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This is not a surprise. It's part of the present culture in the Navy, especially the Surface Forces. There is no integrity there. There are only yes-men and spin doctors. Maintenance is done to a time standard and a cost standard, not to a quality and safety standard. Ships always leave the shipyards on time, even if badly needed work is undone or poorly done. Brand new ships leave the yard on time even if they are incomplete or built incorrectly. Need proof? Look at the USS San Antonio debacle. Look at the USS John F. Kennedy.

The article says that the ships were fully funded for maintenance. The question here is, were they fully funded to the amounts that the Navy was willing to spend, or were they funded to the amount that was actually required for the ships to operate safely and in compliance with the Navy's own regulations? My bet is on the former.

Read the Navy Times article and you will see that the first blame goes on the Sailors. They are the easiest people to blame, and there is some culpability on their part. But in the current environment, can you blame them? The current trend of Self-Sufficiency must stop. There were numerous times that I would submit requests to have work done. These were things that, by the Navy's own standards, should have been done at the intermediate or depot level, not by ship's force. These jobs would, more often than not, be returned as "ships force capable", or the IMA or shipyard would show up and do such a half-a$$ed job that the equipment was in no better condition - or worse - than before. Shipyard or IMA personnel would show up with insufficient or wrong tools, materials, or procedures to do their jobs. And who was the people who were held accountable? You guessed it, ship's force. Any time I tried to intervene, my complaints were quashed by Khaki - people who should have known better. There are many jobs that, by all rights, was a ships force capable job. Now, with the current funding restrictions in place, did we have the proper tools or materials to perform the work? Nope! Too expensive, says the khaki. When it came time for PMS checks and so on, we would beg, borrow, steal, or outright lie to give the inspector the illusion that we were following the rules. Any time I tried to throw the BS flag, I was told to keep my mouth shut. No wonder the INSURV inspectors found so many of the wrong parts in place during these inspections.

All these issues, and many others, was one of the reasons I chose not to aggressively fight my medical discharge.

This is a cultural problem that is endemic to today's politically correct climate and will take years to undo. Here's what needs to happen:

1) The Navy needs to make an honest assesment of what it's material condition is. Like it or not, INSURV is the best vehicle for this.
2) The Navy must ensure that an adequate supply of the correct parts and materials are made available to each ship, not just those that are readying for deployment.
3) Sailors must lose their fear of self-assessment. If a piece of gear is unsat, it is unsat, and needs to be reported as such.
4) The Navy must act on the self-assessments given by its own Sailors. Khaki must lose the mentality that a Sailor who is reporting a deficiency to their equipment is simply trying to waste the Navy's money or get out of doing the work themselves. Khaki, especially those from the "old school", need to understand that an awful lot of Sailor's time is taken up in administrative tasks, often political in nature, that take away the man hours required to perform maintenance and upkeep tasks.
5) The Navy, especially the Surface Forces, need to embrace the same culture of compliance that is found in the submarine and aviation forces. They must find the courage (purportedly a "core value") to hold the shipyards, IMAs, and contractors accountable for the quality and completeness of their work. This is especially true with the new, minimally manned platforms that may be coming online, like the LCS and DDG-1000 classes. Those ships, with the way that they are built and manned, are most assuredly not going to have an organizational maintenance capability like the ones found on today's warships.
6) Bona fide depot-level jobs such as the fire control radars on one of the ships that was 19 years old and had not been overhauled as required at the 15 year mark must be addressed. Those overhauls are done for a reason, and again that reason is not to waste the Navy's money, but to ensure that the equipment works when required.
7) Lastly, High-Level Navy leadership needs to get some serious testicular fortitude when they are asking Congress for money. They must be honest - and forthright - about the amount of funding needed to operate the Navy.

The US Navy has a moral and ethical obligation to provide their personnel with a safe and reliable working environment; one that they can feel confident in while they go in harms way. With this news of INSURV, it is plainly obvious that the high-level leadership of the Navy is miserably failing their personnel.

XHT1(SW) (still in recovery from the Navy)