Two Navy officials told the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that the service is about 6,200 sailors short for at-sea billets and they have actively prevented ship deployments when they were not ready.
Adm. Christopher Grady, Commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, and Adm. John Aquilino, Commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, appearing before a joint hearing of the House Armed Services readiness and seapower subcommittees, said the needed sailors are from the mid-grade and senior enlisted ranks and that it could take years to train and place them in the fleet.
Grady said this number could grow as the Navy plans to increase the size of the fleet to 355 ships, which comes with increased personnel needs.
Grady added those 6,200 ship billets are planned to be used to help plus-up crew numbers on surface ships after the Navy had previously used a lower “optimal manning” crew size to save on personnel costs.
“As we sailed through that environment, we recognized that that was too few, and indeed since 2012 the number on a DDG was 240. In 2017 it’s about 270 and will be funded back up very close to the original size of a guided-missile destroyer in 2023 at about 318,” Grady told the subcommittees.
“Personnel is expensive, and that number did not work out well, and we’re now buying back to a larger size crew complement for a destroyer,” he added.
Grady said when the Navy pushes a ship out of the basic phase, “both Adm. Aquilino and I look very hard at that risk calculus, if they are not fully manned.”
Aquilino noted that over the short term all surface ships in the Pacific region are staffed to meet minimum qualifications outlined in surface ship reforms that came from reviews of what caused the deadly collisions of the USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and USS John S. McCain (DDG-56).
“All the forces on the Pacific side deployed meet the standard of 95 percent fill and 92 percent fit, which is the right job with the right person with right skills,” Aquilino said.
“That was one of the changes that we absolutely pulled up to the highest level to make sure that no one is out there well below a certain level and somebody didn’t know,” he added.
Relatedly, Grady said after instituting a better process to understand ship readiness by communicating with lower-level commanders and using readiness standards determined by Fleet Forces with Pacific Fleet he has had one instance when a ship was not ready to deploy.
In that instance, Grady said he had the choice to either replace it with another ship that was ready or start it three weeks late because the ship needed to finish training. Although he did not elaborate on which ship this was, Grady said he postponed it by three weeks and considered that a “great success” in safeguarding readiness.
For his part, Aquilino said he terminated two deployments for units “not assessed to have the appropriate level of training to deploy and execute their missions.”
The Pacific Fleet commander also said he reduced the requirements of a strike group to remain ready longer to free up manning concerns and posture the forces to be able to be ready for the next employment cycle.
This was done with the approval of Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) combatant commander Adm. Phil Davidson. Aquilino said this was done to “give them the rest of the time they need to ensure that they’re ready.”
The carrier strike group’s “surge phase” in the optimized fleet response plan (OFRP) was cut early to free up personnel and resources. Aquilino said that meant “we took risk with regard to surge forces that, if crisis were to have broken out, they would have needed additional training before they could have gone, that’s the risk.”
Aquilino disclosed one cancellation was for a surface ship scheduled to join the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2018 exercise while the other was scheduled to support the Oceania Maritime Security Initiative deployment. The latter helps small island nations enforce fisheries laws and deal with maritime crime with U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement detachments (LEDETs).
Aquilino applauded Davidson for removing a tasking from his duties to ease the surface force burden, but noted if the threat were to grow, the tasking would have to resume.
“By him reducing some of the operational demands in the Pacific, to me that’s a pretty strong example of someone who understood the concerns when the report was written and doing his part to ensure that it doesn’t happen again as well,” Aquilino said.