[GingerBoats]

I served on both a FFGs and DDGs as a BM. This is pretty much a normal routine out at Sea. Doesn't matter if it's a week, month, or year. It's fairly similar sleep and work schedule. Combine it with other collateral duties, Flying Squad, SAR Swimmer, LSE, Boat Coxwain, etc and it just slowly erodes your time away.

It's not all doom and gloom though. If you properly communicate with your chain of command, and slowly train junior personnel into the proper qualifications, the problem starts to go away. Though, you're not looking at more than 5-6 hours of sleep straight on a good day.

[lovich]

If peace time has 5-6 hours of sleep on a good day as the bar, what are they going to do if an actual war breaks out? It sounds like there is no margin left for them to use and it would only take a few casualties to make the boat unable to operate

[arjie]

They're probably already damaged badly enough from the lack of sleep in peacetime that they'd underperform on any less during an active operation.

This is like giving your sailors food poisoning every week to make them tougher. You just make them weaker instead. And when the time comes, you don't get soldiers capable of eating rotten food. You just get weak people.

[lovich]

Agreed. I could see putting people in that situation for 1-2 week every few months just so they know what it's like and can handle it when it comes up, but running everyone ragged is just going to lead to lots of preventable problems for no gain that I can see

[ptero]

> If you properly communicate with your chain of command, and slowly train junior personnel into the proper qualifications, the problem starts to go away. Though, you're not looking at more than 5-6 hours of sleep straight on a good day.

This, to me, is a major problem. Many (most) young humans do not do well on 6 hours of sleep or less for a long time. One could probably load up on stimulants, but this I suspect will bite you later.

Given that this happens in peacetime, do you think it can be improved with better technology? That is, instead of, say, three people watching screens 18 hours/day you get them to do the work as well (or better) in 12 hours/day if you give them better displays? I suspect it is not that simple, but would still like to know where the snag is.

[GingerBoats]

In most cases, better technology is just as expensive, if not more expensive. You need better trained and better staffed crew on ships, regardless of the systems in place.

As an example: Deck division will have 5/6 people on watch for a smaller ship: Port & Starboard lookouts, an aft lookout, a phone talker, someone actually steering the ship, and then a boatswain mate of the watch that organizes those individuals, keeps the ships schedule, and other various tasks. None of these individuals will actually be looking at a screen, but instead scanning the water for other ships.

Another division down in CIC may have just as many people looking at all the radar and managing the various data streams coming into the ship.

So, if you have 12 to 15 people in your division, which does happen, you'll be on Port & Starboard watch ( 5 hours on then 5 hours off, with a 4 hour mid-shift ).

Now, take an individual that is trained on Ship A, then after 3 years goes to Ship B. Ship B is a completely different class and has new(ish) technology systems. That sailor is then going to have to be completely retrained on those systems. After another 3 years, that sailor can seriously be shipped to a completely new platform where they then have to repeat the cycle.

Adding new technology would just complicate the matter.

[maxerickson]

The snag is funding. The level of resources they have is inadequate for the mission they are carrying out.

[ptero]

I understand that it looks this way, but in my experience, human time is EXPENSIVE. Even a low pay grade soldier/sailor costs us a lot in benefits, insurance, medical, support, etc.

That cost may be coming from a different bucket and thus not visible to the folks who decide whether to invest $X in a systems upgrade, but in the grand scheme of things, getting humans to do the job that machines today do well is a big waste.

When you hear arguments that a badge reader is expensive and instead we will just put two soldiers at this or that door (24x7, btw) and no one jumps and calls BS on it, it is a strong indication of a broken system.

[Pharylon]

That's hard to believe, considering how much the US spends on the military.

[maxerickson]

The ships are understaffed (see the discussion here about people having 16+ hours of duty per 24 hours) and under maintained.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15120636

Add crew and duty hours would go down. Reduce hours of operations and maintenance would be better. More crew obviously costs more. Reducing hours of operation means a smaller mission or more ships.

[pc2g4d]

Crashing and repairing ships is expensive, too :-P

[spyspy]

I'm genuinely curious how there's so much work sailors have to abide by a schedule like this. Is this only in active war zones or is it always like that?

[EliRivers]

There is an enormous amount of work to do on warships (in my experience); the following doesn't apply everywhere always, but all of it applies sometimes and some of it applies all the time.

If you're in engineering, kit is constantly breaking and it is never all working; you'll never catch up, so it's just a question of what you decide to leave broken right now and what you need to fix. The things that are working need constant attention to make sure they stay working; you'll never get them all checked, so there's always something that definitely needs checking really quite soon.

In warfare branch(es), as in all branches, the manning situation is never right; there are always gapped billets, requiring other people who don't quite have the right skills and experience having to share that extra workload amongst themselves and to cover extra watches. Going to defence watches or the like (six on, six off, or even four on, four off) is a permanent mindfuck that leaves everyone as a kind of zombie, skating through on routine.

The kit is often old, and it's all pretty custom, and so much of it is painfully delicate. This ship doesn't like warm water, that ship has a habit of not being able to power the radar all the time, damn comms constantly up and down. With relatively new classes of ship, every one of the first dozen is basically an experiment, so the new kit refuses to work properly with each other, or maybe just plain at all, and the original purpose the ship was designed for is long gone and what was a cold water submarine hunter meant to last a week on its own before being back in port is now a warm water patrol vessel out for months at a time, constantly stressing systems that were meant to have a steady supply of cold water cooling and were never meant to be active for weeks at a time.

Every ship and crew will habitually be asked to do more, with less. Harmony time vanishes, billets get gapped, refits get put off, maintenance cycles become less frequent. It stops when ships basically cease to function.

Sometimes it's a wonder they don't sink upon leaving harbour :)

[jdmichal]

At the risk of imaginary internet points for being too reddit-like, this is my favorite software engineering GIF and is appropriate here:

https://tenor.com/view/shipit-revert-crash-gif-4770661

EDIT: Here's an article with a full video... Which is basically the same as the GIF:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2335331/Dramatic-vid...

[komali2]

What is actually happening during watch? Does that literally mean someone is posted in the modern equivalent of a crow's nest, looking out for ships?

[nradov]

Yes most surface warships have at least four lookouts on every watch to visually look for vessels and other hazards. That system works well as a safety backup for radar as long as they pay attention and communicate effectively.

[GingerBoats]

It's always like this, or worse. Active war-zones are a bit different if we are sailing through "hazardous" waters. Usually on top of work and normal watches, you'll man up some different watches since the crew will have to man extra guns.

Some divisions are different, but a majority of sailors have a pretty solid stream of work. Maintenance of a ship that is close to 20-30 years old is a constant battle. Hell, even a ship that is 5 years old requires meticulous care.

Deck division is responsible for maintaining a majority of the "skin" of the ship. So, a lot of painting and preservation. We are also responsible for all life-saving equipment on the ship: Life preservers, life-boats, any number of RHIB (Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats), life-lines, etc. A lot of this time is spent supervising extremely under-qualified and unmotivated individuals.

It's almost akin to teaching an unwilling 5 year old to read, and then every single day constantly monitoring his progress. As soon as your comfortable that he or she can read without supervision, they are transferred to another division, or are taken off the ship.