A top Navy commander on Thursday pushed back against reports that junior officers’ seamanship skills are lacking, arguing that his three-month internal review was specifically designed to test the most inexperienced officers and yielded exactly the results he expected.
In an interview with The Washington Times on Thursday, Vice Adm. Richard Brown, commander of Naval Surface Force Pacific, said the recent study — which resulted in just 27 of 164 first-tour officers passing a competency check with “no concerns” — will help the Navy develop training courses.
He said the results of the review don’t determine whether officers are “safe or unsafe” and represent proof that the Navy is rigorous in evaluating officers.
The Navy is under a white-hot spotlight after two fatal crashes last year, and leading lawmakers on Capitol Hill have publicly called on military leaders to tighten training programs and ensure all officers are fully qualified and prepared for their posts.
“I’m actually very pleased with the results we had,” Adm. Brown said. Officers on their first tour are “going to fail right off the bat — make no mistake about it. They have to learn they’re in [dangerous situations] … be put in the situation and fail, and then we put them in the situation again.
“I want the public to know about it. We’re going to make things even better,” he said.
SEE ALSO: U.S. Navy finds systemic deficiencies in seamanship skills of junior officers
During the spot checks conducted from January to March, ship commanders tried to put up their “most seasoned” officers for the tests, Adm. Brown said.
“We said no. We don’t want to test those guys,” he said, underscoring that the study was aimed at testing the Navy’s “most junior qualified officers.”
The survey made headlines this week because of numbers that, on the surface, appear alarming. The Navy identified concerns with 137 of 164 junior officers who were randomly tested. Of the 164 first-tour officers subjected to the competency checks, only 27 — barely more than 16 percent — passed with “no concerns.”
Examiners of seamanship skills reported “some concerns” with 108 and “significant concerns” with 29 — 17.6 percent.
Some argue that the results show the Navy is still struggling to overcome shortcomings revealed by recent mishaps.
In June 2017, the Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald struck a container ship off the coast of Japan, killing seven sailors. The ship was carrying a crew of nearly 300. Two months later, the USS John S. McCain collided with a Liberian-flagged merchant ship off the coast of Singapore, killing 10 sailors.
Although the circumstances of each case were different, Navy officials said both could have been avoided.
Adm. Brown, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and other top Navy leaders met Wednesday in closed-door briefings with two key House subcommittees. Leading lawmakers said they believe the Navy is making progress after the deadly collisions but still has work to do.
“Even with the adopted revisions, surface warfare officers are still only allotted 25 percent of the training time that their submarine and aviation counterparts receive,” Rep. Robert J. Wittman, the Virginia Republican who chairs the House subcommittee on sea power and projection forces, said after the meeting. “To me, the system ensures our surface warfare community overpromises and underexecutes. While the Navy is taking steps in the right direction, I continue to be concerned that the systematic reforms we are undertaking will not adequately right the ship.”
Adm. Brown’s internal review identified specific problems with officers’ operation of radar and their ability to apply maritime rules, especially during times of low visibility.
The study also found that while most of the 164 officers were able to steer clear of near-collision situations, those who did find themselves in such circumstances were often unable to avoid a collision. The failure to navigate successfully in a challenging situation was a major factor in both fatal crashes last year.
Adm. Brown said the Navy is instituting new training programs and committing hundreds of millions of dollars to those efforts. The three-month internal review, he said, was necessary to help establish a baseline by which officers in the training programs can be judged.
He said the Navy is constructing maritime skills training centers in Norfolk, Virginia, and in San Diego that will serve as central hubs for officer training. Those facilities will be up and running by 2020, he said.
In the meantime, he said, the Navy will begin junior officers courses in more informal settings.
“Quite honestly, we’re getting a bunch of trailers and putting the simulators in the trailers,” he said. “We’re not waiting to do this stuff.”
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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