Navy wants under 1,000 sailors on new carriers

[CommunityEditor]

The Navy wants to figure out a way to put an aircraft carrier to sea with a crew of fewer than 1,000 sailors.

In an era when manpower costs devour 60 percent of annual Navy budgets, the service has been hard pressed not only to reduce its end strength so it can afford the ships and aircraft it wants, but to pare down crew sizes while making the most of each sailor.

The manning goals for future Navy warships are far below that of current surface combatants, with just 75 sailors expected to be aboard the Littoral Combat Ship and fewer than 150 crew members aboard the Zumwalt-class destroyers. Future submarine crews also are being optimized.

But when it comes to the next-generation aircraft carrier, the cuts may be more dramatic.

Nimitz-class carriers now sail with more than 5,700 personnel aboard — ship’s company and air wing. The goal for the Gerald R. Ford-class carriers — to be delivered in 2015 — has been to bring that number down to 4,600. It’s unclear how much of that number is ship personnel vs. air wing.

Now the Navy wants to cut that even further, for a ship’s company total of fewer than 1,000 sailors, a number that does not include the air wing.

“How do you optimize manpower from a 5,000 crew to 1,000? It’s very difficult. Can it be done? Maybe,” said William “Kip” Krebs, program officer for human systems integration at the Office of Naval Research.

His office recently called on the nation’s research community to find out how much a sailor can be expected to perform on an ergonomically designed ship and what shipboard functions can be replaced by automation. Krebs, a former active-duty aerospace experimental psychologist, said it’s one thing to build a piece of machinery — the proverbial “black box” — but it’s another to design it with a human operator in mind, the definition of human-systems integration.

Factoring in fatigue, stress
Through computer modeling and experimentation, ONR hopes to determine how much to expect from a sailor performing at 100 percent without an overload of stress or fatigue while maintaining situational awareness.

“When you say I want this sailor to be performing at 100 percent, what does that mean, because your 100 percent is different from my 100 percent,” he said. “You don’t need a Ph.D. to understand what fatigue is or workload or stress or stressors.”

Krebs said the key is to go through the ship and identify and isolate each task by the knowledge, skills and abilities required to perform it.

“Then you can start looking at redundancies and say, ‘What type of automation tools can be created to reduce work load on that individual?’” he said.

Another potential shift from traditional crewing will be the need for extensive training so that a smaller number of sailors can operate an increasingly complex machine.

“You can design a very efficient ship, but then you’ve got to put someone in it who fully understands it,” Krebs said. “You are not going to get the recruit out of A-school because they don’t have the knowledge.”

For naval analyst Norman Polmar, all that crew training spells a drain of the existing pool of manpower.

“It’s more front-end training, but the more you train a sailor, the less he’s available to operate on the ship,” he said. “The more complex the ship with fewer people, the more you’re training them and the less useful time you’re getting from them.”



Article: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/1...nning_071019w/

A lot has to be considered if you want to operate a carrier with 1000 sailors one is
Personnel that handle the building of bombs in the magazines, transport, loading and unloading of weapons on aircraft a job that goes on 24hrs. a day at sea. All has to be done SAFELY AND EFFICENTLY.
Maybe a smaller carrier with less planes .

I don't know how this would be possible either how would you handle any of Damage Control situations with several casualities. I.E. Main Space Fire, Flooding, Fuel oil Leak, etc. There wouldn't be enough personel to cover watch stations and combat casulaties.

Very diificult task... Do away with all the required continuous traininig and let the operators just be operators can bring down the numbers a little, but I will never see it my lifetime!!!

I don't know who the great mind was who came up with this but I will guarantee he or she never served on a carrier .Just think, How many man hours it requires just to chip and paint a ship this size. Now figure in the other maintenance there. This alone would require at the very least 300 people full time.I could include the cooks to feed 1000 .While serving on board a carrier as a cook My crew worked 14 to 16 hours 7 days a week while we were underway we were so tired by the time we got in port we sleep for 24 hours. I don't think there is any way you can man a full size carrier with 1000 unless they are robots that don't require sleep. Our whole Military has been reduced by a congress that would take our budget and put it in social programs, We don't need less Military we need a stronger better trained force to protect us from the forces that would like to destroy this great country

[The Universal Curmudgeon_guest]

Originally Posted by CommunityEditor

The Navy wants to figure out a way to put an aircraft carrier to sea with a crew of fewer than 1,000 sailors.

For a mere $1,000,000 [paid in cash and non-refundable] I will provide the USN with an absolutely fool-proof method of producing the results exactly as outlined in the article.

Not only that, but I will also guarantee that that solution doesn't degrade the ability of the carriers to meet emergency situations in the least.

And, as a special bonus for this week only, for an additional $500,000 [paid in cash and non-refundable] I will show how this solution can be "retrofitted" to the existing aircraft carriers without in the least diminishing their capacities. (Regular price for this solution is $2,000,000 [paid in cash and non-refundable].)

Not only that but, for no additional charge, I will guarantee that both of those solutions are 100% in accord with the, relevant, present policies and practices of the government of the United States of America.

Mr. Krebs need to spend time on the carier ( 6 months maybe) and see what is going on there. His theory is base on a computer animation. So, who's going to cook for the Airwing personnel, clean the berthing, do the laundry, clean the ship and stand the watch 24/7/366 while underway. What if half of the crew goes on leave for the holidays, training (firefighting school just to name one). Maybe he should think about putting robots to mannned the ship, that would be better no more underway for the sailors.

Mr. Krebs is such a Dumb individual, maybe he needs to go back to pre-school. Puts your shoes on the carrier to find out what the hell are you talking about. Maybe he needs to negotiate to the japanese and give him a discount on purchasing ASIMO..HONDA ROBOTs.

[MPLisa]

1. Use Mag-Lev technology for the catapults, will reduce maintenance requirements.
2. Ditch Dental, have all routine dental work done by shore-based facilities. Keep some Dental staff for emergencies.
3. 86 the Chaplain's Assistants.
4. Get rid of podiatrists, psychologists, and other ancillary personnel with very little mission-related value.


These wil have small impacts, really, the other guys said it best: spend a deployment on a carrier and you quickly find out there is very little "fluff" in terms of manning.

m

[Brian H]

Sounds like the old Taylor time-motion studies approach to optimal industrial work. Generated reams of paper and many implementations, but was gradually pushed aside by most because it drove humans crazy and left little or no scope for coping with variations or emergencies, small or large.

On a carrier, that elimination of flex and safety margin would be, IMO, suicidal. When the crap hits the fan, you can't have people starting out at "100%", if the phrase means anything, because by definition there's no reserve or fallback available. Every loss of "efficiency" means a broken system. Fuggedaboudit.