".
The "solution" that I saw in my head for this dilemma (from the POV of the Navy) was a re-emphasis on Taiwan and on China, i.e. trying to bring forward (again) the danger that the Chinese pose to Taiwan and to SE-Asia more generally speaking. That's a lot of sea/ocean for the Navy to cover and protect.
paganet says>""why should we assign so much money to the Navy when we're most worried about a continental war?"."<
Russia values the coastal territory it has grabbed b/c d they can use it to support a navy, something Russia has historically always wanted and needed (to project military power). But they have always done poorly and continue to do so:
Thwarting Russia's naval progress is cost-effective since it takes tremendous resources and history to run a navy effectively. Only Great Britain and the USA have been successful at establishing modern multi-ocean navies.
I do think Russia/USSR has focused primarily on the "heartland" [1], they have had some navy power but it looked almost always as an afterthought (their nuclear subs are a special, almost separate, case, they're more nuclear-oriented than sea/ocean-oriented). The US (following Britain) has of course almost been a world power that has focused on the Rimland-like spaces (plus islands like Japan).
Having one aircraft carrier or ten-eleven won't make that much of a difference when the battle happens on the steppes of Eurasia (like it is now happening in Donbas), there are only so many such carriers that one can place inside a "small" sea like the Black Sea (assuming that they'll be allowed to pass the Bosphorus).
The military pivot towards treating China as the primary adversary already happened during the Obama administration, well before the current war in Ukraine. Russia can cause some trouble but they are too poor, weak, and corrupt to ever be a serious strategic competitor. All major defense procurement programs are now primarily focused on producing a force that will be able to defeat China in a major regional conflict across the entire western Pacific theater.
Is there every a situation where an individual can complain about institutional regression at a large scale without facing this dismissal?
I’m starting to associate this point with people flippantly dismissing a (potentially) reasonable point.
Look, Im familiar with all the aphorisms about ‘kids these days’ and ‘soft men’ and the like. There’s a lot of wisdom in avoiding cynicism, but to avoid all negative observations of this sort is just as naive. Many great states and institutions fizzle out with little fanfare, under mediocre leadership and execution.
Also, large armies have been vehicles of social change since napoleonic times at least. You bring young men from all over the country together, from different backgrounds and different social classes, and have them depend on each other for their very survival.
The GP is either an outright troll, or has bought into a political propaganda version of what armed forces are like.
This looks like the same phenomenon as the crisis in staffing nurses that was discussed here the other day. Careerist, indifferent management giving the people on the front line inadequate resources and then blaming them when things start to look shabby, or when someone dies. Scapegoating the people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, who are tired, inadequately trained, and inured to a climate of normalized deviance. Many organizations don't suffer from these problems to nearly such an extent. I've worked in reasonably functional organizations, and ones that are disfunctional in different ways. Why does this malady strike the U.S. Navy and healthcare so severely? Am I viewing this from too great a distance? Are these actually separate forms of institutional dysfunction?
> Why does this malady strike the U.S. Navy and healthcare so severely?
Both industries substantially outsourced functionality in the 90s in an attempt to cut costs.
Consequently, they are now less empowered (vs historical levels) to effect change in their own processes in a timely manner.
Large organizations need to pay more attention to ossification of processes as a serious future risk, that needs to be balanced against immediate savings.
As a Navy physician who has dealt with COVID and fatigue, I think the chronic low pay contributes to a lack of people which leads to overwork, exhaustion, a sort of "this is my lot in life" acceptance of mild to moderate depression. And you get to the point you just look away for your own sanity. Healthcare workers get paid less as you get closer to the coasts. And military gets only very modest pay adjustments for housing costs. A colonel in Kansas may live like a king, but a captain in San Diego can't afford a house.
Edit: I also agree with the posts about outsourcing leading to ossification and rigid stratification. You want rigid stratification? Try military medicine.
Great point! At the end of the day, we're talking about people. Highly trained people in Navy, medicine, and Navy medicine cases.
And people have limits, because they need lives and aren't robots.
Morale and aligning work to allow for happiness in life is a requirement for people bringing their best to work. If you ask people to toughen up and suffer through the suck to get the job done... there'd better be an eventual light at the end of that tunnel. Otherwise, it's just a death march.
PS: Thank you for your service, and especially through COVID.
The Navy pays officers very generously across all fields, EXCEPT medicine and JAG. URL JOs will take a pay cut for the first several years (at least) after leaving for the civilian sector. I never, ever heard a URL peer get out because of financial reasons.
FWIW, BAH (pay for housing that is tax-free) is $4000 for an O-6 in Point Loma v. $2777 in Offut, NE. Seems to be aggressive adjustment, no?
Enlisted pay might be another story…
EDIT: I know one guy who griped about pay once…kind of in passing. Went on to be a YC founder haha.
You will never know. That is the great thing about “benefits”, the recipient has no control or knowledge.
The employer, or politicians, 5, 10, 20 years from now can cut funding and reduce access from MDs to NP/PA, or only cover certain meds, or require excessive prior authorizations to dissuade using the healthcare.
Exactly this. The VA already is hiring as many midlevels (NP/PA) as possible so that they don't have to hire MDs. You wouldn't believe how low the bar is to become an NP. PAs receive substantially better training, but at the end of the day they are still midlevels.
Worse still, many NP programs are now giving out "doctorates" of nursing practice so that NPs can introduce themselves to the patient as "Dr." Smith.
In short, the VA is willing to gamble with your life if it means saving a few bucks. It's pretty harrowing.
You can't just look at enlisted pay broadly. You have to look at the troops that earn BAH and those who don't. Both are underpaid, but those who don't get BAH are inundated in very poor base services and are usually on the clock 24/7: https://veteran.com/2022-military-pay-charts/
Another point that I haven't seen brought up here is that usually the people who paint ships are school washouts. They couldn't get through school and have no classification, so this is what they do. I wasn't in the Navy but this is always what I heard.
if only i knew what any of those words mean. Why haven't people learned to describe their abbreviation unless they already pre-established that the audience will definitely know them?
If you have seen JAG or NCIS (tv shows), you probably know some of these and with NCIS being a top (broadcast) show for a few years, it is quite likely a lot of (dare I say older) people have heard of these
Only ~30% of people on HN are from the US and I'd assume that the number of non-US people who watched NCIS in the original language are comparatively low.
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Line_Officer basically any officer that isn't a specialist. Doctors and lawyers have artificially high ranks compared to non specialists, but you wouldn't expect them to command a ship.
I know what you mean, but I don't think it would merely be unexpected if one did somehow. I'm pretty sure it isn't possible because, being specialists, they can't also be a line officer. It seems like logic stops them, but then leads me to wonder about the vague possibility of a horribly unfortunate event leaving only specialists on-board... what then? Would logic stop them from sailing, or inexperience and lack of expertise?
Because I’m replying to someone who would know what those acronyms are.
The ELI5 is that the Navy pays officers who do the core ship/flying activities quite well. Compared to their civilian peers, Navy lawyers, doctors, and cyber people don’t get paid well.
The posted article is about rust on ships. A ships management team is paid well. Low pay is unlikely to be the cause of dissatisfaction.
To be clear, “paid well” is not “paid well” as measured by FAANG tech salaries. A submarine officer with 8 years of experience is making something equivalent to $200Ks if I am to believe the calculators that adjust for tax advantages of military pay, discounted value of future retirement cash flows, etc.
"Because I’m replying to someone who would know what those acronyms are."
That only flies in an email or on a specialized forum.
It's curious that you are smart enough to come up with an arguement yet apparently at the same time innocently simple enough not to know why it's invalid.
It would indeed. But why push the burden onto all the non-specialist readers, who after all come here to both learn and to take part, rather than expand the initialisms the first time they're introduced in a thread?
I'm reminded of an acronym at work: CIM. They come in two variants, CIM-A and CIM-B. I'd been there a year before I finally decided I needed to ask a more senior colleague what they stood for, and he didn't know either. The intention was obvious from the context of their use (although whether -A or -B was more serious wasn't) but most of the people in the weekly meetings discussing Critical Incident Management didn't actually know that was what they were discussing. Nowadays we have a culture that better encourages definition of terms upon first use, and it's less common that someone needs to ask "stupid" questions.
I was a SWO before going into medicine. My first divo tour was in the engineering dept and my second was in weapons. Did well in both. I'm not sure I agree with you about the SWOs or pilots getting paid well relative to their civilian peers.
Maybe it’s ultimately a subjective thing. If one feels underpaid, they are underpaid. Then it’s a matter if there’s an employer that agrees, and it just takes one.
Anecdotally, I had a reservist friend with a Harvard MBA who realized he could pull down more money as an activated reservist in Bahrain than his role at BlackRock.
JAG was a TV show for like 10 years. Judge Advocate General. Lawyers.
BAH has a description in parens immediately following, but could be better.
Why do people on technical message board with lots of jargon refuses to do even a modicum of research? If I didn't drop a description of a monad after I said it here would you also be mad? How about Term Sheets. I see Alpha used all the time and I have to look it up.
Since this doesn’t seem to be answered down thread- URL refers to Unrestricted Line officers, for example officers in the aviation, surface or submarine warfare communities etc. Restricted line officers can be found in the medical, supply, or intelligence communities etc. A third type of officer, and one of my personal favorite abbreviations, is the Direct Input Limited Duty Officer. DILDOs are required to have prior enlisted experience, but not required to have a bachelors degree. Restricted line officers and DILDOs could be given command of a training unit, or medical facility, but would not be given command of a ship or squadron.
It's part of the indoctrination of military culture/mindset. The heavy use of acronyms especially in a public context like this serves to signal in group/out group status.
> A colonel in Kansas may live like a king, but a captain in San Diego can't afford a house.
Assuming both sought living accomodations outside of free base housing, I was curious what those figures actually looked like[1]:
- O-6 colonel stationed at, e.g. Fort Riley, KS 66442, would draw up to an additional $1500 without dependents, $1911 with.
- O-6 captain stationed at, e.g. NAS North Island, CA 92135, would draw up to an additional $3342 without dependents, $4026 with.
It's worth mentioning for those unfamiliar that, just like BAS (i.e. food allowance), this BAH (i.e. housing allowance) is completely tax-exempt.
The game that active service members play here is to secure a home mortgage (often through VA home loan), then apply BAH directly towards monthly mortgage payments throughout service all the way to retirement. It's not hard to imagine other tax advantaged games to be played here. Applying BAH to rent a house off base is a naive fool's errand.
In terms of annual cost of living adjustments to base pay, uniformed service received +2.7% increase this year; in contrast, +2.2% for federal GS civilians. The year before that, it was +3% v. +1%. These adjustments have historically favored uniformed service over the federal civilians that work beside them. Sure, they're lowball relative to inflation, but that ought to be squared against military tax-exempt BAS/BAH and hugely subsidized commissary entitlements.
Exceptionally common amongst Navy personnel, married sailors typically draw an additional $250/mo family separation allowance[2] when out at sea for more than 30 continuous days. This will obviously have a greater financial impact amongst the enlisted ranks than officers. Depending on rank and job, there's a litany of allowances, bonuses and incentives (beyond the scope of this remark) that are often ignored when the conversation of military service compensation is brought up...nevermind that no one ever talks about the opportunity to retire with guaranteed pension + benefits for life as young as 38.
As an outsider, I'm inclined to agree that military health professions do seem to pay a substantial indirect opportunity cost despite the unique bonuses they're entitled to[3].
I do wonder what individual circumstances led you to choose a Navy commission over everything else?
There's plenty of reason to not buy. What if something catastrophic happens while you're gone for six months? What if you struggle to close on your house in time to move? How sure are you that the market will appreciate enough in the ~3 years at a given station to make back the realtor fees?
I know much more about healthcare than the Navy, but it’s notable that they both have rigid stratification between roles. I could imagine that hampering operational feedback loops in normal times, and strategic feedback loops given the labor supply/demand situation in these extraordinary times.
At least in healthcare, I doubt this is a major causative factor (presuming when you say roles you mean physicians and nurses) -- the physicians are extremely supportive of the nurses, and their demands for more pay and better conditions in all the healthcare settings I've worked.
The real problem is the unaccountable bureaucratic management, which are neither physicians nor nurses, and the numbers of which continue to expand (sucking up financial resources) while physicians and nurses workload increases and pay continues to decrease in real terms.
I tend to agree with the parent post about the extreme rigidness though causing issues. My wife is an Occupational Therapist and in some states she can supervise showering and some states only nurses can. Some states she can initiate cases and some states she can't.
There are too many micro-specialties and not enough crossover. Imagine if once you were a frontend dev you would have to go back to school for 2 years full time to be legally allowed to do ui design of a button even though there is a lot of crossover and knowledge sharing between roles.
This definitely causes shortages and issues when the demand naturally rises and falls for various Healthcare disciplines.
I'm not saying formal education isn't important but there could be a much more fluid crossover between various allied health disciplines than their is currently.
Maybe more transition programs or seeing individual billing codes for Medicare attached to education modules
Even if we had more licensed physicians we would still have a large number of staff per doctor. A radiologist might be able to administer contrast to a patient, check their vital signs, transport them to the MRI machine, and run the scan but that's not a good use of a radiologist's time. Better to have nurses, orderlies, and technicians do all that so the radiologist can focus on reading the images.
That part is obvious. Regardless of the number of physicians, they will always be the most expensive resources. Thus any procedure which can safely and legally be performed by less expensive resources, should be.
That's been used to refer to the changes caused by Covid over the last couple years. It's added mostly up to mild inconvenience for me, but it definitely has had serious impact on the Healthcare sector and is being blamed for the undermanned crews in the Navy.
In the UK at least, there's much less stratification than there once was I think.
For example Advanced Nurse Practitioner status grants nurses almost all prescribing rights you'd get as a doctor. They're allowed scheduled drugs (ie stuff that's commonly abused) because a bunch of those are effective painkillers and a key reason to have Advanced Practitioner is that "This patient is in agony, and I know the only thing a doctor would do is give them these stronger drugs, but I'm not allowed to do that on my own" is a stupid situation to put an experienced nurse in, so let's just authorise them to do it.
I believe there are Advanced Practitioner variants for several other healthcare roles including midwife and pharmacist; in some cases you just get limited prescription rights (so you can only give people some specific prescription drugs from a list) but in other cases like Advanced Nurse Practitioner it's the whole thing, if your knowledge and experience tells you that off-label use of a heart medicine is the right way to solve your patient's acute hiccups you can do that just like a doctor could.
To qualify for advanced practice these professionals are doing much of the same work student Doctors do - but just focused to their specific discipline. Lots of Chemistry, learning how to read research literature, and so on. They get a post-graduate degree of some sort, I don't remember the exact title.
> Why does this malady strike the U.S. Navy and healthcare so severely?
Totally government run in the case of the military, and healthcare is the most heavily regulated industry (by far) in the US. Heavy bureaucratic regulations make an organization unable to adapt to local and/or changing circumstances.
I read in the book "The Pity of War" by Ferguson that the reason the death rates of the German army in WW1 were so much lower than that of the British is the British generals would craft detailed orders on how the soldiers were to achieve objectives. The German generals would instead just give the officers the objectives. The officers were free to adapt to local circumstances.
A similar idea is a story I heard where a class of new lieutenants were asked how would they go about raising a flagpole. The lieutenants all wrote down detailed instructions and procedures. The instructor said you're all wrong. The correct answer is "sergeant, get that flagpole up!".
>the reason the death rates of the German army in WW1 were so much lower than that of the British
If the advice you just gave is so good, why couldn't you (or the book's author) have found an example in which the side following the advice actually won the war?
If you're interest in exploring this further, I recommend the book "Strategy" by Hart for a dance through the history of warfare and what works and doesn't.
As for WW1, Germany did defeat Russia. It took America's entry into the war to defeat Germany.
But you want an example. Take WW2. When Hitler allowed his generals to run things, things went well for the German army. When Hitler decided he knew better, he micromanaged the Wehrmacht into defeat and ruin. The Luftwaffe's problems were greatly impeded by Goering making a hash of things, despite his officers pleading with him. Goering would dictate tactics that negated the advantages of the Me-109s in the Battle of Britain. Goering also infamously ordered a literal decimation of his pilots for cowardice, an order that was quietly ignored.
In the naval war, the U-Boot commanders knew that Enigma had been broken and tactics had to change, but Admiral Doenitz knew better and sent them to their doom. Some histories assert that the Germans were clueless about Enigma, but the U-Boot commanders knew the truth.
That's incorrect. In World War 1 both sides had extremely rigid operational plans. The German operational plan even included specific times down to the hour, for when specific bridges and road junctions should be captured.
Indeed, what saved the Entente in World War 1 was the fact that Belgium, which had been expected to roll over and allow the German army unmolested free passage, actually called up its military and fought. That ruined the German timetables, allowing France to complete its mobilization and brought the British into the war preventing a quick German victory on the Western Front.
Towards the end of the war, yes, Germany was beginning to move towards what we would consider a "commander's intent"-based system. Erwin Rommel's text, Infantry Attacks, captures this transition. However, it's inaccurate to say that the German military was any less rigid than the British.
It is also inaccurate to say that the death rates of the German army were any less than they were for the British. Perhaps in 1914 and 1915, as well-trained German regulars were facing off against the "Pals Brigades", the Germans inflicted more casualties than they received. But by the end of the war, as the German economy was crumbling and the prospect of US involvement made the German generals desperate, they resorted to mass infantry charges with relatively untrained soldiers, and took extremely heavy casualties as a result.
If anything, your description of the German army is more accurate for the Wehrmacht in World War 2 than it is for the Kaiser's army.
Ferguson, the author, backs it up with statistics.
"As Table 32 shows, the greatest of all the paradoxes of the First World War is that, despite being disastrously disadvantaged in economic terms, the Central Powers were far more successful in inflicting death on their enemies. According to the best available totals for wartime military deaths, some 5.4 million men fighting for the Entente powers and their allies lost their lives, the overwhelming majority of them killed by the enemy. The equivalent total for the Central Powers is just over 4 million. The Central Powers' superiority in killing was thus of the order of 35 per cent. The official British statistics published shortly after the war give an even higher margin of 50 per cent, as do the figures in a number of modern textbooks.52 In other words, the Central Powers were at least a third better at mass slaughter." pg 294
"The trouble was - and here the excuses must stop - that the entire culture of the British regular army militated against effective improvisation. The command structure was based on obedience to superiors and suspicion of subordinates; men could still advance according to their connections; and commanders could still be 'unstuck' by personal quarrels.83 This could have serious repercussions: when Haig questioned
Rawlinson's original Somme plan, the latter felt unable to stand his ground, with the result that Haig was able to insist on the suicidal breakthrough objective. As Rawlinson said, 'It is a gamble to go for an unlimited offensive but D. H. wants it and I am prepared to undertake anything within reason [sic].'84 An Army Commander did not presume
to correct the Commander-in-Chief, even when tens of thousands of men's lives were at stake.85 Similar inhibitions existed at every level. Orders were issued at the top and fed down the line; there was little traffic in the other direction. As a result, officers, NCOs and men grew accustomed to 'waiting for orders'. In battle, as J. M. Bourne has remarked, 'when German shelling interrupted communications paralysis set in'. To adapt the not inappropriate language of industrial organization, this was 'line management', and it provided no mechanism by which the views of 'junior line managers' could be relayed back to head office.86 Partly for this reason, the proponents of a more technocratic approach made slow headway against the traditional believers in war as a moral rather than material contest.87 Too much emphasis was placed on morale, courage and discipline; not enough on fire-power and tactics."
pg 305
"These German tactical strengths were rooted in a distinctive military culture. According to Dupuy, the German military establishment had 'discovered the secret of institutionalizing military excellence'.109 Martin
Samuels likewise points to a distinctively German philosophy of combat, which acknowledged its fundamentally chaotic character.'10 This in turn influenced the way command structures evolved. The Germans favoured 'directive command' (task-oriented and decentralized decision making, flexible at all levels) whereas the British preferred 'restrictive
control', which deliberately discouraged initiative."1 Differences in training also followed logically from this. German 'chaos theory' demanded a high level of training to promote adaptability; the British approach required only obedience. Moreover, the German officer did not stop learning on obtaining his commission; the officer corps was
meritocratic, and dud officers were ruthlessly weeded out."2 This line of argument has been further developed by the work of Gudmundsson on stormtroop tactics, which (he argues) depended for their success on the existence of a 'self-educating officer corps'."3 pg 309
If that's not enough, there's plenty more backup in the book. It's a good read, I recommend it.
That's very interesting! My understanding of World War 1 is from Tuchman's The Guns of August and Clark's The Sleepwalkers, and both of those don't seem to rate the Germans as being more flexible at the beginning of the war than the British.
Rust-free? How over budget should we go trying to make an all-aluminum and carbon fiber carrier? Is fiberglass ok or are we planning on making submarines too?
If you read the article, they talk about how commercial merchant marine vessels use modern coatings and materials, but that the US Navy has not approved their use after several years. Another failure.
The modern materials are required since the EPA outlawed the coatings they used to use that actually worked.
I thought the military had exemptions on EPA compliance for stuff. For example: US Army tanks use depleted uranium projectiles. Those are definitely not good for the environment.
The military must follow all EPA regulations as a general order, but someone at a high enough rank in the pentagon can make an exception for a specific rule/reg.
Probably because the chemicals they were using are pretty nasty and were used in high volumes. They were doing a lot of damage to the environment and there are alternatives. They just haven't been approved yet for use by the navy. It's not a good look to continue using damaging, outdated methods because your bureaucracy is so bad that can't utilize new technology.
The all-aluminum Independence Class ships barely lasted 10 years before corrosion and other design problem meant all three had to be scrapped.
It's too bad since I liked the concept and the new technology being tested out on the ships. There was even speculation one of the ships would have the first working rail gun installed.
Was this upvoted by bots because of "Rust" in the title?
Who cares if the US Navy's ships look like crap, this isn't a particularly intellectually stimulating topic, nor is it one that is of much interest outside of the US.
If I were to ask 10,000 people selected randomly from outside the US. What percentage do you think would be able to name the naval commander of the US? I'd bet it's very close to zero.
The military is is very much beloved by the US population and present at big sport events, in Hollywood, on campuses etc. I'm not surprised these topics are getting traction on HN.
How about reducing the Navy budget because current spending is beyond wasteful for equipment that's hardly used since wars are becoming so rare. For the minimum set of future ships, sure, lets look for technology that'll save tax-payers money.
Arguably, in a nuclear era, this state of affairs is managed by maintaining the undeniable obviousness of mutually assured destruction. Securing peace by preparing for war.
The second a steel ship leaves the shipyard it is rusting. This is not about old rusty ships, it's about the normal routine maintenance that all steel ships require, and the Navy's seeming inability to do it.
Politically bad move since Chinese is rapidly increasing their fleet size. Sure there are many are other components of power like quality, tradition, supply chain and so on. But I'm emphasizing on Politic here.
What happened to appearing weak when you're strong, and strong when you're weak? (Unless this is a submarine targeting enemy researchers?) Making warships look aesthetically pleasing strikes me as a little silly.
That said, safety and mental health sounds like vital issues to address.
I'm not in a navy and I think the rusty ships look more intimidating. Though I guess I could be abus-- I mean, disciplined into thinking unmade beds, unshined shoes, and a spot of rust must mean you're a total pushover.
From vague memory - didn't the USN have to more-or-less write off some major warships in the past decade or few, because the contractor who built them did so to "fresh water only" spec's - then weaseled, lawyered, and lobbied his way out of responsibility for the ships being utterly unfit for purpose?
I don't think so? The only major warships the Navy operates are carriers (Nimitz, Ford), amphibious assault ships (Wasp, America), cruisers (Ticonderoga, the last of which was commissioned in 1994), and destroyers (Arleigh Burke, forthcoming DDGX). Ignoring the LCSs as a complete cluster#_$&.
Maybe you're thinking of the Spearhead-class EPFs [0] and the issue with high sea states? But those were designed from the ground up to be cheap ($180M each) and "good enough" for sealift and harbor basing missions.
Not a capital ship, nor quickly written off - but 2,300 tons (light) is between the Allen M. Sumner- and Gearing-class (late WWII) destroyers. And "forgot that aluminum hull + steel propulsion hardware + salt water = galvanic corrosion" is a "never bothered to calculate GM" (the metacentric height) level of cluster#_$&'ing incompetence for any shipbuilder.
Thank god some common sense seems to have finally injected itself into the frigate endeavor via the Constellation pivot. Although we'll see how the engine development on those goes...
Missing galvanic corrosion as a serious concern while making an aluminum and steel ship is pretty impressive. I guess they didn't actually miss it though. In your article, they say a cathodic protection system appeared on a list of things that were originally planned for the ship, but left off in the end. Which is incredible to me.
I'm definitely in the learning phase with respect to how different metals and alloys interact, but I'm pretty sure I would have caught that myself. Galvanic corrosion is a pretty well-known issue when dealing with aluminum.
This is quite a cool analogy for either poor or strong leadership during a time of crisis and long deployments. I can't tell which is which yet. I'd probably go with the former based on my experiences and what I've seen firsthand in the surrounding world(healthcare, big tech, education, etc).
On the poor leadership front, less people on the front line and they have been burnt out for longer than ever on overextended deployments. Enduring stress for too long simply breaks you down. The attention to detail eventually dissipates and people are just trying to keep their heads above water.
On the strong leadership front, everything continued to function to expectations except appearance which may be argued to be the last remaining detail. Appearance however is everything in the military and goes back quite some time to tradition:
> An old Navy tradition has it that the ship's cook shines the ship's bell and the ship's bugler shines the ship's whistle. This tradition may still be observed in some of the ships of the modern Navy. However, in normal practice, the ship's bell is maintained by a man of the ships' division charged with the upkeep of that part of the ship where the bell is located.
This seems like a fun college-level question for a leadership/military/software class. What is your argument and why?
205 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadSounds like a classic case of trying to do the same job with less people, and management only taking notice when the issue becomes public-facing.
But there is hope on the horizon. The submarine construction programs (Virginia SSNs and Columbia SSBNs) are proceeding smoothly, as are the Flight III destroyers. DDG(X), the future replacement of the Arleigh-Burke class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers, is in development, and the first Constellation-class frigates will soon be laid down.
[1] https://www.janes.com/defence-news/
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%24160B+in+2022+convert...
Meta: (1) Oh, that's cool, using Wolfram to look up inflation data! I'll try to remember that.
(2) "Trying to gently... I'd suggest..." strikes me the same as "With the greatest respect..." Maybe just post the link next time.
US GDP (nominal) in 2021: USD$23T
I would strongly advise waiting until the first Flight III ship is going on deployment before making this claim.
The Navy has failed to accomplish the modpro packages on the current CGs & LSD, including Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Tortuga. Those three I have personally been involved with in many ways. The 5XXX and structural work on the CG program has been wildly underestimated. The money for Tortuga was never there and as she lay idle in the shipyard problems grew. They are not simply east coast/BAE issues either. The issues repeat themselves here on the west coast at Vigor. It was a huge mistake to leave behind cost+ and switch to FFP. There is too much time lost to pointless contract fighting.
There is hope on the horizon with new subs and DDGx and FFG. Time will tell if the new build construction yields a new DDG1000/LCS or a workhorse like the earlier DDG flights.
As for corrosion it is a necessary evil. Too many armchair metallurgists point to various alloys as a solution. The ocean is cold, salty, and miserable. The planning yards, repair yards, and Navy are full of extremely bright and hardworking folks. It takes time and money to fight rust at sea and in port.
There's a big issue with manning on the civilian and Navy side. At the end of the day there are few people in my generation lining up to enlist or to do body-damaging labor. I can't say I blame them.. I became and engineer and then joined program management. Few in the yards want the same for their children as they had in their life. Those who are left are primarily 30+ years of experience or 1-5 years of experience looking to get out.
Solutions:
Switch to 100% stainless steel. Stainless steel is an alloy and contains a minimum of 11% chromium. This allows the formation of a protective film of chromium oxide which acts as a shield against rust. The protective film will re-form if damaged. Corrosion resistance can be further enhanced with the addition of nickel.
Use a weathering steel, also known as “COR-TEN” steel which contains up to 21% of alloying elements such as chromium, copper, nickel, and phosphorous. The alloys form a protective rust patina which reduces the corrosion rate with time. COR-TEN steel tends to be cheaper than stainless steel.
Galvanized steel. Galvanizing is a method of rust prevention. This is accomplished through hot-dip galvanizing or electroplating. The iron or steel object is coated in a thin layer of zinc. This stops oxygen and water from reaching the metal underneath but the zinc also acts as a sacrificial metal. Zinc is more reactive than iron, so it oxidizes in preference to the iron object. The zinc oxide layer prevents the formation of iron oxide, thus eliminating the possibility of rust forming.
Joking aside: There are many ways to prevent rust, though I think environmental concerns are also an issue. Galvanising might leak heavy metals into the sea? And chrome is also a pollutant. Iron is not.
Corten can work in less aggressive environments, but it has been known to fail to provide the expected protection in places with more acidic rain than was expected. Salt water is really aggressive.
Hot dip galvanizing does work, and is common for small boats, dock fittings, and other smaller items. There are also likely sacrificial anodes on the ship made of zinc.
(1) Rust wouldn't go all the way through. Surface rust isn't a problem.
(2) You want high-quality armor; toughness is key. Steel composition should be primarily chosen for toughness-to-weight
(3) And cost, of course.
Stainless would have been expensive, and given little upside, and potentially a lot of downside in terms of less effective armor plating.
Obviously, modern ships are entirely different (much less armor, actually, instead relying on active defenses), but I assume there are sensible reasons for materials choices.
But modern ships generally don't have any amount of armor except against the smallest of gunfire. The idea being is that if someone gets close enough to shoot at you with a sizeable cannon you're already dead.
The Navy would love armor that can stand up to modern missiles, but it isn't really possible, and the compromises in costs and inside space mean it isn't worth it. Maybe someday we will find a new material that would work, but for now ships rely on not getting hit.
I'm sure it was a concern in WWII, and that they took all steps they could to preserve their vessels, but I'm also guessing that as long as they weren't rusting so fast as to become junk in three or five years, they were much more worried about surviving combat than rust.
What could go wrong?
If the point is for the ship to look 'not-rusty', Cor-Ten is probably about as far from that goal as one can get
Galvanizing basically works like anodic protection. Already used, but a galvanized coating will disappear (even a very thick one) in just a few years at sea, and can’t be reapplied in the field effectively. Paint works better.
Cor-ten works best where the rusting surface isn’t exposed to wear directly (like a ship hull). Something like a bridge span member or a shipping container side, or a side of a building. It has to rust for it to work.
If exposed to a particularly corrosive environment it still rusts through pretty quickly. A lot of Corten products (like shipping containers) still get painted to slow the process down.
Ships have desired operational lives of 20+ years. Painting and rust removal is the only way that works.
So any sailor doing any kind of patching or repair to whatever part of the hull is stainless needs extra education and extra PPE. As well as monitoring for blood levels and other health issues. Nothing insane, but an added inconvenience in an already inconvenient job.
You need to have the right toughness, ductility, fatigue, etc.
Steel varies a lot. You can buy a 1000 page book that just lists different steels, along with their material properties.
Saying “just use stainless” is kinda like saying “just 3d print it” or “just make it out of carbon fiber”
If you run your teams and equipment beyond the threshold, your equipment and team will suffer and degrade your abilities.
This is a failure of leadership, and it was avoidable!
That isn’t to say there is no effect - people might start to see themselves as more disciplined if they look sharp. “Look good, play good”, as my coach used to say.
I find that to be a very valuable signal, and I’m struggling to imagine how I could be disagree with on this.
It’s a classic case of the halo effect. If you had an electrical issue, you wouldn’t contact your doctor because they are good at figuring things out and pretty smart.
Domain specific skills and habits are just that.
Is it so far stretched to say that a person who is in good shape, takes proper care about his hygiene and stuff like hair/beard might be a more self disciplined and organized person compared to someone that is lazy about his hygiene, physical condition and appearance?
In my experience, some people place a high priority and gain significant pleasure from looking sharp, while others consider it a chore and would prefer to minimize the time spent on it. Thus a significant part of the "looking sharp" signal is measuring preference and priorities rather than level of successful execution.
In addition, issues with hygiene are more common in people with ADHD, autism etc so if you over apply this metric you may end up excluding some very smart, neurodiverse individuals.
If you see a rundown looking restraunt, you might conclude it isn't worth trying, but you'd be better off looking at how busy it is or the reviews. A rundown restraunt with a line out the door is probably gonna be better than a sharp looking restraunt with no customers, especially if they are side by side (in the same context). Beyond that, if I see a sharp restraunt and a dingy restraunt, both with lines out the door, I will pick the dingy one because I see that as signaling higher confidence that the consistent quality of their food will drive all the repeat business they want.
Edit: I'd also point out that "smart looking" is intricately tied into social class status signaling in many contexts.
To look sharp and fit you HAVE to be disciplined. That's a fact. Yours, is a speculation. That is a difference.
Notice that I have never said that being a disciplined individual, which is a fact for who takes lots of care about himself implies a better professional, or a more self disciplined worker.
That being said, imho, there is a correlation between those things. If someone has good self discipline often he can probably translate this at a place of work or study.
Again, not in my experience. There are other ways to be fit than a rigorous workout scheme and diet. Some people are fit as a side effect of something they love to do. A mountain biking enthusiast doesn't have to be disciplined to be fit, just a little obsessed. Some people have obsessive body issues and their level of exercise is the result of an unhealthy lack of discipline. You are whitewashing a complex topic with your bias and stating it as an unassailable fact.
I think it is easy to confuse obsession with discipline sometimes. I think the obsessed tend to outperform the disciplined in their areas of focus and the combination of the two can lead to quite incredible things.
Edit: I will say that a lack of fitness can be a sign of a lack of discipline IF you know the context of the goals and priorities of that individual, but as a stand alone signal, it is meaningless without specific contexts.
The issue is that we take one aspirational characteristic and use it to project things that might or might not be correlated.
Better to just measure what you want to measure directly. If it’s an important evaluation, it’s worth the cost. If it’s not important, why bother even with a cheap evaluation that may or may not be connected?
If a company can put energy into looking sharp while also staying in business, that proves some sort of viability/success of the business. There seem to be a few qualities you could have to achieve this, discipline being one of them. But, even if it's discipline that's being used to look sharp, that doesn't mean it transfers to the work the business produces -- all we know is that they're still in business and are successful enough to look sharp. For all we know they could use shady practices, under-deliver, know how to protect themselves contractually, and extract wealth from large inefficient organizations.
While I have certainly seen idiots with nice clothes make bad decisions in management, I do think that all things being equal, some level of professionalism is beneficial to an environment. Attitude and aptitude are critical, and I think dress can help the former.
1. I hope I'm reading this wrong. I can guarantee Sailors arn't committing suicide, or arson, because of a fugly rusty ship.
2. If their is any real problem it's the way our Navy treats Sailors, and lies to them upon signing that contract, and tries to renig on any lofty promises upon signing.
I once heard the Navy will send you to school upon enlisting. Navy, "Become a Lawyer. We pay for it.". This commercial was around that movie with Tom Cruise playing the spiffy lawyer in his whites going up against Jack Nicholson. "You can't handle the truth!". Forget the name.
I looked it up. The military at the time was picking up tuition for 8 enlisted men to go to law school.
The guys are angry because once they enlisted, it wasen't the opportunity they thought it would be. Period.
Sad to see that HN discussions stow so low so as to not discuss the things the piece actually mentions
> The situation is not much better for American shipyards. On the morning of April 11, Captain Brent Gaut, the commander of the USS George Washington — an aircraft carrier undergoing major shipyard work at Newport News, Virginia — got on the ship’s intercom to announce that two sailors had died, and Gaut was alerting the crew that those deaths were the eighth and ninth suicides the ship had experienced in the nine months the ship has been stuck in shipyard. What was the Navy’s response? Gilday’s top enlisted adviser, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith, told sailors they need to do a better job “managing expectations” then he chastised them by saying “What you’re not doing is sleeping in a foxhole like a Marine.”
> This type of “toughen up, stand up” approach sounds eerily familiar to those of us who worked offshore in the years leading up to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
> In 2020, while undergoing shipyard repair in San Diego, conditions aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard were so bad a crew member set fire to the ship leading to the ship’s destruction. The responsible crew member was arrested but – despite investigators finding bad morale, delays, and poor training – the ship’s captain (and his chain of command) was left in charge and was allowed to celebrate the decommissioning of the ship he had lost.
Please, next time just review the piece
This is a great point that I started thinking about 2-3 days ago, i.e. that the present war in Ukraine is, almost by definition, a continental war (think Napoleon or the Eastern Campaign in WW2), and, as such, that an organisation like the US Navy might feel like it has been left out (like this quote actually emphasises). At which point it gets tricky when it comes to justify your budget, as in: "why should we assign so much money to the Navy when we're most worried about a continental war?".
The "solution" that I saw in my head for this dilemma (from the POV of the Navy) was a re-emphasis on Taiwan and on China, i.e. trying to bring forward (again) the danger that the Chinese pose to Taiwan and to SE-Asia more generally speaking. That's a lot of sea/ocean for the Navy to cover and protect.
Russia values the coastal territory it has grabbed b/c d they can use it to support a navy, something Russia has historically always wanted and needed (to project military power). But they have always done poorly and continue to do so:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-russias-military-is-so-sh...
Thwarting Russia's naval progress is cost-effective since it takes tremendous resources and history to run a navy effectively. Only Great Britain and the USA have been successful at establishing modern multi-ocean navies.
Having one aircraft carrier or ten-eleven won't make that much of a difference when the battle happens on the steppes of Eurasia (like it is now happening in Donbas), there are only so many such carriers that one can place inside a "small" sea like the Black Sea (assuming that they'll be allowed to pass the Bosphorus).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_J._Spykman#Geostrateg...
I’m starting to associate this point with people flippantly dismissing a (potentially) reasonable point.
Look, Im familiar with all the aphorisms about ‘kids these days’ and ‘soft men’ and the like. There’s a lot of wisdom in avoiding cynicism, but to avoid all negative observations of this sort is just as naive. Many great states and institutions fizzle out with little fanfare, under mediocre leadership and execution.
The GP is either an outright troll, or has bought into a political propaganda version of what armed forces are like.
Both industries substantially outsourced functionality in the 90s in an attempt to cut costs.
Consequently, they are now less empowered (vs historical levels) to effect change in their own processes in a timely manner.
Large organizations need to pay more attention to ossification of processes as a serious future risk, that needs to be balanced against immediate savings.
Edit: I also agree with the posts about outsourcing leading to ossification and rigid stratification. You want rigid stratification? Try military medicine.
And people have limits, because they need lives and aren't robots.
Morale and aligning work to allow for happiness in life is a requirement for people bringing their best to work. If you ask people to toughen up and suffer through the suck to get the job done... there'd better be an eventual light at the end of that tunnel. Otherwise, it's just a death march.
PS: Thank you for your service, and especially through COVID.
FWIW, BAH (pay for housing that is tax-free) is $4000 for an O-6 in Point Loma v. $2777 in Offut, NE. Seems to be aggressive adjustment, no?
Enlisted pay might be another story…
EDIT: I know one guy who griped about pay once…kind of in passing. Went on to be a YC founder haha.
The employer, or politicians, 5, 10, 20 years from now can cut funding and reduce access from MDs to NP/PA, or only cover certain meds, or require excessive prior authorizations to dissuade using the healthcare.
Worse still, many NP programs are now giving out "doctorates" of nursing practice so that NPs can introduce themselves to the patient as "Dr." Smith.
In short, the VA is willing to gamble with your life if it means saving a few bucks. It's pretty harrowing.
But of course, nobody cares. The rich will get MDs and the poor will get midlevels.
Another point that I haven't seen brought up here is that usually the people who paint ships are school washouts. They couldn't get through school and have no classification, so this is what they do. I wasn't in the Navy but this is always what I heard.
I was a submariner, so I’m not certain who ends up chipping paint on surface ships. Submarines don’t get the people who washed out of schools.
>URL JOs
>BAH
if only i knew what any of those words mean. Why haven't people learned to describe their abbreviation unless they already pre-established that the audience will definitely know them?
Does anyone have time to cite a source for this? I was thinking this number was a lot higher.
Dang mentions quite often that HN has a very international readership, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23363430 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438403 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27052434
An old poll with 32% US (probably the number I remembered): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13819771
There's also a recent poll w/ 47% (2346 of 4891), although this might be timing related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378
> There's also a recent poll w/ 47%
Clearly you need one more poll to decide this, as per XKCD 927.
I know what you mean, but I don't think it would merely be unexpected if one did somehow. I'm pretty sure it isn't possible because, being specialists, they can't also be a line officer. It seems like logic stops them, but then leads me to wonder about the vague possibility of a horribly unfortunate event leaving only specialists on-board... what then? Would logic stop them from sailing, or inexperience and lack of expertise?
The ELI5 is that the Navy pays officers who do the core ship/flying activities quite well. Compared to their civilian peers, Navy lawyers, doctors, and cyber people don’t get paid well.
The posted article is about rust on ships. A ships management team is paid well. Low pay is unlikely to be the cause of dissatisfaction.
To be clear, “paid well” is not “paid well” as measured by FAANG tech salaries. A submarine officer with 8 years of experience is making something equivalent to $200Ks if I am to believe the calculators that adjust for tax advantages of military pay, discounted value of future retirement cash flows, etc.
That only flies in an email or on a specialized forum.
It's curious that you are smart enough to come up with an arguement yet apparently at the same time innocently simple enough not to know why it's invalid.
Counterpoint: It doesn't.
They made a reply to a military member on a thread about military equipment. Googling a few acronyms + "military" would surely lead one to the answer.
I'm reminded of an acronym at work: CIM. They come in two variants, CIM-A and CIM-B. I'd been there a year before I finally decided I needed to ask a more senior colleague what they stood for, and he didn't know either. The intention was obvious from the context of their use (although whether -A or -B was more serious wasn't) but most of the people in the weekly meetings discussing Critical Incident Management didn't actually know that was what they were discussing. Nowadays we have a culture that better encourages definition of terms upon first use, and it's less common that someone needs to ask "stupid" questions.
I’d just note that the service academies crowd the rankings for highest paid graduates at early/mid career https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors#ful...
Anecdotally, I had a reservist friend with a Harvard MBA who realized he could pull down more money as an activated reservist in Bahrain than his role at BlackRock.
Your mileage may vary…
BAH has a description in parens immediately following, but could be better.
Why do people on technical message board with lots of jargon refuses to do even a modicum of research? If I didn't drop a description of a monad after I said it here would you also be mad? How about Term Sheets. I see Alpha used all the time and I have to look it up.
Assuming both sought living accomodations outside of free base housing, I was curious what those figures actually looked like[1]:
- O-6 colonel stationed at, e.g. Fort Riley, KS 66442, would draw up to an additional $1500 without dependents, $1911 with.
- O-6 captain stationed at, e.g. NAS North Island, CA 92135, would draw up to an additional $3342 without dependents, $4026 with.
It's worth mentioning for those unfamiliar that, just like BAS (i.e. food allowance), this BAH (i.e. housing allowance) is completely tax-exempt.
The game that active service members play here is to secure a home mortgage (often through VA home loan), then apply BAH directly towards monthly mortgage payments throughout service all the way to retirement. It's not hard to imagine other tax advantaged games to be played here. Applying BAH to rent a house off base is a naive fool's errand.
In terms of annual cost of living adjustments to base pay, uniformed service received +2.7% increase this year; in contrast, +2.2% for federal GS civilians. The year before that, it was +3% v. +1%. These adjustments have historically favored uniformed service over the federal civilians that work beside them. Sure, they're lowball relative to inflation, but that ought to be squared against military tax-exempt BAS/BAH and hugely subsidized commissary entitlements.
Exceptionally common amongst Navy personnel, married sailors typically draw an additional $250/mo family separation allowance[2] when out at sea for more than 30 continuous days. This will obviously have a greater financial impact amongst the enlisted ranks than officers. Depending on rank and job, there's a litany of allowances, bonuses and incentives (beyond the scope of this remark) that are often ignored when the conversation of military service compensation is brought up...nevermind that no one ever talks about the opportunity to retire with guaranteed pension + benefits for life as young as 38.
As an outsider, I'm inclined to agree that military health professions do seem to pay a substantial indirect opportunity cost despite the unique bonuses they're entitled to[3].
I do wonder what individual circumstances led you to choose a Navy commission over everything else?
[1] https://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/bahCalc.cfm
[2] https://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/fsa/
[3] https://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/Pay-Tab...
The real problem is the unaccountable bureaucratic management, which are neither physicians nor nurses, and the numbers of which continue to expand (sucking up financial resources) while physicians and nurses workload increases and pay continues to decrease in real terms.
There are too many micro-specialties and not enough crossover. Imagine if once you were a frontend dev you would have to go back to school for 2 years full time to be legally allowed to do ui design of a button even though there is a lot of crossover and knowledge sharing between roles.
This definitely causes shortages and issues when the demand naturally rises and falls for various Healthcare disciplines.
I'm not saying formal education isn't important but there could be a much more fluid crossover between various allied health disciplines than their is currently.
Maybe more transition programs or seeing individual billing codes for Medicare attached to education modules
If it weren't profitable to have large numbers of staff per doctor, there wouldn't be large numbers of staff per doctor.
Now make an argument that the current arrangement is more optimal than the one we might end up with if there were more doctors.
What in the world is that supposed to mean? I've been hearing that for years now, and I have not the foggiest idea of what we're even talking about.
Nothing is different. What is extraordinary?
Edit to add: If these times are extraordinary, then that is a valid excuse for rust and a lot of other problems.
For example Advanced Nurse Practitioner status grants nurses almost all prescribing rights you'd get as a doctor. They're allowed scheduled drugs (ie stuff that's commonly abused) because a bunch of those are effective painkillers and a key reason to have Advanced Practitioner is that "This patient is in agony, and I know the only thing a doctor would do is give them these stronger drugs, but I'm not allowed to do that on my own" is a stupid situation to put an experienced nurse in, so let's just authorise them to do it.
I believe there are Advanced Practitioner variants for several other healthcare roles including midwife and pharmacist; in some cases you just get limited prescription rights (so you can only give people some specific prescription drugs from a list) but in other cases like Advanced Nurse Practitioner it's the whole thing, if your knowledge and experience tells you that off-label use of a heart medicine is the right way to solve your patient's acute hiccups you can do that just like a doctor could.
To qualify for advanced practice these professionals are doing much of the same work student Doctors do - but just focused to their specific discipline. Lots of Chemistry, learning how to read research literature, and so on. They get a post-graduate degree of some sort, I don't remember the exact title.
Totally government run in the case of the military, and healthcare is the most heavily regulated industry (by far) in the US. Heavy bureaucratic regulations make an organization unable to adapt to local and/or changing circumstances.
I read in the book "The Pity of War" by Ferguson that the reason the death rates of the German army in WW1 were so much lower than that of the British is the British generals would craft detailed orders on how the soldiers were to achieve objectives. The German generals would instead just give the officers the objectives. The officers were free to adapt to local circumstances.
A similar idea is a story I heard where a class of new lieutenants were asked how would they go about raising a flagpole. The lieutenants all wrote down detailed instructions and procedures. The instructor said you're all wrong. The correct answer is "sergeant, get that flagpole up!".
If the advice you just gave is so good, why couldn't you (or the book's author) have found an example in which the side following the advice actually won the war?
As for WW1, Germany did defeat Russia. It took America's entry into the war to defeat Germany.
But you want an example. Take WW2. When Hitler allowed his generals to run things, things went well for the German army. When Hitler decided he knew better, he micromanaged the Wehrmacht into defeat and ruin. The Luftwaffe's problems were greatly impeded by Goering making a hash of things, despite his officers pleading with him. Goering would dictate tactics that negated the advantages of the Me-109s in the Battle of Britain. Goering also infamously ordered a literal decimation of his pilots for cowardice, an order that was quietly ignored.
In the naval war, the U-Boot commanders knew that Enigma had been broken and tactics had to change, but Admiral Doenitz knew better and sent them to their doom. Some histories assert that the Germans were clueless about Enigma, but the U-Boot commanders knew the truth.
Indeed, what saved the Entente in World War 1 was the fact that Belgium, which had been expected to roll over and allow the German army unmolested free passage, actually called up its military and fought. That ruined the German timetables, allowing France to complete its mobilization and brought the British into the war preventing a quick German victory on the Western Front.
Towards the end of the war, yes, Germany was beginning to move towards what we would consider a "commander's intent"-based system. Erwin Rommel's text, Infantry Attacks, captures this transition. However, it's inaccurate to say that the German military was any less rigid than the British.
It is also inaccurate to say that the death rates of the German army were any less than they were for the British. Perhaps in 1914 and 1915, as well-trained German regulars were facing off against the "Pals Brigades", the Germans inflicted more casualties than they received. But by the end of the war, as the German economy was crumbling and the prospect of US involvement made the German generals desperate, they resorted to mass infantry charges with relatively untrained soldiers, and took extremely heavy casualties as a result.
If anything, your description of the German army is more accurate for the Wehrmacht in World War 2 than it is for the Kaiser's army.
"As Table 32 shows, the greatest of all the paradoxes of the First World War is that, despite being disastrously disadvantaged in economic terms, the Central Powers were far more successful in inflicting death on their enemies. According to the best available totals for wartime military deaths, some 5.4 million men fighting for the Entente powers and their allies lost their lives, the overwhelming majority of them killed by the enemy. The equivalent total for the Central Powers is just over 4 million. The Central Powers' superiority in killing was thus of the order of 35 per cent. The official British statistics published shortly after the war give an even higher margin of 50 per cent, as do the figures in a number of modern textbooks.52 In other words, the Central Powers were at least a third better at mass slaughter." pg 294
"The trouble was - and here the excuses must stop - that the entire culture of the British regular army militated against effective improvisation. The command structure was based on obedience to superiors and suspicion of subordinates; men could still advance according to their connections; and commanders could still be 'unstuck' by personal quarrels.83 This could have serious repercussions: when Haig questioned Rawlinson's original Somme plan, the latter felt unable to stand his ground, with the result that Haig was able to insist on the suicidal breakthrough objective. As Rawlinson said, 'It is a gamble to go for an unlimited offensive but D. H. wants it and I am prepared to undertake anything within reason [sic].'84 An Army Commander did not presume to correct the Commander-in-Chief, even when tens of thousands of men's lives were at stake.85 Similar inhibitions existed at every level. Orders were issued at the top and fed down the line; there was little traffic in the other direction. As a result, officers, NCOs and men grew accustomed to 'waiting for orders'. In battle, as J. M. Bourne has remarked, 'when German shelling interrupted communications paralysis set in'. To adapt the not inappropriate language of industrial organization, this was 'line management', and it provided no mechanism by which the views of 'junior line managers' could be relayed back to head office.86 Partly for this reason, the proponents of a more technocratic approach made slow headway against the traditional believers in war as a moral rather than material contest.87 Too much emphasis was placed on morale, courage and discipline; not enough on fire-power and tactics." pg 305
"These German tactical strengths were rooted in a distinctive military culture. According to Dupuy, the German military establishment had 'discovered the secret of institutionalizing military excellence'.109 Martin Samuels likewise points to a distinctively German philosophy of combat, which acknowledged its fundamentally chaotic character.'10 This in turn influenced the way command structures evolved. The Germans favoured 'directive command' (task-oriented and decentralized decision making, flexible at all levels) whereas the British preferred 'restrictive control', which deliberately discouraged initiative."1 Differences in training also followed logically from this. German 'chaos theory' demanded a high level of training to promote adaptability; the British approach required only obedience. Moreover, the German officer did not stop learning on obtaining his commission; the officer corps was meritocratic, and dud officers were ruthlessly weeded out."2 This line of argument has been further developed by the work of Gudmundsson on stormtroop tactics, which (he argues) depended for their success on the existence of a 'self-educating officer corps'."3 pg 309
If that's not enough, there's plenty more backup in the book. It's a good read, I recommend it.
The modern materials are required since the EPA outlawed the coatings they used to use that actually worked.
It's too bad since I liked the concept and the new technology being tested out on the ships. There was even speculation one of the ships would have the first working rail gun installed.
Could have bought a lot of paint.
Who cares if the US Navy's ships look like crap, this isn't a particularly intellectually stimulating topic, nor is it one that is of much interest outside of the US.
Arguably, in a nuclear era, this state of affairs is managed by maintaining the undeniable obviousness of mutually assured destruction. Securing peace by preparing for war.
That said, safety and mental health sounds like vital issues to address.
Maybe you're thinking of the Spearhead-class EPFs [0] and the issue with high sea states? But those were designed from the ground up to be cheap ($180M each) and "good enough" for sealift and harbor basing missions.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spearhead-class_expeditionar...
Not a capital ship, nor quickly written off - but 2,300 tons (light) is between the Allen M. Sumner- and Gearing-class (late WWII) destroyers. And "forgot that aluminum hull + steel propulsion hardware + salt water = galvanic corrosion" is a "never bothered to calculate GM" (the metacentric height) level of cluster#_$&'ing incompetence for any shipbuilder.
I'm definitely in the learning phase with respect to how different metals and alloys interact, but I'm pretty sure I would have caught that myself. Galvanic corrosion is a pretty well-known issue when dealing with aluminum.
On the poor leadership front, less people on the front line and they have been burnt out for longer than ever on overextended deployments. Enduring stress for too long simply breaks you down. The attention to detail eventually dissipates and people are just trying to keep their heads above water.
On the strong leadership front, everything continued to function to expectations except appearance which may be argued to be the last remaining detail. Appearance however is everything in the military and goes back quite some time to tradition:
> An old Navy tradition has it that the ship's cook shines the ship's bell and the ship's bugler shines the ship's whistle. This tradition may still be observed in some of the ships of the modern Navy. However, in normal practice, the ship's bell is maintained by a man of the ships' division charged with the upkeep of that part of the ship where the bell is located.
This seems like a fun college-level question for a leadership/military/software class. What is your argument and why?
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading...