This is What Your Navy with Accountancy in Primacy Looks Like

six-sigma at sea is ... well ... BEHOLD!

As you would expect, the best granular reporting on the grounding of the USNS Big Horn (T-AO-198) can be found from our friends John Konrad at gCaptain and Sal Mercogliano - whose video I will post below.

First, let’s get the summary from John,

..,.the US Navy oiler USNS Big Horn ran aground yesterday and partially flooded off the coast of Oman, leaving the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group without its primary fuel source.

First reported on the gCaptain forum and by maritime historian Sal Mercogliano, a leaked video and photos show damage to the ship’s rudder post and water flooding into a mechanical space. US Navy vessels don’t typically transmit AIS signals, so we don’t know the exact location of the ship but a Navy source confirms she is anchored near Oman awaiting a full damage assessment.

Fortunately, no injuries or environmental damage have been reported for the ship. This is significant because the 33-year-old vessel is one of the single-hull versions of the Kaiser-class oilers.

A little note about the Kaisers. They were an oiler designed and began construction during the last decade of the Cold War. 15 in total, some were not even completed in the 1990s due to a variety of “Peace Dividend” issues. They are now on the road to being decommissioned at a fairly snappy rate to be replaced by the John Lewis Class oilers.

As we discussed with The Other Sal on Midrats back in August, we have two perfect storms going on right now when it comes to our USNS auxiliaries.

First, we have done such a poor job nurturing our human capital, we have had to soft-mothball 17 ships so we can reassign the 700 merchant mariners elsewhere.

Second, absolutely no one believes that we have enough auxiliaries to support our fleet even at peace. We unquestionably do not have enough for a sustained fight west of the International Date Line.

It isn’t just oilers, it is salvage ships, ocean going tugs, tenders, and more.

One of the largest mistakes made over a generation ago was moving from USS to USNS, that is part of the fix. A big part of the fix though? Be an adult enough to hurt people’s feeling. Be a mature enough institution enough to say we got it wrong.

Then get money.

We need more auxiliaries. We need to bring back some auxiliaries, such as Destroyer Tenders. The post-Cold War B-school false horizons are no longer a vanity-indulgence we can afford to continue.

Without adequate numbers—and redundancy—then you don’t have a blue water navy. You can have all the battle force destroyers and carriers you want, but if they cannot be replenished at sea, you have a coastal defense fleet.

To quote The Other Sal again: we’ve been here before.

Early in the Pacific War, USS Lexington was tasked to conduct a raid on Wake Island. At 2,500 miles, any strike required an oiler for fuel. USS Neches (AO-5) sortied from Hawaii to meet Lex but on 22 Jan 1942, Neches was torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-72. The raid was canceled and after this, no oiler sailed without escort, requiring the diversion of destroyers from other missions to protect the remaining oilers and to convoy vital tankers sailing from the US to replenish the Pearl Harbor fuel farm left untouched by the Japanese raid.

None of what John, Sal, or what we put here is in any way magical thinking. The crisis in the “unsexy but important” is not new.

What it is, is simply professional neglect.

We have let the Cult of Efficiency, led by the green eye-shade brigade flavored with no small bit of immaturity derived by a kid’s love of things that go boom, win the day. They and their handmaidens for too long have run roughshod over those who argue for military effectiveness flavored with an understanding of the lessons of history.

And so, here we find ourselves. A mess of our own creation