Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener, commander, Naval Surface Force, speaks with junior officers at the Mariner Skills Training Center, Pacific (MSTCPAC) on May 6, 2022. US Navy Photo
Surface warfare reforms crafted to improve mariner skills and manage demand for ships are trickling into the fleet five years after two fatal collisions in the Western Pacific forced the Navy to retool how the service trains the surface fleet. Read More
USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) departs Huntington Ingalls Industries – Ingalls Shipbuilding’s Pascagoula shipyard to conduct comprehensive at-sea testing on Feb. 3, 2020. US Navy Photo
The Navy’s surface warfare community is weighed with a culture that values administrative chores over training to fight, ship commanders that are micromanaged and an aversion to risk, according to a new survey overseen by a retired Navy admiral and Marine general at the behest of a group of Republican lawmakers. That culture was at least partially responsible for a string “of high-profile and damaging operational failures in the Navy’s Surface Warfare community,” the report found. Read More
Sailors on the bridge of USS Antietam (CG-59). US Navy Photo
Surface warfare officers are leaving the Navy at a higher rate than other unrestricted line officers despite reforms in training the service has instituted since two fatal collisions in 2017, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. Read More
Lt. Aaron Van Driessche, a warfare tactics instructor at the Center for Surface Combat Systems (CSCS), Detachment San Diego, pilots the U.S. Navy’s virtual combat curriculum with Sailors aboard USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60) inside the newly launched portable simulator, the On Demand Trainer, on Jan. 6, 2020. US Navy photo.
The head of the Navy’s surface force highlighted a handful of new training and manning initiatives meant to get sailors the right training they need to fight and maintain ships, put them in the jobs where that training can be best leveraged, and then continue that cycle of building and applying individual expertise to ultimately boost fleet readiness. Read More
The crew of USS Benfold (DDG-65) trains in the Combined Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD)/Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Trainer (CIAT) in San Diego, Calif., on March 5, 2020. USNI News photo.
The surface navy continues to expand and evolve its use of virtual trainers, as it looks to train and certify individual sailors and watch teams ashore so they can make best use of their time at sea. Read More
