The Senate Armed Services Committee has published the advance policy questions, with answers, for the nominee for appointment to be our next Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Daryl L. Caudle, USN.If you want to know where he stands or where the center-mass of consensus thinking on topics are, this is about as good of a source as any.Yes, there is a fair bit of boilerplate, but there are some solid answers as well. Even better, it is a serious set of questions. I did word searches for some of the socio-political garbage previous CNOs invested their personal capital in, and none of it is there.
The first one is, for me, the most important one. It has been eight years since the horrible summer of 2017. It has been 2.11 WorldWars since the last of the collisions of that summer, and yet we are still working through the issues.The report of the post-mishap investigation into the June 17, 2017, collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a Philippine-flagged container ship found that the collision was avoidable and resulted from an accumulation of “smaller errors over time,” ultimately resulting in a lack of adherence to sound navigational practices. Similarly, the report of investigation into the collision of the USS John S. McCain and merchant vessel Alnic MC on August 21, 2017, also was avoidable and resulted primarily from crew complacency, over-confidence, and lack of procedural compliance.
37. What has the Navy done to counter the “smaller errors over time” and the “complacency, overconfidence, and lack of procedural compliance” that resulted in these otherwise “avoidable” collisions?Simply said, the Navy is embracing, assessing, and leveraging near misses using the best practices honed over decades by Naval Reactors versus only responding to corrective actions following a significant incident or mishap. Prior to these collisions, the Navy reviewed each incident as a standalone issue and established a working group to directly tackle and address the deficiencies without holistic extensions of the problems or ruthlessly executing all corrective actions to closure.
As a direct result of the collisions in 2017 and the fire that destroyed USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD-6) in 2020, the Navy implemented sweeping changes with a targeted objective of increased safe operations through rigorous compliance with safety standards, increased focus on improving overall fleet manning and training, improving long-term sustained readiness and establishing a stronger culture of operational excellence. In October 2021, the Navy established the Learning to Action Board (L2AB), which supports the implementation of critical recommendations and measures sustainment and effectiveness of those recommendations over time.
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