I personally, from what I know which is not much, lay most of the blame on Mabus and Clark. This is the companion article, on USS MCCAIN, just as informative:
https://features.propublica.org/navy...-cause-mccain/
Quote:
At the Pentagon, Navy Undersecretary Janine Davidson repeatedly told her boss, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, that the Navy was plowing money into buying new ships while its current fleet was falling dangerously into disrepair. His expanded fleet would take years, even decades to build; the risks were immediate. Mabus, appointed in 2009, served the entire two terms of the Obama administration, leaving just months before the crashes.
"His priority was shipbuilding. He made it very clear," Davidson said of Mabus, whom she accused of blocking her from speaking to Congress about her concerns. "Anybody who had a different opinion was shut down."
|
I believe Davidson, I have worked with leaders like Mabus who are closed to input.
Quote:
In the early 2000s, the Navy embarked on a quest for so-called efficiencies. Vern Clark, the Navy's top military officer during much of the Bush era, brought an MBA to the job and pitched his cuts to the force using the jargon of corporate downsizing. Smaller crews were "optimal" crews. Relying on new technologies to do the work sailors once did was described as "capital-for-labor substitutions."
Promising a "workforce for the 21st century," Clark's team tried out new training and staffing ideas, including a decision that officers no longer needed to attend months of classroom training to learn the intricacies of operating billion-dollar warships. Instead, aspiring Surface Warfare Officers, charged with everything from driving ships to launching missiles, could learn mostly at sea with the help of packets of CDs. The program was widely derided by sailors as "SWOS in a Box."
The efficiencies even included eliminating a requirement for ship captains to post lookouts on both sides of ships, a cut that would later prove crucial when the Fitzgerald's crew failed to see a fast-closing cargo ship until it was too late.
In an interview with ProPublica, Clark said these reforms were intended as experiments for a more streamlined and ready Navy and should have been regularly re-assessed.
"Only a nitwit of the highest order would continue down this path without seeing if it's working," he said.
|
Yeah, only a moron of the highest order would alter proven training methods so radically and expect it to work.
Plus, I suspect the caliber of sailors has changed over the years. Our society has changed.
Quote:
A legion of poorly trained junior officers aboard the ships were being promoted, Balisle warned, creating a generation of unprepared leaders.
Balisle's report, dated February 2010, was delivered to Mabus and to Congress.
"It appears the effort to derive efficiencies has overtaken our culture of effectiveness," Balisle said in the report. He then took aim at the "downward spiral" of the Navy's culture, in which a commitment to excellence had been badly eroded.
"From the most senior officers to the most junior petty officer, the culture reveals itself in personal attitudes ranging from resignation to frustration to toleration," he wrote. "While the severity of current culture climate may be debated, its decline cannot."
The report left Work, then the undersecretary of the Navy and Mabus' No. 2, shaken. He decided to act.
|
My generation wasn't as tough as my father's generation. The current generations are softer yet. It's not a thing to characterize as blame or denigration, it's just a result of our success as a society. We're nicer, more thoughtful, and more understanding and supportive of each other. We're just not tough warriors anymore.