October 22, 2007:
The U.S.
Navy is moving increasingly towards small, no, make that very small, crews. Not
just the 75 men on the new, 3,000 ton LCS (Littoral Combat Ship), but a
thousand sailors for a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier. Not immediately, but in
the next decade or so. Meanwhile, the new Ford class of nuclear powered carriers
is reducing crew size 17 percent (to
4,700). But based on three decades of experience with shrinking crews on combat
support ships, and commercial shipping in general, the navy believes it has a
reasonable shot at running a large carrier with a thousand sailors.
This all began back in the
1970s, when the U.S. Navy began converting its unarmed supply, repair and
maintenance ships to be run largely by civilians. While the U.S. Navy has about
280 combat ships in service, there is another fleet of 185 support ships. The
civilianization of these ships taught the navy that a lot of practices, used in
running civilian ships, would work in the navy. The big change was the use of
smaller, but more capable, crews, and the use of more automation. The navy, for
example, found that, as it converted support ships from military to civilian
crews, crew size typically was cut by 50-70 percent. While the civilians got
paid more, they were actually cheaper, saving millions of dollars per ship each
year, in payroll alone. There were still some sailors on these ships, about ten
percent of the crews, and these were sought after billets. The Military Sealift
Command ships had much better accommodations for the crews (everyone had their
own room, although more junior personnel shared two man rooms), and things
operated much more smoothly because many of the "sailors" were guys who retired
after twenty years in the navy, to take these jobs. The high experience level
prevented a lot of things from going wrong in the first place, and led to
problems being fixed much more quickly
When Military Sealift Command
ships converted to civilian crews, the ships often had much new equipment
installed, stuff that was standard on most civilian ships. This included a lot
of automation in the engine room, and on the bridge. Instead of having sailors
standing around watching equipment, most of that was now done by computers
hooked up to sensors. A few sailors could keep an eye, and then some, on every
aspect of ship operation. If anything went wrong, dozens of experienced sailors
were available for deal with it. Over the years, the navy noted that, even when
there was a major catastrophe (as would be the case from combat damage), the
smaller civilian crews on Military Sealift Command ships were able to cope.
Because of all that experience, the navy is now moving forward with the same
degree of automation on warships.
This is a trend that has been
going on for over a century. In the early 19th century, a typical 3,500 ton
"ship of the line" had a crew of 800-900 sailors. That was about 240 sailors
per thousand tons of ship. A century later, capital ships had eliminated labor
intensive sails and were running on steam, and lots more machines. The 12,000
tons pre-World War I battleship had a crew of 750 (62 sailors per thousand tons
of ship). But for the last century, not a lot of progress was made. The current
U.S. nuclear carriers have 57 sailors per thousand tons of ship. But the LCS
gets that down to 25. Advances in automation, as well as the introduction of
the combat UAVs in the next decade, will make the thousand sailor crew for a
carrier possible. That's ten sailors per thousand tons of ship, plus a lot of
robots, and equipment built to require very little manpower to fix or operate.
That last innovation is already happening with warplanes, greatly reducing the
man hours of maintenance required per flight hour. The navy has long since
accepted those concepts for missiles (delivered in sealed containers, requiring
no maintenance.) These are trends that have been building for some time, and
show every indication of continuing. Although these new techniques are
expensive, so are sailors. Each one costs over $100,000 a year. For a carrier
crew of 5,700, that's over half a billion dollars a year. That buys lots of
automation, and keeps a lot of people out of harm's way.